Protest letter of the Institute for Research of Genocide, Canada for request not to proceed with the invitation of Mr. Michael Parenti (supporter of Milosevic and genocide denier) as guest speaker for the Lone Star College, Kingwood, Texas

To:
Kingwood, Texas
Lone Star College
Student Conference Center
Contact: John.J.Theis@lonestar.edu

Dear Mr. John. J. Theis,

We have heard about your decision to host Michael Parenti as guest speaker. Mr. Parenti is the leader of a campaign to defend Slobodan Milosevic, who was charged and tried with war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina but died before his victims were able to see justice achieved.

On behalf of many Bosnian war victims' and survivors' organizations in Bosnia and North America we urge you to end all contact and co-operation with Mr Parenti without delay or hesitation.

Michael Parenti is a man who publicly denies the substance and the scope of genocide and other crimes perpetrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war. He undermines efforts to bring reconciliation and achieve closure for the victims of the crimes committed during the war. In his article "The Demonization of Slobodan Milosevic", Mr. Parenti describes the genocide at Srebrenica as a media-hyped story of how the Serbs allegedly killed 7,000 Muslims when the most thorough investigations had uncovered no more than 2,000 bodies of undetermined nationality. His claims and “observations” are entirely unsustainable. The International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found that the killing of over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys by Serb execution squads at Srebrenica in 1995 constituted an act of genocide. To date 5,137 victims have been interred in the cemetery at Potocari and more bodies continue to be found. The ICTY's finding has subsequently been confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In his book "How to Kill a Nation" (pp. 88-89, "Demonizing the Serbs"), Mr. Parenti also questions the notion that Serb Nationalist concentration camps were death camps. He makes willfully misleading references to the International Red Cross and Western media visits, alleging that the camps were "hyped" by media and public relation companies. In his article "The Media and their Atrocities" he suggests that reports of the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war by the Serb forces in Bosnia were a total fabrication. Parenti's "doubts" and "suggestions" have been conclusively refuted by the International Tribunal in The Hague. From the very start of the Yugoslav wars our United Nations-accredited international human rights organization, Gesellschaft für bedrohete Völker/Society for Threatened Peoples, was involved in campaigning on behalf of the victims of expulsion, genocide and other war crimes. We continue today to work closely with the Mothers of Srebrenica and many other victims' organizations.

Our protest is supported by Bosniaks worldwide who are appalled that Parenti is still able to do so much damage to the process of reconciliation and hopes for a new, better future for all the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We take the liberty of drawing your attention to some background information about the genocidal crimes perpetrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995:

• More than 100 concentration, internment and rape camps existed in which over 200,000 civilians were held prisoner.
• Many thousands of prisoners were murdered in concentration/death camps including Omarska, Manjaca, Keraterm, Trnopolje, Luka Brcko, Sušica and Foca.
• Members of intellectual, commercial and political elites were systematically detained and murdered (the phenomenon of "eliticide").
• Approximately 2.2 million Bosnians fled or were expelled from their homes and dispersed around the world.
• There were many thousands of unrecorded and unacknowledged deaths among children, the elderly and the sick, who were injured or their health severely impaired during and as a result of their flight and expulsion.
• 500,000 Bosnians were besieged, shelled, starved and partially exterminated in the UN "safe areas" of Tuzla, Goražde, Srebrenica, Žepa and Bihac over the course of nearly four years.
• The sixth UN "safe area" of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo was besieged and bombarded for nearly four years, with the loss of 11,000 lives including 1,500 children.
• Massacres and mass killings took place in many towns and municipalities across the strategic area of northern, western and eastern Bosnia (the Posavina, the Prijedor area and the Drina valley).
• Hundreds of towns and villages were systematically destroyed.
• The comprehensive destruction of Islamic cultural monuments and extensive destruction of Catholic cultural monuments included the demolition of 1189 mosques and medresas and up to 500 Catholic churches and religious establishments, together with 38 Orthodox churches.
• Ongoing investigations continue into the whereabouts of approximately 15,000 missing persons and unmarked and concealed remains are still being exhumed and identified.
• 284 UN soldiers were kidnapped, mistreated and used as human shields.
• More than 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women were raped in the "rape camps" and elsewhere.
• 8372 Bosniaks from the town of Srebrenica, mostly men and boys but also including 560 women, were murdered and their bodies disposed of in concealed mass graves

Do you have any idea how much Bosnian people who survived the genocide of the 1990s - the mass killings, concentration camps, mass rapes, forced expulsions and torture - are hurt by the poison spread by these people? It would be like asking a Holocaust denier or a member of the Ku Klux Klan to speak - that would show equivalent disrespect to Jewish or African American people. Parenti was the head of the American section of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic. How can a Lone Star College host the supporter of a fascist dictator who started wars and murdered tens of thousands of people, just because they belonged to the wrong ethnic groups? We urge you to reconsider your decision.

Yours sincerely,
Professor Emir Ramic
Director of the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada

Sabina Mujanovic
Member of the Governing Board of the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada