Srebrenica Genocide (20th Anniversary)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Three more people wish to speak. I do not wish to impose a time limit. If each Member speaks for a maximum of five minutes, we should be able to fit them all in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) on securing the debate and on all the work that he has done over the years with Remembering Srebrenica. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Srebrenica, which was set up about three years ago. I want to thank right hon. and hon. Members who have supported it and its work.

My interest in what happened in Bosnia stems partly from having seen what happened during the war in the former Yugoslavia, as it disintegrated before our eyes. In addition, I worked for two years with the United Nations mission in Kosovo, from 2000 to 2002, so I had a chance to see at first hand some of the things that happened in Yugoslavia. I did not have the opportunity to travel to Bosnia, because of various security issues and concerns at the time, but I had the chance to speak to people who had been there—and, of course, to people generally across Yugoslavia. I am sure that Members are aware that there were many massacres in Kosovo too, carried out by Miloševic and his people. I had a chance to see mass graves there.

I am grateful for the fact that we are remembering Srebrenica and the 8,344 young boys and men who died in the massacre, but it is also right to remember that those were not the only deaths. About 100,000 Muslims died in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. In addition to the killings, as is almost inevitable in wars, thousands of women were raped. We have heard accounts of how that happened consistently—and it seems almost to be a pattern in war.

I was humbled yesterday to be one of the 20 people to light a candle in Westminster Abbey. It was a wonderful event. I thank not only Members of the House who have given cross-party support, but the United Kingdom; we were the country that years ago pushed in the European Parliament for an annual day to commemorate Srebrenica. It is sad that even though the Parliament passed a resolution that the event should be commemorated every year in all the European countries, we are probably the only one still doing it properly. The rest of Europe has a lot of catching up to do.

I pay tribute to our country and our Parliament for what they have done, and for the assistance given by the Foreign Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government. I hope that the commemorations will come to be held in not just a few towns and cities, but every town and city in the country. The events in question should never be forgotten.

Much has been said about the details of the horrific crimes that happened. I met some of the mothers and survivors about three years ago for tea on the Terrace. The hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) spoke about dignity and forgiveness, and how the mothers bear no malice despite everything that has happened to them. Perhaps the world at large can gain understanding from such things. People were killed for their religion, sometimes by neighbours—one of the mothers said that some of the people who turned against her family were neighbours.

We need to learn the lesson from the fact that such dehumanising hatred can build up—that we are mistaken if we target groups and tarnish our view of them because of race, ethnicity or religion. Treating a group constantly as not part of our society, or not fitting in with our values or doing certain things, is the sort of thing that can lead to such genocide and neighbours turning against each other.

I want to touch on genocide or killing that is still happening; Syria has been mentioned. Conflicts are sometimes confusing, and the situation in Burma is also relevant. May I have another minute, Mr Chope?

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

The hon. Lady has the Floor, but I hope to fit in Mr Kerevan as well, and we need time for proper winding-up speeches.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I just need two minutes, and I will stop.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to my gallant friend, the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), for organising the debate. “Gallant” is an important word, because it is a truism—true in this case—that the people who hate war and its aftermath most are former soldiers who have experienced it. We should remember that.

I will briefly explain why this debate is of significance to me. I was born at the end of the 1940s and am of the generation brought up in the shadow of the Nazi holocaust. It was axiomatic to us that such mass, clinical, industrial murder could never take place again in Europe—but it did. I was shocked when it happened in Srebrenica. I had thought that it could never happen again, but it will always happen again if each generation does not learn the lessons and if we do not preach the lessons to the young of our country. We have to go on doing that; it will happen again unless we go on preaching the dangers.

I also want to speak because I have a Bosnian Muslim constituent. Campaigning in the general election, I knocked on a door in Haddington, a country town in Scotland, in East Lothian. A happy family from an immigrant community answered the door and it turned out that they were from Bosnia; they had come over as refugees in the aftermath of the war. I did not know that a number of refugees at that time had been relocated to Haddington to keep them together and to form a local community. It is now 20 years on, however, so I happily asked, “Are any other Bosnian families still here?” The people in the door laughed and pointed next door and up the street and I discovered that quite a significant community had made its home in Haddington. They were talking with broad Scottish accents, as is the way if someone lives there for a while. We have made them welcome, but they have joined us and entered our community despite all their traumas, so I thank them.

In my past life I was a documentary filmmaker, and I have been so moved by this issue over the years. We made a documentary film about the survivors of the massacre with Samir Mehanovic, an old Bosnian Muslim friend of mine who suffered and lost family in the crisis, but now lives here. It will be shown in an edited form on BBC World and we are premiering it in Sarajevo at the weekend. The film is designed for the cinema; we wanted people to see things on the big screen, in the dark, to achieve immediacy, rather than having it go on in a living room on the small screen, which does not have the same impact.

The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) mentioned some of the footage taken by the Serbian irregulars and the Serbian army of the cruel things they were doing. I could only watch some of the scenes once. I actually argued with my friend Samir in favour of taking the footage out of our film, but he would not have it—it traumatises him to watch it, but he wants people to see.

The message of our film is the one I wanted to bring to the Chamber, however briefly: we should not only honour and remember the dead, but remember the living. There are many survivors—most are now in Tuzla—but they have found it difficult to find work, their memories are still in their heads and they still need help, support and solidarity. We must remember that fact, which I commend to the Minister. There is still work to be done for the living as well as the dead.

My final point involves Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, who in the past few weeks has been doing his usual thing of denying the massacre. He has even been to the massacre site and denied that it ever took place. There have been contacts between the Bosnian Serbs and the Moscow regime; pressure is put on Moscow to continue to operate at the United Nations in an attempt to stop proper UN recognition and continuing investigation of the massacre. I commend that fact to the Minister.

There is still work to be done at the UN to ensure that we go on remembering Srebrenica, seeking justice for the victims and remembering those who are still alive.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I call Stephen Gethins for a maximum of five minutes.