IGC – Bosnia and Herzegovina needs individual memory and collective history
SARAJEVO, January 27 (FENA) – On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Institute for Genocide Research Canada (IGC) remembers the victims of the Holocaust, as well as the victims of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all victims of all crimes in the world.
The twentieth century, as stated by the IGC, was marked by a monstrous desire to exterminate entire national, ethnic, racial or religious groups, to prevent their biological, cultural, social and environmental survival.
From the experience of the Nazi Holocaust, humanity still has the opportunity to draw historical lessons and messages, and to secure a better future, though the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, generated by Serbian and Croatian Nazism and built on the bones of the murdered victims in a unique state and social space of Bosnia and Herzegovina, demonstrates a tremendous negative experience.
“It is a misconception that more Europe means more culture of memory, more historical truth. The question of the past of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not decided in the field of historiography, objective historiographical knowledge and the conflict of historians over objective historical truth, but in the field of cultural articulation, in which the destruction of the culture of memory is the basis of anti-Bosnian reality, in which the state and society are deeply in the impasse of misery and hopelessness.
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s view of the past – a culture of memory is determined by Bosnia’s current reality – the construction of state and society on the basis of legalizing the results of aggression and genocide. There is no Bosnian historiography that claims the right to scientific objectivity. There is a plurality of ethnic histories – true, without claiming objectivity.
Bosnia and Herzegovina needs individual memory and collective history, not a plurality of histories and collective memory – the IGC stresses on this occasion.
The Institute emphasizes that public speaking about aggression and genocide in BiH is the first prerequisite to get out of the anti-Bosnian state of denial of genocide, honoring criminals and falsifying judicial, historical and scientific facts.
Unlike the Jewish people, victims of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially Bosniaks, did not find an active response to genocide. War criminals live freely in public space, being nominated for the most responsible political, academic and cultural positions in society.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina’s victims of genocide do not have a clear awareness of the culture of remembrance as a Bosnian program for the survival of not only the state and society, but especially the existence of the Bosnian idea.
The lack of a Bosnian program and platform is a sign that we are working against ourselves, but also against the Bosnian state and society. No one will give us the Bosnian program and the institutionalization of the culture of remembrance as one of the essential components of that program; we must build it by defending, strengthening and lobbying for truth, justice, culture of remembrance, defending, strengthening and lobbying for the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is said in the statement.
Together, we can stop the crime of denying the Holocaust and genocide and thus send a clear message to the victims that they are not alone in the struggle to prove the obvious and indisputable truth of their suffering.
The truth about the Holocaust and genocide must prevail. Justice for the victims of the Holocaust and genocide must be fully satisfied. The freedom of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is only possible when the judicial responsibility for the aggression and genocide, on whose results that freedom is based, gets fully established.
The state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its victims of the aggression and genocide must not be degraded. Truth and justice are the best strongholds against anti-Bosnian policies and actions and the best defensive wall against the humiliation of the victims of aggression and genocide,” it is said in a statement from the Institute for the Genocide Research Canada.