“The ‘protected’ zone of Srebrenica has fallen into Serbian hands. It should have taken with it the empty hopes of all those innocents still deluding themselves that they could continue the game of mediation and neutrality amid the planned slaughter of the Bosnian people. I pass over the figures of the dead, and of the wounded, and of the horrors experienced by the 45,000 inmates of the concentration camp that Srebrenica had become since March 1993....

For three years an attempt has been made to hide the cowardice of our governments and the international institutions through a false and cynical policy of neutrality.... The fall of Srebrenica is the culmination of the series of provocations by which the Serbian side has responded to our cowardice. Enough prevarications and half-truths! In Bosnia, apart from a genocide, the future of Europe is being played out. Yes. Confronted by barbarism, the Bosnian people is resisting and dying in defense of the values of common living, tolerance, and respect for differences which are the values of the majority of European citizens, and which constitute the basis of the European Union. Only if we stop being neutral between the murderers and their victims, if we start regarding Bosnia as our ally, if we decide to back its fight for life against the fascist horror of ethnic cleansing, shall we be able to contribute to the survival of the remnants of that country and of our own dignity. We must remember that the international community agreed to protect the Bosnian population, and not just the soldiers sent to do that....

I do not want to weep tomorrow for the dead of Zepa, as we weep today for those of Srebrenica. I do not want to go on hearing the same half-truths, the same campaigns designed to manipulate and confuse public opinion, which have led to the present situation.”

Jose Maria Mendiluce, “Stop the Lies!,” Bosnia Report, Issue 11, June-August 1995. Mendiluce served as the special envoy of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1993 and as a member of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. For this report, see the website of the Bosnia Institute: www.bosnia.org.uk