Revision on the way to The Hague and Ivanić's rattling of words

Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mladen Ivanić called the proposal for a revision of the BiH ruling against Serbia before the International Court of Justice a creation of a crisis. And for that, he blamed one party. Naturally, the victims of the crime of genocide and numerous crimes against humanity were not members of any parties.

It has not been recorded in the mass executions across Bosnia and Herzegovina that the killers asked about party affiliation. People were judged by their personal documents and executed based on their first and last names. It has all been seen before: When someone in Bosnia and Herzegovina wants to provoke tension and conflict, they reduce facts and direct them for their own needs.

Convicted Serbian leaders Milošević, Karadžić, Brđanin, Plavšić, Krajišnik did this when they used the most harmless trifles or statements from other nations to rattle weapons and call for hatred and killings.

For now, Ivanić is rattling threats by reducing the question of the genocide ruling to a single national political party. Ivanić's key claim is that the revision destabilizes BiH and aims to provoke conflicts. Ivanić can freely and excessively produce political pressures, destabilize, threaten, and rattle words in BiH. In any rule-of-law state, he would be charged with obstruction of justice. In Bosnia, he is protected by a politics that lives and persists on tensions and threats of conflict. However, what the International Court of Justice in The Hague will deal with cannot be tied to the internal political issues of Bosnia and Herzegovina. If there is a procedural error in the proposal for the revision of the ruling, the request will be rejected at the outset. If there is no delay or any procedural error, then Ivanić is encroaching on the jurisdiction of international justice.

Ivanić threatens conflicts because procedures are not respected, although he threatened much more seriously when he was deploying the army and violating the constitution of this country. Even the head of the OSCE Mission to BiH, Jonathan Moore, whose duty is to care for security in BiH and the region, reduced the proposal for the revision of the ruling to a real question of justice for the victims. If it happens – let it be. Dozens of international lawyers have said there is room for a revision of the ruling, as a fundamental right to achieve final justice for the victims.

Ivanić is bothered that procedures are not being respected and that the decision for the revision process was not made by the Presidency of BiH. For two decades, victims have been watching the destruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina in peace. That is two decades of long-standing disrespect for the system, laws, and procedures, and a complete denial of state institutions by the Republika Srpska.

How many times has Dodik, even during Ivanić's term, called for the secession of the RS? How many times has he stated that he prefers Serbia over BiH, that this country does not exist, and finally that he does not even want a passport of this country. Such amounts of degrading treatment of one's own country have never been expressed anywhere. Did it seem to Ivanić back then that this was provoking tensions? And that his entity leader was destabilizing this country and wanting to provoke conflicts? How many times should Ivanić have reacted to Dodik's horrors with at least a similar stance as he did to this latest cry of the victims for justice. Double standards seem to be the strongest tradition of politics from the RS.

On the other hand, the Serbian Assembly has never truly apologized to the victims after it was ruled that the state was guilty for failing to prevent genocide. It was done sloppily and superficially, formally and without substance. It was the worst possible response to an internationally adjudicated crime of genocide. The first in the history of the World Court of Justice against a state. The public in Serbia has never confronted the essence of the war crime committed by Milošević's regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There was no catharsis, so there was no genuine reconciliation. After two decades of mocking the rulings of international courts, it is time for a final decision.

Written by: Sead Omeragić