Summary
THE arrest of Radovan Karadzic, after 13 years on the run, will not bring total closure to the horror story that was the Balkans during the 1990s, but it is a start. For Karadzic was responsible for the worst genocide and ethnic cleansing seen in Europe since the Nazi era, including the murder of 8,000 Muslim Bosnian men and boys in Srebrenica, in July 1995. That particular massacre lasted three long days, as each victim was individually shot in the back of the head with a pistol, before being thrown in a communal grave.
Karadzic's trial is not a matter of revenge, but of remembering, so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the recent past. The collapse of the old Yugoslav federation and its descent into genocidal civil war was something that happened in modern Europe. Our society and institutions are not so stable or perfect - as we also saw in Northern Ireland - that they cannot disintegrate into chaos given the right circumstances. But equally, the collapse of Yugoslavia was not pre-ordained. It was the result of a failure of political processes and neglect by the rest of Europe. Karadzic may have done evil things but he was given the opportunity by the failure of others to act earlier- particularly the European Union and Nato. That must not happen again.See the full content of this document
Extract
Leader: Europe Allowed Karadzic's Evil to Flourish
Karadzic's arrest is proof that modern Serbia is turning its back on the past and seeking to integrate itself with the rest of Europe. It is probably no accident that Karadzic was taken into custody only a few weeks after ...
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