(Washington, DC - 3/14/06) -- The death of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, the chief
architect behind a genocide in Bosnia which left over 200,000 dead just a decade ago, is a stark reminder of the unresolved search for justice and
resolution in the former Yugoslavia.
Milosevic, who died of an apparent heart attack on Saturday, was near completion of a four year trial
before the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on charges which included war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide,
and mass rapes. While it is unclear whether that trial will be completed in absentia, it is now more than ever crucial that the international
community bring other indicted war criminals to justice in order to bring about a much-needed process of truth and reconciliation.
In his
single-minded pursuit of what he termed "Greater Serbia," it is widely believed Milosevic commissioned and/or sanctioned a policy of "ethnic
cleansing" which forcefully displaced hundreds of thousands of Bosnians, Croats and Kosovars from their homes for the better part of the 1990s. War
crimes prosecutors characterized the creation of the separatist Serbian Republic as a "joint criminal enterprise" whose goal was "the forcible
removal of the majority of the Croat and other non-Serb population from the approximately one-third of the territory of the Republic of Croatia that
he planned to become part of a new Serb-dominated state."
The European Union has given the Serbian government until April to hand over Ratko
Mladic, military leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-95 war, who is accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes for the
siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys around Srebrenica in July 1995. The Bosnian Serbs' wartime political leader,
Radovan Karadic, also has yet to surrender to the Hague tribunal. Both men have been fugitives for more than 10 years. Capturing and trying Mladic
and Karadic should be an immediate priority of the international community in order to deliver long overdue justice that is crucial in order to begin
the heal the scars faced by those who witnessed the Balkan genocide firsthand.
One of the few positive developments in U.S.-Muslim world relations in recent decades is the
intervention by President Clinton in 1994 to end genocide against Muslims in the Balkans. At that time, Europe was reluctant to end ethnic cleansing
against a religious minority, similar to its reluctance to end persecution of Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, which
culminated in the Holocaust. The persecution of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia was supported by the Serbian Orthodox church and was not
condemned by any orthodox religious leader in the world. We call on all religious leaders to demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of Kradic
and Mladic.
[CONTACT: Edina Lekovic, 213-383-3443,
communications@mpac.org]
