Silence paves the way for more massacres: Erdogan aide

ANKARA (AA) - It has been 21 years since the Srebrenica genocide took place in eastern Bosnia under the UN's watch, but more massacres are likely to happen in Syria if the global community stays silent, according to Turkey's presidential spokesperson.

In his regular column in English-language newspaper Daily Sabah on Thursday, Ibrahim Kalin argued that much like Srebrenica in July 1995, another "human tragedy" is taking place in Syria, where the war has entered its sixth year and the international system has opted to let it happen again under the watch of the UN, Europe, the U.S., and the rest of the world.

"What connects Srebrenica, the largest massacre at the heart of Europe since World War II, and Syria, the deadliest war in recent memory, is the collective failure of the international system to stop war, state terror, and human suffering," he said.

Kalin said although the UN told Bosniak Muslims that they were going to be safe, the Serbians made it clear that there would be an "ethnic cleansing".

"The so-called peace talks went on without any hope for Bosniaks, but the Serbian plan devised and executed by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, [Radovan] Karadzic, and [Ratko] Mladic moved forward," Kalin wrote. "It is established now that at least two of the intelligence services of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council knew about the Serbian plans to kill everyone in the ‘safe zone’ enclaves."

About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred after the Bosnian Serb army attacked the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops tasked with acting as international peacekeepers.

So far 6,504 victims of the genocide have been buried at the Potocari Memorial Centre. At last year's commemoration alone, 136 Srebrenica victims were interred at the site.

A total of 8,400 people remain missing since the war’s end, according to the Institute for Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Kalin said if one asks if humanity learned any lessons after the Srebrenica genocide and the Bosnian war, the answer is "hardly affirmative".

"Milosevic died in prison in 2006, Karadzic was found guilty of genocide, and Mladic, captured after 14 years on the run, is awaiting his verdict. Perhaps this is justice served. But the real moral and political lesson of the Srebrenica genocide is to make sure that such abominations never happen again.

"But such atrocities are taking place two decades later in Syria. Bashar Assad's regime in Syria is killing people in the thousands, violating all international conventions and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

He added, “While endless talks and initiatives continue for an endgame scenario Syria, the ‘reality on the ground,’ the motto of the realpolitik paradigm, is the fact that a nation is butchered and a country destroyed."

"How many more people will have to die before we say with a clear conscience that we have learnt a lesson or two from Srebrenica after two decades?" he asked.