Bosniak mothers not to be allowed to address UN discussion on ICTY

Activists of several associations of Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) and Croat families whose members were killed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina will fly to New York for a discussion which the United Nations General Assembly should hold on the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on 10 April at the initiative of the UNGA chairman, Serbian diplomat Vuk Jeremic, but they will not be allowed to address the thematic debate.

We have not received a regular invitation. Jeremic has allowed us to enter the UN headquarters, but we have not been allocated any time for speeches, Munira Subasic, chairwoman of an association of Bosniak mothers whose children were killed in Srebrenica and Zepa, told Hina on Monday.

Therefore, those activists have not yet decided whether they will attend the debate from the Assembly’s gallery or whether they will stage a protest during the Assembly’s meeting.

Subasic said that the only motive of Jeremic to convene the thematic debate on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation was to depict the Serbs as an endangered people “although it is the Serbs who committed 93% of war crimes (in the 1990s) and the others committed the rest of 7%”.

Subasic also does not believe that a speech to be given by the Serb member of Bosnia’s collective presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, during the discussion on the performance of the UN ICTY tribunal in The Hague, would contribute to justice.

Source: Hina