BAGI letter to University of British Columbia regarding genocide denier Srdja Trifkovic
Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada
Published: February 21, 2011
BAGI letter to University of British Columbia regarding genocide denier Srdja Trifkovic
February 20, 2022
Office of the President
The University of British Columbia
6328 Memorial Road
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z2
e-mail: [email protected]
Dear Professor Stephen J. Toope:
The Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI) is an educational organization dedicated to scientific research pertaining to the genocide of Bosniaks and to the education of others about the holocaust, genocide and other forms of crimes against humanity and international law. The purpose of the mission is reconciliation by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice, and indifference.
BAGI is a sister organization with the Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC), which recently sent you a letter to make your aware that Srdja Trifkovic, a Serbian-American scholar, who will speak on February 24th at 5 p.m. at the University of British Columbia, has been denying, openly and frequently, the Srebrenica genocide.
Stephen Karganovic, President of Srebrenica Historic Project, stated in his letter to you that Professor Ramic’s protest is against freedom of speech and the Canadian principles of a free society and that “the lecturer’s position would be deemed completely irrelevant. The only pertinent issue is the right of citizens, in this case students, to hear the speaker and to assess his views about the controversial issues of ‘Srebrenica Genocide.’”
The former ambassador in Yugoslavia, ambassador James Bissett, in his letter of support of Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, claims that professor Ramic is using “South African Apartheid-style” and that genocide “happened to any one side during the Bosnian war of 1991-95,” even denying the right of Bosniaks, including myself, to express our identity as Bosniaks recognized by the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Constitution together with Serbs and Croats (“people of “Bosnian origin” are Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, who have taken to calling themselves “Bosniaks” in the 1990s”). He also made a malicious insinuation: “Let it be noted that the ‘Institute for Research of Genocide Canada’ uses for itself the acronym ‘IRGC.’ That acronym is more commonly associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. While conceivably accidental, the coincidence is not altogether inapt.”
Holocaust and genocide denials are illegal in a number of European countries. I hope that other democratic societies, such as American and Canadian, will follow their example.
My duty, as director of BAGI, is to inform you that the Srebrenica genocide is not a controversial issue that happened to any side during the war 1991-1995, and the statements of those who claim it to be such are not based on official and legal documents.
The U.S. House Resolution 134 (in 2005) and the U.S. Senate Resolution 199 (in 2005), as well as the International Criminal Court Tribunal established for the former Yugoslavia, the European Parliament Resolution from 2009, and similar Resolutions in the States of Illinois, Michigan and Missouri passed the Srebrenica genocide Resolution. All these Resolutions and their court decisions state that the Srebrenica massacre in which 8, 372 Bosniaks, innocent civilians representing three generations of men, were executed by Bosnian Serb forces, is the worst single war crime committed in Europe since World War II. Recently, the Parliament of Canada has recognized the Bosnian Genocide that took place in the enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995
The process of reconstruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the common life of all its constituent peoples must begin from the truth about the genocide of Bosniaks (1992-1995) and conviction of its perpetrators in the Hague International Court of Justice.
Sincerely,
Sanja Drnovsek,
Director of the Bosnian-American Genocide Institute and Education Center
www.baginst.org
