Three decades since the Srebrenica genocide

Speech at the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Srebrenica Genocide in the Memorial Park for Civilian Victims of the Wars in the Former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001 in Podgorica

Dear friends, today we are united by the memory of the Srebrenica genocide, an unimaginable crime that shocked the world three decades ago, the memory of more than eight thousand victims, and the feeling that the deniers of Srebrenica are becoming more and more shameless every year. And that the government is not bothered about it. And all of this could be dangerous symptoms of the decline of a society. If things are not clear here, where are they?

Around us, they celebrate murderers, they celebrate criminals who made Srebrenica possible. And those who want to remember Srebrenica are told that they were bought and in the service of the West. Although it is actually easiest to see things as they are, and as they happened, without any additional meanings.

This echo of Srebrenica continues, and it's good that it continues, for three decades. And if we are there, it will never stop.

As long as we remember Srebrenica, we are human. What will we remember if we don't remember Srebrenica?

How many worlds have been destroyed here. How many hopes have been buried.

Because man can be a beast more bloodthirsty than all beasts. We believe, we all like to believe that the whole Earth will one day be inhabited by better people. What do we live and do if it is not so? It will be easier to explain to the better ones... That is why they must know our stories, then it will be easier for them to be better. That is why we must tell them the truth about everything.

And when the truth is painfully clear, people sometimes like to humiliate the truth. To invoke Lies, new and old.

If we are a society, we must find a way to explain the obvious. And to say clearly when the Lie is no longer a matter of imagination, but of hatred, naked and terrible, a hatred that can devastate any landscape. Just as dehumanized are those who in their songs evoke repetitions of Srebrenica. Every denial of the Srebrenica genocide is another killing of the murdered, another shooting at innocent victims. That is why it is painful to live in a society in which such voices are not a bizarre rarity, and in a society that does not know how to punish such inhumanity. Whenever a society does not have the strength to punish inhumanity, inhumanity wins and becomes a measure. Then, and only then, are events possible, such as the one from 30 years ago, it is possible for people to turn into beasts and become a clear negation of everything human.

Every lie ends like a bloodstain, like a bloody trail.

Everything that begins under the sign of Lies ends under the shadow of the Knife.

We saw it. And let's remember it.