Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-06-Speech-3-271"
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"en.20050706.26.3-271"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, after 1945, the promise was made that there would be no more mass murder, Srebrenica is a byword for its having been broken. Ten years on from Srebrenica, the Western governments have to ask themselves why they did not intervene in good time to prevent expulsions, murder and war. At the beginning of the 1990s, they looked the other way and let Milošević, Karadžić and Mladić have a free hand to expel people from their homes, to rape them and, eventually to put them to a gruesome death, which is what happened at Srebrenica, where, in a cowardly manner, Serbian criminals slaughtered thousands of Muslims before the eyes of UN troops acting under an inadequate mandate.
As we commemorate this massacre today, we call on everyone to endeavour to get Karadžić and Mladić, who bear responsibility for it and are now on the run like the cowards they are, handed over to the Tribunal. There is no hope of reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina if they are not. Good though it is that high-ranking Serb politicians will be attending the commemorations at Srebrenica, they should also prevent certain Serbian politicians from naming in the same breath the Serb victims of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the victims of Srebrenica, as if they were talking about one and the same thing. The failure of the Serbian parliament and of the parliament of Republika Srpska to condemn these massacres testifies to their lack of either maturity or penitence. How are the Serbs to show either if those who represent them do not first give a good example?
Today is an opportunity to remind the Serbs in particular that reconciliation is possible only when one acknowledges one’s own guilt, and, as a German, I know what I am talking about. It took a relatively short time after the war for our relations with the rest of the world to be restored, and that was because we admitted our responsibility for the heinous crimes committed in Germany’s name. By no means are all Serbs guilty today, any more than all Germans were guilty then, and so those holding political power or religious authority, and the media, should do everything in their power to make reconciliation possible. At the same time, though, the EU must neither stint in its efforts nor shirk its responsibility in helping the countries in the region to put their tragic past behind them and set their sights on a better future.
The young people in the region have gained the right not to be left high and dry by us, but it is their politicians, their parents and grandparents upon whom the obligation rests of preparing for the day when they will be able to name the events at Srebrenica as the crimes they were and to reach out the hand of reconciliation."@en1
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