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Home  Publications Monday, 24th June, 1996 Press Conference [Bosnians are citizens of the world]
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Monday, 24th June, 1996 Press Conference [Bosnians are citizens of the world] |
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Good Morning,
We have been saying that events are accelerating—posing questions and challenges for the further implementation of Dayton.
In the meantime, Pale media announces that "the international community has learned nothing in five years. Mme Playsic goes on to say that "we thought that the signing of the Dayton agreement would bring to an end the troubles of the Serb people, but difficult times are ahead of us, because they are disputing the leaders who led us through these last four years in the political and military arena".
Correct! It is the policy of the High Representative not to accept as legitimate leaders those indicted for war crimes.
The Pale commentary went on:—"the war came about as a result of the international community rejecting the right of the Serbian people to freely decide with whom they want to live and who will represent them".
Really?
Setting aside the question of how the war began, the Dayton agree¬ment provides clearly for different people to retain their identity with¬in a unitary state.
And here the High Representative draws attention once again to the hand of friendship he extends to all people on both sides of the IEBL. This is not an empty gesture—but one that implies important assistance and help.
But as to who should represent any group, then no!, The High Representative and the international community do not, of course, recognise indicted persons as legitimate leaders. War crimes are too grave for such an acceptance.
On Thursday next, the international tribunal in The Hague is scheduled to open its hearings on Dr. Karadzic and General Mladic.
But on the very next day, 28th June, Pale says it will announce its electoral candidates (on the anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje).
Any attempt by the SDS to place Dr. Karadzic's candidacy at the head of a list of hard-line candidates, in this manner, heavy with symbolism, will be seen by us as an extraordinary further provocation and another foolish gamble directly contrary to the real interests of the Bosnian Serb people.
Once again, and yet again, at issue here are concerns that go beyond the borders of Bosnia and indeed, of Europe. Can a provocative pursuit, by short-sighted hard-liners, of a spurious racial purity and parochialism—reminiscent of the early 1940's—be allowed to sabotage a peace process invested in so heavily by so many for so many?
Nor will mere lip service to the Dayton peace agreement do—ritu¬ally repeated by these same hardliners.
Just what have they learned in the last, brutal years?
Over those recent years, Bosnia and, in particular Sarajevo, caught the imagination of the world. Because all of the great issues were at stake here, all of us became, in a certain sense, Sarajevans. In a certain sense, Bosnians.
But correspondingly, Bosnians are citizens of the world—with appropriate responsibilities as well as rights. Neither the present regime in the Republica Srpska, nor that in Herceg-Bosna, for example, has the right to remove itself from the planet.
If the international community has a clear duty in Bosnia, then Bosnians too have responsibilities toward the rest of the world—as they take now their proper seat among the nations.
The Pale regime is engaged on a course contrary to the welfare of its own people—a people who have too much suffered, largely at the hands of their own leaders.
And in such a society, without open media or open debate, the distorted popularity ratings of these same leaders is just one more manipulated myth, unwisely re-calibrated and celebrated—at a time when reconstruction and reconciliation is called for.
This manipulation of myth is unwise. The attempted manipulation of the international community is unwise.
It is transparent. It will fail. And it is not fitting for would-be citizens of the world—as will become clear." |
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Quotes
Reviewing "Aza Beast" in Foreign Affairs (Jan/Feb. 2005), Harvard's Stanley Hoffmann wrote: "This memoir is valuable both as a portrait of a deeply moral man in an awful situation and as an account of the sufferings of the Bosnians ... Murphy's sense of right and wrong, his distaste for "realist" justifications of inaction, and his concern for the victims of war gives this volume its glow and its emotional power"
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