Boris Tadic: An Apology for Srebrenica
[Mr. Tadic is the president of the Republic of Serbia.]
The massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted one of the most tragic chapters of the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. In order to show that Serbia mourns for all the victims, I traveled to Srebrenica a year after I was first elected president of Serbia to stand with the survivors and bow to victims on the 10th anniversary of that terrible atrocity.
This opened up a fierce national debate on the misdeeds of the Slobodan Milosevic regime. It also increased regional awareness of the critical importance of reconciliation, a core European value my country wholeheartedly embraced following the restoration of Serbian democracy on Oct. 5, 2000.
For us, reconciliation is seen as a moral imperative to tell the truth—the unadorned, factual, horrible truth of the bloodshed that must never return to our lands. We also understand it as being a categorical rejection of the individuals who falsely claimed to act in our name, and a repudiation of the policies that promoted violence and hatred.
Finally, reconciliation contributes to restoring to prominence the fact that for most of our shared history, going back many hundreds of years, interethnic and faith-based pluralism was the norm in the Western Balkans. Our similarities far outweighed our differences—as they still do—and while discrimination was not unheard of, it was far from rampant. In short, reconciliation helps us take back our past from the nefarious fear-mongers still lurking in our midst.
It is against this backdrop that the Serbian parliament on March 30 adopted a historic declaration on Srebrenica that unequivocally condemned the war crimes that took place there. The declaration is the product of my country's absolute dedication to restore trust and promote friendship and understanding between two proud nations in our region and, more broadly, two great religious traditions present throughout our increasingly interdependent world. As such, this unprecedented document—the first of its kind in the Western Balkans—extends profound condolences and sincere apologies to the families of the Bosnian Muslim victims...
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The massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted one of the most tragic chapters of the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. In order to show that Serbia mourns for all the victims, I traveled to Srebrenica a year after I was first elected president of Serbia to stand with the survivors and bow to victims on the 10th anniversary of that terrible atrocity.
This opened up a fierce national debate on the misdeeds of the Slobodan Milosevic regime. It also increased regional awareness of the critical importance of reconciliation, a core European value my country wholeheartedly embraced following the restoration of Serbian democracy on Oct. 5, 2000.
For us, reconciliation is seen as a moral imperative to tell the truth—the unadorned, factual, horrible truth of the bloodshed that must never return to our lands. We also understand it as being a categorical rejection of the individuals who falsely claimed to act in our name, and a repudiation of the policies that promoted violence and hatred.
Finally, reconciliation contributes to restoring to prominence the fact that for most of our shared history, going back many hundreds of years, interethnic and faith-based pluralism was the norm in the Western Balkans. Our similarities far outweighed our differences—as they still do—and while discrimination was not unheard of, it was far from rampant. In short, reconciliation helps us take back our past from the nefarious fear-mongers still lurking in our midst.
It is against this backdrop that the Serbian parliament on March 30 adopted a historic declaration on Srebrenica that unequivocally condemned the war crimes that took place there. The declaration is the product of my country's absolute dedication to restore trust and promote friendship and understanding between two proud nations in our region and, more broadly, two great religious traditions present throughout our increasingly interdependent world. As such, this unprecedented document—the first of its kind in the Western Balkans—extends profound condolences and sincere apologies to the families of the Bosnian Muslim victims...