'Appointing Zovko would be a collapse of European democratic and civilisational architecture'

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The scandalous nomination and potential appointment of Željana Zovko as EU Special Rapporteur for Bosnia and Herzegovina can and does symbolically and actually represent the final signal of EU realpolitik towards BiH, states a joint statement by the Association of Independent Intellectuals Krug 99 and the Croatian National Council of BiH.

"This would confirm the previously expressed indications by some former senior officials of the EU Delegation to BiH that European democratic values and standards, desirable in the community of all democratic countries, are not and will not be applied to BiH. With such an act, the EU knowingly and unilaterally distances BiH from the much-needed and desirable integrations and objectively forces it to search for alternatives that could potentially mean security, stability, and overall development.

Appointing a person who, in their actions, does not accept the basic rules of general International Public Law, according to which any legal, and especially political, undertaking whose results arise from the violation of fundamental human rights (e.g., prohibition of genocide) or fundamental interests of the international community (prohibition of aggression) represents absolute nullity, would only harm the development of a democratic BiH and further undermine the European democratic and civilisational architecture", the statement reads.

Adil Kulenović and Marijo Pejić state in the joint statement that it is widely known that Željana Zovko followed and affirmed the actions of a part of the political spectrum in BiH that seeks to impose legal and political outcomes, both those arising from genocide and those from the prohibition of aggression.

"Evidence of this is her advocacy in the European Parliament to impose further ethno-territorial division of BiH and the undermining of society on the principle of ethnofederalism, despite the obvious violation of the aforementioned international jus cogens norms, to reaffirm the values and revive the para-institutions of the so-called Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosnia. Her rejection of the verdict of the highest judicial instances in the world for a joint criminal enterprise and the affirmation of the convicted, as well as her insistence on a discriminatory election law, and the refusal of responsibility for the political and other consequences of the JCE and the committed genocide, and their removal, are also scandalous", they conclude in the statement.