Protest Letter Regarding Genocide Denier Michael Parenti

[Thanks to the Congress of North American Bosniaks for this Press Release, Following is the text of an open letter; the original is here.]

Dr. Sharat G. Lin
President San Jose Peace and Justice Center
48 South 7th Street, Suite 101
San Jose, CA 95112

Protest letter on behalf of Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), representing the interests of Bosnian American and Bosnian Canadian citizens, the Institute for Research Genocide, Canada (IGC), the Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina (ACBH), Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI) as well as the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosniak Cultural Association, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dear Dr. Lin,

On behalf of survivors of the Genocide that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), we are deeply concerned with your decision to host Dr. Michael Parenti as a guest speaker for the May 31st fundraiser.[i] Dr. Parenti, a self-proclaimed “Balkan Revisionist” and author of To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia explicitly denies that genocide, systematic rape of women and girls and ethnic cleansing ever took place in BiH.

Dr. Parenti places the blame on Bosniaks for the Genocide in Srebrenica and other massacres that took place throughout the war of aggression on BiH. As a result of his denial, Dr. Parenti has publicly disregarded that approximately 50,000 Bosniak women were raped during the three year war of aggression on BiH.

The rapes were in fact used as an official Serb policy for ethnic cleansing. To this day, his outrageous claims have not been supported by internationally accepted evidence but only by other genocide deniers. His conspiracy theories are in direct conflict with the official rulings by the International Court of Justice, the International War Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, as well as various declarations from the United States Congress and the European Parliament. We acknowledge the importance of freedom of speech, however, falsifying facts and denying genocide is unacceptable and deeply traumatic for the survivors and their families who continue to suffer due to the physical and emotional trauma they underwent. Hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks who survived the genocide in BiH have made the United States and Canada their second home; most of them having lost someone as a result of genocide and aggression. Dr. Parenti uses his writing to purposely hurt those who have survived genocide, and having him attend this event will send the wrong message to all genocide survivors. In addition, it will send a message that San Jose Peace and Justice Center supports Parenti’s genocide denial. We hope that you will agree that having Dr. Parenti speak would be highly inappropriate and contrary to the mission of your organization which strives to promote peace and justice.

All genocide deniers directly undermine peace and justice because the only way to peace and reconciliation is to acknowledge the truth and punish those responsible. Dr. Parenti’s work and constant expression of denial is damaging to the healing process of the survivors of the genocide in BiH and we urge you to stand up for justice and truth and reject all affiliation with Dr. Parenti and his work.

Sincerely,

Haris Alibasic,
MPA President, Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB)

Professor Emir Ramic
Director, Institute for Research Genocide, Canada

Ajla Delkic, M.A. Executive Director, Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina (ACBH)

Dr. Smail Cekic Director,
Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, University of Sarajevo

Dr. Senadin Lavic President, Bosniak Cultural Association “Renaissance”, Sarajevo

Sanja Seferovic-Drnovsek, J.D., MEd
Director, Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center

"The Destruction of Yugoslavia" by Branka Magas--Part Four

Part Four: Systemic Collapse (1990-91)

The nine articles collected in this section detail the final collapse of socialist, Federal Yugoslavia. The demise of the League of Communists created a power vacuum at the federal center. Milosevic ruthlessly capitalized on the opportunity to assert his power as the leader of a Serb republic where the political center was moving to the Right and extreme nationalism was being openly promoted by the ruling "Socialist" party--the same "Socialist" party which was pushing for greater privatization of the economy.

Magas does a marvelous job of conveying a sense of how unsettled and anxious the country was by this point. The specter of the Army forming a new political party while nobody quite knew who the commander of the nations' military was exactly, for example, serves as a powerful reminder that Yugoslavia was vulnerable because nobody was at the helm. And make no mistake about it--this was the work of Slobodan Milosevic.

This entire section should be required reading for Michael Parenti and others who claim Yugoslavia was destroyed from without by Western intersts, or Diana Johnstone and all those who claim that it was the Milosevic regime which sincerely tried to keep Yugoslavia together. Their disingenuous, convoluted arguments differ in some respects (although intellectual coherence is hardly a strength of Bosnian Revisionism), but they like all baseless conspiracy theories they rely on a carefully studied, deliberate ignorance of context and foundational knowledge.

The revisionists serve two purposes: they provide rhetorical cover for certain reactionary and far-Right factions to assert their agenda under various, more palatable pretexts; they prop up this fiction by appealing to the other end of the ideological spectrum, pitching their poison both to the receptive ears and willing minds of the authoritarian (often Stalinist) Left, and among well-meaning but ill-educated leftists, progressives, liberals, and internationalist-leaning moderates and conservatives.

Johnstone's pretenses regarding the Constitutional and legal issues regarding the breakup of Yugoslavia and the role the Milosevic regime played in it would not bear the scrutiny of any individual familiar with this material. Magas does what Johnstone and other advocates of Greater Serb centralism only claim to do--take the constitution and the governing institutions of socialist Yugoslavia seriously.