Bosnia and Herzegovina: Stability and Peace

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I declare an interest as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Srebrenica. My interest in that part of the world arises from the fact that, from 2000 to 2002, I worked with the United Nations mission in Kosovo after the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia. Kosovo was an autonomous province of the state of Serbia. Prior to 2000, the Serbians had come into Kosovo; I saw at first hand some of the atrocities that had been carried out by the Serbian Government in Kosovo. After I came into Parliament in 2010, I got interested in Srebrenica in particular and founded the group with a Conservative Member.

The name “Srebrenica” is associated with the dark days in July 1995 when thousands of men and boys were systematically murdered and buried in mass graves. The victims, who were Muslim, were selected for death based on their identity. Many of us will remember seeing images of the war in Bosnia during the 1990s, watching the horror of the footage of Sarajevo under siege and people being held in concentration camps, and slowly learning about the reports of the atrocities committed across Bosnia that culminated in genocide. The APPG was set up in 2013 with the purpose of commemorating Srebrenica and reminding us of those horrors. Until July 2020, when we stopped doing it because of the pandemic, we had a book of commemoration and remembrance to sign in this House.

After every conflict, we say “Never again,” but years later we have another. When the Dayton agreement was signed, it was not perfect, but it stopped the bloodshed for a number of years. It is important for us all to ensure that peace continues. We cannot return to the violence and destruction of the 1990s, so it is important for the United Kingdom to start working together with our European partners and with others in the world to ensure that they do not happen again.

The seeds of genocide in Srebrenica were planted after years of growing Serb nationalism and the spread of fear and hatred. Even now, there is genocide denial by Serbian leaders. They are trying to stoke the same fears again. Recently, Biljana Plavšić, a former President of Republika Srpska and a convicted war criminal, explained their dehumanising ideology and thinking:

“It was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam. And now, of course, with each successive generation it simply becomes concentrated. It gets worse and worse. It simply expresses itself and dictates their style of thinking, which is rooted in their genes. And through the centuries, the genes degraded further.”

I hope that the Minister will agree that that is inflammatory language that should be condemned by all.

Given the history of atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I hope that the Government will take steps to activate the conflict centre and adopt an atrocity prevention framework so that we do not descend into any more identity-based violence. We know that the current Serbian leader, Dodik, has pledged to withdraw from the federal institutions and form distinct entities, seriously threatening the stability of the nation and heralding fears of a return to violence.

If the international community allows this secession, it will be rewarding the Bosnian Serbs with their goal of creating a “Greater Serbia” by handing to them the very territory in which they committed a four-year campaign consisting of forced deportation, torture and mass murder. It would also be a risk to the most vulnerable returnees, who are based in places such as Srebrenica and Prijedor. Those survivors have already experienced suffering at the hands of the Bosnian Serb force and many of their loved ones have been killed. There is now a real danger that there will be a conflict again and it will happen to them.

The potential for a return to conflict on our doorstep is worrying. Will the Minister and her Department ensure that they share analysis of the current crisis across all Departments, including the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? Members of the Bosnian-British community are reliving their trauma and fear for what an escalation of violence might mean for their loved ones in the Balkans. I ask the Government to proactively reach out and work with Bosnian communities here, so they feel that there is someone looking after them and that they will not be left alone as they were years ago. I also ask the Government to work with Remembering Srebrenica, led by Waqar Azmi and his team, so that we are reminded of what can happen if we do nothing.

We know that the first world war was started by a Serb nationalist who killed a king in Sarajevo. I do not want to see history repeating itself.