Komšić with Pettigrew: There are no "three historical truths", The Hague verdicts are the only relevant ones

(Patria) - BiH Presidency Member Željko Komšić received David Pettigrew, a CSU professor from the University of Connecticut, who was recently declared an honorary citizen of the city of Sarajevo.

In his long-term work, Professor Pettigrew often speaks about the need to strengthen the culture of remembrance and transitional justice, as a fundamental prerequisite for the process of reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He also speaks about the need to remove all monuments and memorials to convicted war criminals, such as the mural to war criminal Ratko Mladić in Kalinovik or, for example, the memorial plaque in Vrace, which undermine both the process of reconciliation and the achievement of mutual trust among the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The interlocutors agreed that it is important to strengthen the culture of remembrance and enable transitional justice in a way that all historical facts should be accepted in social life, especially in the educational system.

They emphasized that it is necessary to regularly remind of the social obligation to invest efforts in raising awareness about the committed genocide and other war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

BiH Presidency Member Komšić pointed out that the public space very often talks about "three historical truths", which are allegedly related to three ethnic communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their interpretations of historical facts, which in his opinion is very wrong, because there is only one truth, especially the one established and stated in the verdicts of the International Criminal Court from The Hague.

The creation of a narrative about "three truths", according to Komšić's opinion, has its political goal of strengthening and maintaining ethnic divisions in the country, with clear political goals of those who appear with such a narrative.

At the end of the meeting, it was jointly assessed that the culture of remembrance must be strengthened, so that through the process of transitional justice, conditions are created for overcoming all divisions in Bosnian-Herzegovinian society, with the necessary acceptance of the fact of the committed genocide and other war crimes.