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Home  Publications Sarajevo, Thursday, 11th July, 1996 Press Conference [The fall of Srebrenica]
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Sarajevo, Thursday, 11th July, 1996 Press Conference [The fall of Srebrenica] |
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"Today, one year ago, the "Safe Area" of Srebrenica fell. Only one year has passed. Yet this is an anniversary that will be long memorialised.
On the morning of July 11, at 12.00 a.m. the defenders of Srebrenica surrendered to the Bosnian Serb army. Thereafter, the men and women of Srebrenica were separated by the conquering soldiers.
Over ensuing days, terrorised refugees fled toward Tuzla, and were shelled, ambushed and cut down as they hurried along—their former lives left behind them forever.
Now listen to this :
Have I just now quoted from an eyewitness to Srebrenica? No! what I read describes what happened in Russia in 1943 when Nazi einsatzgruppen ethnically cleansed their way across the Soviet Union.
That was in 1943, just before the half-way point of this most destructure of all centuries.
Clearly, we. have learned a lot since then! Or have we? History repeats itself—if we let it!
Srebrenica is 1,800 kms. from Paris, 1,300 kms. from Rome. It is only two hours flying time from Brussels, three hours flight from London . It is less than one hour to Omarska. Eight hours flying time to Dayton, Ohio. But only two hours from The Hague.
Those suspected of committing crimes in Srebrenica must be brought to that bar of justice.
Somebody must do this—must make the necessary arrests. But if not us, then whom? If not now, when?
Now here is one report, which is from Srebrenica :
"On the day Srebrenica fell, (last July 11), all the men of the enclave, combatants and non-combatants alike, gathered at a nearby village. There were about 15,000 of them and they planned to flee through the mountains. The women, the children and the sick were to go the other way, down the valley toward the UN troops at Potocari.
Then the Serbs moved in and began culling the Muslims. On the next day, July 12, they took only the old men. Later they began taking boys. Few of the men were ever seen again. Some of them were tortured and then murdered. Others were taken to killing fields farther away. Some were forced by the Serbs to dig their own graves and then were buried alive in them.
Elsewhere, those who had managed to flee were called from the hills by Serb loudspeakers to come down and surrender. Exhausted, many did. Some preferred to kill themselves. Others went mad.
On July 14, trucks arrived every few minutes to take away more Muslims. They were blindfolded, told not to worry—they would be
exchanged. Instead, they were driven to a field, lined up with their backs to their captors and then shot.
Later in that long day, as the summer field piled high with bodies and the ditch at the foot of it flowed with blood, the few survivors tried to run away. They were finished off with individual shots to the head."
Somebody committed these patterned crimes.
Somebody ordered these crimes.
Somebody must pay for these crimes.
Somebody must stop such future crimes.
We have said that what is needed is not a greater Serbia, nor greater Croatia, nor a greater Federation. What is needed is a greater interna¬tional community—more determined and more willing to act.
And we must ask: who failed at Srebrenica? We failed. The interna¬tional community failed. The world failed. The people of Srebrenica lost—loved ones: fathers, brothers, sisters, sons. They lost. But we failed them.
Unless we recognise this then, in one year from now, we may well memorialise other horrors.
So we must not engage in appeasement. We will not. But, to that end, those with special power have special duties—deeds that go beyond words, tasks more needed than rhetoric. Great powers must be great. Otherwise they lose the appellation "great".
Otherwise the Srebrenicas—which could not possibly happen, and yet happened—will happen again.
What is appeasement but a postponing of the inevitable— the hard clash between what is right and what is not right. Sooner or later, indicted leaders will have to be removed.
It is a time for plain words.
Either indicted leaders are arrested—or they will arrest the peace process. This is what they are doing. They are damaging Dayton right now.
Because this is not just any mission. In some ways, it is the mission, one that will determine whether we will reach the end of the century with the key lesson learned—that either the international community prevails over evil, or evil will prevail over it.
If that should happen then there is nothing left to prevent future Srebrenicas : they will happen as surely as night follows day. And we will bequeath to our children, at the outset of a new century, an
unsafe world where aggression flourishes and the forces of interna¬tional security fall back in disarray: demoralised, impotent, unmasked and feeble; its great moral and physical investment here brought to ruin.
We would then be looking at the danger of a wider conflict. But this can, and must, be prevented.
Those who planned Srebrenica¬For planned it was,
Those who calculated Srebrenica¬For calculated it was,
Must be removed.
Yet still they stand in our path,—(hands on hips in the arrogant way we see in photos of the surrender,)—blocking, this time, the peace process itself. There, in all their mighty malignancy, they will stay until we remove them.
And better that we grasp that nettle, rather than wait to be stung again—fatally. Because they are poisoning everything they touch." |
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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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