IGK: Together to Stop the Denial of Genocide and the Holocaust

(Patria)- The Institute for Genocide Research, Canada (IGK) issued a statement on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, IGK remembers the victims of the Holocaust, but also the victims of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all victims of all crimes in the world.

"The twentieth century was marked by a monstrous aspiration to exterminate entire national, ethnic, racial or religious groups, to prevent their biological, cultural, social and ecological survival. From the Nazi Holocaust, humanity still has the opportunity to draw a historical lesson and message, and ensure a better future, although the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, generated by Serbian and Croatian Nazism, inaugurated genocidal creations on the bones of murdered victims in the unique state and social Bosnian-Herzegovinian space, showed an enormous negative experience.

It is a delusion that more Europe means more culture of remembrance, more historical truth. The question of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian past is not decided in the field of historiography, objective historiographical knowledge and conflict of historians over objective historical truth, but in the field of cultural articulation in which the destruction of the culture of remembrance is the foundation of the anti-Bosnian reality in which the state and society find themselves deeply in a dead end of misery and hopelessness," they say from IGK.

The Bosnian-Herzegovinian view of the past - the culture of remembrance, is determined by the current Bosnian-Herzegovinian reality - the construction of the state and society on the basis of legalizing the results of aggression and genocide. There is no Bosnian historiography that claims scientific objectivity. There is a plurality of ethnic histories - truths, without claiming objectivity. Bosnia and Herzegovina needs individual remembrance and collective history, not a plurality of histories and collective remembrance.

Public speaking about the aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the first prerequisite for us to emerge from the anti-Bosnian state of denying genocide, honoring criminals and falsifying judicial, historical and scientific facts. Unlike the Jews, the victims of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially Bosniaks, have not found an active response to genocide. War criminals live freely in the public space, and are proposed for the most responsible political, academic and cultural functions. Bosnian-Herzegovinian victims of genocide do not have a clear awareness of the culture of remembrance as a Bosnian-Herzegovinian program for the survival not only of the state and society, but also especially for the survival of the Bosnian idea. The lack of a Bosnian program and platform is a sign that we are working against ourselves, but also against the Bosnian state and society. No one will give us a Bosnian program and the institutionalization of the culture of remembrance as one of the essential components of that program; we must build it by defending, strengthening and lobbying for truth, justice, and the culture of remembrance, thereby defending, strengthening and lobbying for the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"People cannot be happy or satisfied without the truth about crimes and justice for victims. A person who has not found truth and justice is lost. He insults, fabricates and is dissatisfied only because he cannot grasp the meaning of the culture of remembrance. We can and should open up to each other only if justice rises above guilt, truth above lies. We are tasked with fighting against evil, against all forms of violence. That is our mission. Evil and crime are a disease that has spread so much. That is why today, more than ever, when crimes against humanity and international law exist in the world, it is necessary to form and strengthen historical awareness of the Holocaust and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the sacred task of intellectuals and the responsibility of researchers to scientifically investigate genocide and other forms of crimes against humanity and international law, on which truth and justice are based, and to maximally narrow the space for potential falsifications, manipulations and lies. Those who glorify and deny the Holocaust and genocide must be fought against by all means, letting them know that such evils will not be tolerated.

Together we can stop the crime of denying the Holocaust and genocide and thereby send a clear message to the victims that they are not alone in the fight to prove the obvious and indisputable truth about their suffering. The truth about the Holocaust and genocides must prevail. Justice for the victims of the Holocaust and genocide must be fully satisfied. The freedom of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state is possible only when judicial responsibility is established for the aggression and genocide on whose results that freedom is based today. The state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its victims of aggression and genocide must not be humiliated. Truth and justice are the best defense against anti-Bosnian activities and the best defense against the humiliation of victims of aggression and genocide," the statement said.