Why should Bosniaks forget Milošević's death squads, or what kind of Bosnia do Ivanić, Čović and Dodik want

By: Prof. Nedžad Ahatović

In February 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague dismissed as unfounded the lawsuit of Bosnia and Herzegovina against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia, for aggression and genocide.

The judgment left BiH with the possibility of initiating a review procedure within ten years if it gathered and submitted new evidence in that period to support its lawsuit.

The deadline for initiating the review procedure ends at the end of February 2017.

In the context of this topic, the current Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Mladen Ivanić, believes that Bosniak politicians will not succeed in their intention to initiate a review of the genocide lawsuit against Serbia before the International Court of Justice and that it would be better if they did not even try!?

"I think they will not succeed in that and it would be better not to even try," said Ivanić.

On the same topic, he also stated the following for local media:

 "That is the Bosniak renewal of the lawsuit, the Bosniaks are renewing the lawsuit, it is not a renewal of the BiH lawsuit against Serbia," said Ivanić.

These two statements by the esteemed member of the Presidency of BiH from the Serbian people, Mr. Mladen Ivanić, are a classic and textbook example of chauvinism. That is probably that cultural level, intellectual dignity and character of a professor of social sciences at the University of Glasgow.

Now let's take the other extreme. The commemoration of the anniversary of the horrific Ustasha crimes and the subsequent genocide against Serbs in the villages under Kozara during the fascist offensive against Tito's partisans in this part of Bosnia in 1942, which takes place every year in Donja Gradina, cannot pass without the esteemed member of the Presidency of BiH, Mr. Mladen Ivanić. Meanwhile, Srebrenica and the commemoration of July 11 is, for him, a politicized passé topic.

Unfortunately, it is precisely his presence at the commemoration of crimes and genocide against Serbs that makes him cynically hypocritical, because the same crime of genocide that happened to Bosniaks in the last war is not considered a fact by the said gentleman.

Thus, Mladen Ivanić believes that the genocide in Srebrenica as a term is purely the right of another to have their own opinion about that "event," even though that "event" has been translated several times into court verdicts for genocide against Bosniaks by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, thereby making that "event" a fact of genocide.

What does such a negative attitude towards valid court verdicts - facts about genocide - mean from an intellectual, pedagogue and scientist?

Does that mean that Bosniak victims in the past war are unimportant, because they were then, and still are, second or third-class citizens, or are those victims irrelevant because they were killed in the name of creating today's Republika Srpska, which guarantees a political position and comfortable state existential conformism for people like Mr. Ivanić?

Claiming that in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthausen, Dachau, Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška and in Srebrenica and a dozen other cities in BiH, through distant and recent history, crimes of genocide occurred is a matter of a high level of respect for the other and different, personal upbringing, formal education and literacy.

Any contrary claim is first-class chauvinism and a reflection of a very low level of respect for the other and different, personal upbringing, formal education and literacy.

If Mr. Ivanić does not forget (and should not forget) the horror that the Ustasha troops of the fascist Ante Pavelić inflicted on the inhabitants of the villages under Kozara like Donja Gradina 80 years ago, when they silenced crying two- and three-year-old children in the columns of Serbs being led from Kozara to the Jasenovac concentration camp by snatching them from their mothers' arms and throwing them to the ground while holding them by the leg.

Why should Bosniaks forget how members of Milošević's death squads, on warm July nights in '95, abducted 12- and 13-year-old boys from the columns that set out from Srebrenica, only to tie them with a knife wound a few kilometers ahead of the column, bind them to a tree and mine them, so that they could not be helped. Is that not the same crime for Mr. Ivanić? The crime of Genocide?

My opinion is that the fundamental issue is not the mere renewal of the BiH lawsuit against Serbia for aggression and genocide. The fundamental issue is whether Mr. Ivanić and, according to his claim, Mr. Čović, want to build Bosnia and Herzegovina by denying and belittling crimes against Bosniaks as a politicized passé topic and invoking a supposed "peace in the house."

While they will duly commemorate crimes against members of their own ethnic groups, as should be done. If a crime is a crime, no matter against whom it occurred, why then is that crime against Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina not condemned through the renewal of the BiH lawsuit against Serbia as the legal successor of the FRY for aggression and genocide?

What is, in that case, the human and moral obstacle for such a condemnation of crimes specifically against Bosniaks for Mr. Ivanić?

If such an obstacle exists, and it obviously does, then the question rightly arises whether Mr. Ivanić would dispute that same renewal of the lawsuit if before that International Tribunal in The Hague a BiH proceeding was being conducted against the NDH for aggression, annexation and genocide. I deeply believe he would not. Therefore, the conclusion is that Mr. Ivanić is, in fact, "Milorad Dodik" with a bow tie.