Every year in July, commemorations are held in memory of Serb and Bosniak suffering in Podrinje and the areas around Bratunac and Srebrenica, but while some are expected to unconditionally accept the qualification of “genocide,” others are under no obligation even to acknowledge the crime, Srđan Mazalica, head of the SNSD caucus in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, told Srna.
“If someone were to speak about July 1995 without mentioning Bosniak victims, we would rightly say that they were falsifying history. But what do we call it when Srebrenica is discussed without Bratunac, Kravica, Skelani, Zalazje and the Serb villages that were burning in 1992 and 1993? That too is selective history. The only difference is that one form of selectivity is punishable, while the other is desirable,” Mazalica said.
Mazalica said that he does not deny anyone’s death, does not justify any crime and does not glorify any criminal, but that he refuses to accept a criminal law “left behind by Valentin Inzko” to determine how far he is allowed to go with his questions.
“What kind of truth is afraid of questions?” Mazalica asked.
He stressed that truth is proven by facts, documents, names, forensic evidence and free scholarship, but is not defended by prosecutors and the police.
“And what kind of truth is it, and what kind of guardians does it have, if a citizen of this country must first hire a lawyer in order to ask the following: do we distinguish between a man who was captured and then executed, and a soldier who died in combat with a weapon during the breakthrough of an entire division toward Tuzla? Can we speak of genocide limited to the territory of a single municipality, and can we speak of intent to destroy a people if the women and children from that municipality were organizedly moved to safe locations?” Mazalica asked.
He noted that Adolf Hitler was never tried and was never finally convicted, and asked whether the Prosecutor’s Office and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina act under a law that would permit the glorification of Adolf Hitler.
“Can a judge lock up history and take the key home?” Mazalica asked.
He emphasized that historians still debate events that took place 100, 200 and 500 years ago.
“Only here are we expected to stop thinking about an event from 1995 because someone has decided which sentence is allowed. Because the moment a state says that there is a question you are not allowed to ask, it is no longer protecting the truth. It is admitting that it fears the answer,” Mazalica said.
Source: RTRS
