The Bosniak Vice President of the Republika Srpska entity, Ćamil Duraković, stressed that as a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide, as a person who has dedicated his entire public and political engagement to Srebrenica, its victims and survivors, he cannot and will not remain silent while, as he said, the Srebrenica Memorial Center and its director are being subjected to organized attacks whose goal is not the truth, but destruction.
Duraković stated in a press release that Suljagić is a child survivor of Srebrenica, that he is not an official who came from the outside, but a man who looked death in the eye in July 1995, who lost his loved ones and who dedicated his entire life to ensuring that the crime he survived is never forgotten and never repeated.
“Under his leadership, the Memorial Center has undergone an unprecedented transformation. From an institution that functioned on the margins, the Center has become a globally recognizable place of remembrance, education and the fight against genocide denial. Cooperation has been established with the most important world institutions, projects have been launched that will serve generations, and Srebrenica has gained a voice that can be heard from New York to The Hague,” Duraković stated.
What, as he pointed out, particularly strikes him is the cynicism of those who are attacking the Center and its director today.
“These same people have never dug mass graves. They have never sat with mothers waiting for DNA identification. They have never spent a single day in Potočari working to preserve the truth. They come from a safe distance, from keyboards and social networks, and are trying to destroy what others have built for years, with blood, sweat and tears,” said the Vice President of the RS.
An attempt to instrumentalize the Memorial Center for anyone’s daily political or geopolitical goals is unacceptable, believes Duraković.
According to him, Srebrenica is not a tool for petty gain, but a sacred place.
“Her Memorial Center has one sole task: to preserve the memory of the genocide and fight against those who deny it. Everything else is manipulation. I would like to emphasize in particular that the Memorial Center today represents the economic and existential pillar of the returnee community in Srebrenica. More than 50 of our people, returnees, work on the Center’s projects. For many of them, this is the only reason why they stayed in Srebrenica at all. Whoever tries to destroy this institution should know that they are directly endangering the survival of Bosniaks in Podrinje,” Ćamil Duraković’s statement states.
