Bosnian Muslim authors slam Israel for
"denying Bosniak genocide"
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - January 29, 2009 Thursday
Text of report by Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation official news agency FENA
Sarajevo, 29 January: Authors Dzemaludin Latic and Fatmir Alispahic today
condemned Israel's denial of the genocide against Bosniaks [Muslims] and other
peoples subjected to genocide.
Latic and Alispahic said in a statement for the public that they were "raising
their voices in protest against Israeli officials' attacks on the sanctity of
the Bosniak victims, and by extension the Bosniak people who are blamed for
inflicting pain and suffering on the Bosnian Serbs from the position of
`terrorism and extremist fundamentalism'".
"Placing Bosniak victims in the context of `terrorism and extremist
fundamentalism' is a bare-faced lie, because no-one has ever suffered from any
alleged Bosniak terrorism, and Bosnian Serbs were never the victims of any kind
of Bosniak-committed genocide, such as the one the RS [Bosnian Serb Republic]
had committed against Bosniaks in Srebrenica," Latic and Alispahic said.
They believe that in his correspondence with [Serb] entity Premier Milorad Dodik
Israeli President Shimon Peres brazenly violated the sovereignty of the state of
Bosnia-Hercegovina, because he "communicates with someone who does not represent
our state, but only an entity which does not carry the attributes of a state".
Latic and Alispahic said that the Serbs were only victims of Radovan Karadzic
and Ratko Mladic, who had pushed them into a war in which they died as soldiers,
while the Bosniaks died primarily as civilians, as victims of mass executions,
torture, starvation and expulsion.
They also condemned the insult to all victims of genocide uttered by senior
Israeli diplomat Pinhas Avivi, who said that "for his country the Holocaust is
the only genocide".
Latic and Alispahic stressed that the Holocaust was the worst genocide in
history, whose dimensions are only comparable to Israel's genocide against the
Palestinians, which has been going on for decades with the support of America
and silence of many western and Islamic countries.
"Respect for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust does not exclude our respect
for Palestinian victims," they said.
Source: Federation News Agency, Sarajevo, in
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 1206 gmt 29 Jan 09
Posted for Fair Use only.