Time to stop treating Bosnia and Herzegovina like a European pa-riah state

Dear Federal Chancellor,

Tomorrow you will be welcoming Mr Zeljko Komsic, Chairman of the Rotating Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the occasion of his state visit to Germany. On behalf of our human rights organisation I should like to draw your attention once again to the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina, the principal victim of the wars in Yugoslavia, continues to be treated like a pariah state, thanks in no small measure to European and German policies.

While citizens of Croatia and Serbia now enjoy the privilege of unrestricted travel to Western Europe, Bosnians continue to be denied that right. We re-main mindful how Serb militia interned tens of thousands of Bosniaks in con-centration camps, thousands of Bosnian Muslim women were detained in rape camps for months on end, besieged Bosnian towns and cities, including Sara-jevo, were subjected to daily bombardments over a period of four years, 8376 men and boys were slaughtered at Srebrenica and hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims were forced to flee their country. We have not forgotten how Marek Edelman, the recently deceased commander of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighters, observed that "Europe has learned nothing from the Holo-caust. Nothing has been done to stop the killing. What has been taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a posthumous triumph for Hitler." Prominent individuals including Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Ernst Tugendhat and Alfred Grosser also spoke out on behalf of Bosnia's victims.

Zeljko Komsic is a politician who is recognised and respected by all Bosnians of goodwill who support reconciliation. Germany has a special duty of respon-sibility to them because of the failure of the Kohl/Kinkel government in the 1990s to make any serious effort to halt the genocide. Christian Schwarz-Schilling was driven to resign from that government in frustration.

At Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided up in a way that left the ethni-cally cleansed half of the country in the hands of a political organisation that is dominated even today by war criminals. No serious attempt has been made to bring about the return of the exiled population.

We urge you to play your part in repairing the damage. We call on Germany to oppose the plan by the entity of Republika Srpska to hold a referendum on union with Serbia. 60% of the entity's population were forced into exile. The German Federal Government should aim to secure a rational reorganisation of Bosnia based on a regional structure and the effective decentralisation of local government.

Yours sincerely,

Tilman Zülch