West Hypocritically Backs UN Vote on Srebrenica ‘Genocide’ While ‘Supporting Extermination of Gaza’
18:54 GMT 23.05.2024 (Updated: 19:05 GMT 23.05.2024)
© AP Photo / Amel Emric
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The United Nations General Assembly has voted to recognize the July 1995 violence in Srebrenica, Bosnia as a “genocide.” Veteran Balkan affairs expert Stevan Gajic told Sputnik what’s wrong with the resolution’s timing, and why the countries pushing it are in absolutely no moral position to accuse someone else of genocide.
The General Assembly passed a resolution Thursday designating July 11 as ‘International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica’, and condemning “without reservation any denial of the Srebrenica genocide as a historical event.”
The Germany and Rwanda-sponsored resolution passed without an outright majority, with 84 countries voting in favor, 19 opposed, and 68 abstaining.
Russia, Serbia, China, Syria, Cuba and Hungary were among the nations opposed to the resolution, while the US and its European and Canadian allies made up a large chunk of those in favor, along with many countries in the Muslim World.
Serbian officials slammed the vote, alleging that the resolution brands Serbs as a “genocidal people,” and raises questions about Bosnia and Herzegovina’s legitimacy as a state. Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik warned that he would propose Bosnia's peaceful dissolution if the vote proceeded. He has since vowed to deliver a draft agreement on separation to Sarajevo within 30 days.
Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said that the resolution seems designed to undermine the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which put an end to the Bosnian War. Nebenzia called Thursday’s vote a “sad page in the history of the UN General Assembly,” suggesting that Germany, which “has no moral authority to even mention the term genocide to describe anything other than their own atrocious crimes” during WWII, pushed through a thoroughly “political declaration” under the guise of establishing a memorial day to the events in Srebrenica.
Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Duric accused “someone” of seeking to pit neighbors against one another and “opening old wounds” in the Western Balkans region, using the UN resolution to do so.
Serbian and Republika Srpska leaders recognize the killings of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica, Bosnia in July of 1995 as a war crime committed by individuals, but categorically reject its characterization as a genocide, and challenge claims by Bosnian authorities and Western countries about the number of people killed.
Hypocrisy Levels Off the Charts
“This outcome was expected because of the immense pressure of the Western countries,” says Professor Stevan Gajic, a political analyst and research associate at the Belgrade-based Institute of European Studies.
What’s far more significant is the resolution’s timing, Gajic told Sputnik.
“The proposal comes at a very interesting moment. It comes at the moment when Western countries are supporting extermination of Gaza. And therefore they want to divert the anger of the Muslim countries and also to give an alibi to the Muslim countries who voted for the resolution…to somehow come clean in front of their people because they are not doing anything when it comes to Palestine. This is the main motive. The motive is also to stir differences among the countries of the emerging world majority, which is struggling and which is fighting and defeating Western hegemony and Western global dominance all over the world,” the observer believes.
Gajic found it particularly repugnant that Germany, which committed genocide against Yugoslavs and established genocidal puppet regimes in the region during the Second World War, is now essentially engaged in victim-blaming by accusing Serbs of wrongdoing.
“Germans were the ones who organized mass shootings of civilians during World War Two, in Serbia and other parts of Yugoslavia, where Serbs lived. For one German soldier that was that was killed by the liberation movement the Germans would murder 100 civilians. For one wounded they would murder 50,” the scholar recalled.
Gajic fears the resolution may be designed to trigger a new war in the Balkans, and that this may have been the West’s goal all along.
“Another war is possible. And this precisely can be the spark. I think that when we think about the motives, we should remember what [then-US Secretary of State] John Kerry said in 2015 - that Serbia, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Macedonia, Montenegro, and a number of other countries are 'in the line of fire' of the West versus Russia and connected to the war in Ukraine, which was already raging for a year and a half [in the Donbass, ed.] when he said it,” Gajic recalled.
“This region is projected by the West for the provocation of new conflicts. And I hope that this does not happen. I hope that they are not going to be able to produce another war, because now, the situation is not the same as it was in the early 90s. However, this is very dangerous,” the observer concluded.
