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The Special Edition of the University’s Information Gazette – Info Bulletin - “Aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Genocide of Bosniaks” Promotion
On Tuesday, 12 July 2011, the University of Sarajevo organized a promotion of the special edition of the University’s Information Gazette – Info Bulletin dedicated to commemorating the 16th Anniversary of Genocide of Bosniaks in the Srebrenica UN Safe Zone in July 1995, under the title: “Aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Genocide of Bosniaks”. In this way, University of Sarajevo is giving the support to Decision of the European Parliament on declaring 11th of July as the Day of Commemoration of Srebrenica Genocide’s Victims, the UN Safe Zone in July 1995.
“Publications like this one are one of academic community’s obligations consisting of educating younger and reminding senior generations on basic values of human life” wrote in the introduction Prof. Dr Faruk Čaklovica, Rector of the University of Sarajevo.
This Edition's Promoters were academicians: Muhamed Filipović, Vladimir Premec, Esad Duraković and Rešid Hafizović, while the moderator was Prof. Dr Samir Arnautović, Vice-Rector, University of Sarajevo.
In his speech, academician Muhamed Filipović stated: “It is hard to tell when it is needed to say something meaningful about something, what is in terms of human, from the perspective of human ideals of good, incoherent as it is a crime of genocide. It is particularly difficult to talk in a situation where the speech is saturated with overwhelming emotions, in addition to emotions that are normal, it is also necessary to speak rationally, it is necessary to speak objectively, it is necessary to refer to that way of speaking and that way of regarding this great tragedy that will enable life to be rehabilitated. ”
Academician Filipović stressed that this publication indicated that the crime had been absolutely identified. "This was a crime committed in the sight of all mankind. This crime is a public crime. It cannot be denied. However as it is well known from the point of any procedure that could rehabilitate the rights of people and create for them decent living conditions, the scientific evidence is needed that cannot be questioned and doubted, as what happened with the Bosnia and Herzegovina's lawsuit against Serbia. In this publication there is evidence that it was an army that it was an idea... The University, by this publication wants to say that we are a place, we are a structure, we are an organization, we have the potential to investigate the crime, primarily to make an exhaustive list or a detailed registry of victims of not only human, but also the material and spiritual losses that this nation had had, because it suffered a colossal genocide committed against them. "
Academician Vladimir Premec congratulated Rector Prof. Dr Faruk Čaklovica, as the publisher of this small, but so transparently composed publication and to the author Prof. Dr Smail Čekić, proven fighter for the truth about the atrocities in Bosnia and against the Bosniaks.
Speaking about what and who is Bosnia, academician Premec said: "Bosnia is sensitive to the newcomers, although it welcomes them with a unique hospitality. Maybe that aura is radiated by self-consciousness of kindness, presented and witnessed in Fojnica Heraldry's Treasury, inherited and difficult, like the worst forms of work granted to Bosnia - in the forces hidden underneath its surface, painstakingly scooped black gold and iron, in the warmth of its mineral water, in the health and joy of the snows which have not yet fallen, in the collision of the Continent and the Mediterranean heat of the whirlwind, in the interweaving of many climate and impacts. We say, the rearranged land of Bosnia, washed by the sea and rivers - by the examination of conscience - in utter solitude - alone. I do not know, but I believe that in any specific period, from the Illyrians to the Roman province, from the Slavs to the Ottoman conquest, from the Austro-Hungarian annexation to these dark Serbo-Croato-Bosniak divisions of Bosnia which had made a wreck out of Bosnia for God knows many times".
Academician Esad Duraković said that it was hard to speak about Srebrenica without emotions, and continued: "In the longest experience, Srebrenica is in fact, silenced and suffered in the dignity of victim people, primarily by families of victims, in front of tainted face of the world."
Publishing of this special issue and its presentation, academician Duraković considered important for a number of reasons, out of which he listed two: "First, by itself it is a significant fact that our academic community at the highest level - by the actions taken by its highest authority - expressing a full awareness of the importance of Srebrenica, because the appropriate relationship to it is not just a political nature, but having many aspects of which, I believe, first of all is the humane one in general. Therefore I find positive that our University is institutionally positioning to the institutionally organized, genocidal extermination of Bosniak population of Srebrenica. Another reason why I consider this important action, and this publication of the University of Sarajevo, is that, they occur at the time when apathy is expressed, a surprisingly large number of individuals of the academic community who are invited by knowledge, academic and social status to react and correct the events in their society, to correct them, and be guided by not to abandon apathy, or be guided solely by instinct selfishness. That is why the involvement of representatives of the University is precious. "
Academic Duraković mentions that even a cursory overview of this special edition of "University Information Bulletin - particularly its careful reading – leads the reader into believing that the contents of the publication, the text, particularly of documentary, factual nature, as befits to this type of publications and institutions that is issuing it.
Professor Rešid Hafizović said in his address: "How just gullibility and unbearable and terrifying childlike naivety was within us during the bloody aggression through which we had gone through?! All that time we had our faith and our hope directed to the centers of political power in Europe and the West, and never suspecting that they exactly in Paris, London, Brussels, Belgrade, New York and Moscow all the time only were tightening the "'Judas' cover" over Bosnia, preventing screams of Bosniak and Bosnian victims not to reach the ears of the world. We trusted in the breath of freedom that they will give us even only for a moment, and they had already tightening the noose around the neck, cuffing our hands behind backs and sending us to the executioner like lambs to the slaughterhouse. How could we only ask for mercy those who had been in their own hundred years' war, mutually slaughtering each other to extinction? What kind of understanding we might expect from those that always preach us lessons of tolerance and enduring us just how much and how far they ought to, because they never knew higher levels of peaceful coexistence? How could we shout to the deaf ears that the dialogue was much more than tolerance, and that diversity is the grace of God, not doom and damnation! In addition, we were quite confident that we would be heard and our suffering properly understood! How naive was our faith and vain, then and now. Yes, then and now. Even today we are in vain trying to assure mighty political figures in Brussels, London, Paris, Belgrade, Moscow and New York about own cosmic tragedy of so many figures of killed ones, displaced, raped and abused, they do not hear us, they do not believe to our sufferings, do not respect our victims, they do not find our blood human. If it were not so, perhaps we too Bosniaks and Bosnians, like the people of Western democracy, would be enjoying the benefits of democratic international law which prohibits any kind of fascist organizations, and the fascist rampage anywhere in the world, even including us, the law preventing, even the thought suspecting, for example, the victims of the Holocaust in Europe and the West, the thought that is considered a criminal offense, not to mention the premeditated genocide".
Within the promotion of a special edition of the University’s Information Gazette the awarding of the Golden Badge of the University of Sarajevo was organized. Rector Prof. Dr Faruk Čaklovica conferred Mr. Brian Massee, a Canadian MP, with a University of Sarajevo's Golden Badge.
On 19 October 2010, the Canadian Federal Parliament unanimously passed a Resolution, No. M416, on the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide in Srebrenica. Mr. Brian Massee, confirmed a fighter for truth and human rights, was the most significant carrier of activities for the adoption of the Resolution and for spreading the truth about the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for the genocide against Bosniaks Mr. Brian Masse.
By this act, the Canadian Federal Parliament expressed unreserved commitment, as confirmed by the voting, to adopt the Resolution, which confirmed and qualified events in and around Srebrenica in July 1995, as genocide.
Golden Badge will also be awarded to M.Sc. Emir Ramić, Director of the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada, who made significant and notable contribution during these this important activity in the Canadian Federal Parliament.
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