Column by Valentin Inzko: Evil will not defeat us

This year, 2015, marks 20 years since the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina finally ended.

This year also marks the anniversary of Srebrenica, as the greatest crime committed in Europe after the Second World War, a crime that two international courts have characterised as genocide.

In these twenty years since the genocide in Srebrenica was committed, the families of innocent victims across the country have travelled a long, slow and painful path towards justice and reconciliation.

Innocent lives lost in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be brought back. Every victim was unique and irreplaceable. The grief of their loved ones can never be alleviated.

What we can do is try to preserve and nurture what was positive and precious in the lost lives and destroyed communities. If we succeed in that, we will ensure that the killers, together with those who wanted to divide the country and its people, did not win.

This means we must engage, and seriously so, to support citizens of all nationalities across Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are fed up with stories about what divides them, and who want to work together on the reforms necessary to secure a more prosperous future for themselves and their children.

Twenty years after the war, the job is not finished, and progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina is often slow, not because the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina do not want reconciliation, but because progress is undermined and prevented by some of the leading politicians in this country.

Where politicians have failed to set an example, others have shown the way. For example, a few years ago, “Women in Black”, a citizens' association from Serbia that opposed the wars of Slobodan Milošević, visited Bosnia and Herzegovina and met with the “Mothers of Srebrenica”. That was an example of great courage and dignity.

It was a meeting of ordinary people determined to overcome evil and ensure that the tragedy of the past does not get even the slightest chance to repeat itself in the future. Today we must support and renew their determination - the determination to thwart the spread of ideologies that promote conflict and hatred in order to save innocent lives.

On Saturday, 11 July, tens of thousands of BiH citizens will gather in Srebrenica to pay tribute to those who were killed there twenty years ago. Twenty years after the crime in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina has come a long way, but has not yet completed its journey towards reconciliation and lasting peace. For that reason, we must see this job through to the end. Honourable citizens want a society based on justice and equality, and I have no doubt that honourable citizens make up the vast majority in this country.

We do not stand silently before evil. We are not powerless. We are determined to continue building a society in which the values that were attacked 20 years ago are upheld, a society in which justice prevails.

Returning Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European family of states, where it belongs, is the way to achieve justice and equality, and also a due tribute to those who lost their lives. We must finish the job so that those lives are not lost in vain, and so that future generations can live in peace and dignity in a truly reintegrated Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Written by: Valentin Inzko