PISMO DANIEL TOLJAGA PREDSJEDNIKU UNIVERZITETA U VANKUVERU

Who is Srdja Trifkovic?

By Daniel Toljaga

 

Srdja Trifkovic (aka: Serge Trifkovic) is an expatriate Serb who hates Muslims to the extent of being willing to act as the spokesperson for the perpetrators of genocide. He was media relations adviser to the secessionist Bosnian Serb Government at the time it was conducting the mass executions of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in July 1995. He admitted to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague that he was closeted with the inner circle of the Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic while atrocities were being organised and carried out by the Bosnian Serb army commanded by General Ratko Mladic.

 

I am very pleased that Canada has stopped and blocked Trifkovic from entering this country and holding anti-Muslim hate speech at the University of British Columbia here in Vancouver, BC.

 

The Canadian Institute for the Research of Genocide exists -- in part -- to establish the truth and raise awareness of the reality of genocide that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990s. It is convinced that the promise of "Never Again" -- cointed after the Holocaust of Jewish people -- is meaningless unless we are prepared to speak out and condemn the promoters of inter-communal hatred responsible for the bloodshed and destruction of the past two decades in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.

 

Srdja Trifkovic has spent those two decades challenging the findings of international courts that the criminal conspiracy with which he was associated committed "a terrible crime – the worst on European soil since the Second World War", as the United Nations Secretary General described it, the genocidal murder of more than 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. Now, not content with denying genocide, Trifkovic has brought his campaign of hatred against Muslims across the Atlantic as he tours the college circuit encouraging distrust, prejudice and ethnic intolerance.

 

From Providence, Rhode Island, to UBC in Vancouver Trifkovic seeks out venues where student groups like Youth for Western Civilization and the Serbian Students Club are prepared to tolerate his extremist views and his stereotyping and criminalisation of entire communities.  The Canadian Institute for the Research of Genocide unhesitatingly condemns Trifkovic's efforts to sow the seeds of future  division and conflict.

 

The Institute is not impressed by efforts on the part of the front organisation of which Srdja Trifkovic is Chief Executive, the so-called "Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies", to distract attention from the controversy surrounding the UBC invitation to Trifkovic by raising the spectre of terrible events during World War II.  The Foundation's President, former Canadian Ambassador James Bissett, supporter and defender of the late Slobodan Milosevic, is regularly associated with Trifkovic in Serbian propaganda initiatives aimed at excusing the crimes of the Bosnian Serbs. The Institute considers that Bissett might not unreasonably be asked where he stands with regard to his Chief Executive's racist attitudes and pronouncements.

 

The Institute speaks out not just on behalf the victims of genocide in Bosnia but on behalf of all victims of genocide, wherever and whoever they are. The Institute brings together a wide variety of individuals of different cultures, faiths and nationalities - Canadians, Americans, Bosnians, Serbians and others, including Holocaust survivors. The Institute's President, Dr Emir Ramic, affirms that "Our Institutes seeks after the truth and we oppose all attempts to deny genocide and create division.  We wholeheartedly condemn the decision to allow Srdja Trifkovic, the mouthpiece for genocide, this opportunity to spread hatred and intolerance."