Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-219"
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"en.20070314.18.3-219"2
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".
Mr President, it is almost 15 years to the day since I arrived in Sarajevo on the eve of the tragedy that was to make that town the martyred capital that we despaired for a moment would not survive. I arrived in a Sarajevo that was a model of coexistence between three cultures: Croatian, Serbian and Muslim. That town in which the bells of the Catholic cathedral rang in chorus with those of the Orthodox churches and with the cry of the muezzin, that extremely diverse town, without any ghettos, whose Serbian, Croatian and Muslim residents lived together in the same neighbourhoods and the same buildings, without even knowing who was Serbian, who was Croatian or who was Muslim.
On 4 April 1992, I witnessed, in that town, the desperate attempt by an entire population, men and women, young and old, Serbian, Croatian and Muslim, marching through the town, to bring down the barricades that the supporters of ethnic cleansing had begun to erect. I saw those barricades give way one by one before the crowd, at the end of the demonstration, you may recall, were taken to task by Karadzic’s mad militiamen. I appreciate that town, that province, that republic for having recognised their assets and, above all, for having shared their suffering born out of the disease of a fear of others, of a fear of being wiped out and of a fear of losing their identity, so many fears that irresponsible criminals sparked there.
With this memory in mind, I cannot overstate my satisfaction with the report by our fellow Member, Mrs Pack, whose commitment Parliament recognises and to whom it pays tribute for the dedication with which she has always worked to bring about a reconciliation in that country which, as she points out in her report, was once peaceful and multi-ethnic. In that country that we should encourage along the road to European integration by pushing it to adopt constitutional changes that are, as you said, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, vital, in spite of the persistence, within one section of its political class, of radical discourse that is still overly imbued with ultra-nationalism."@en1
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