Condemn the showing of Boris Malagurski's film, Republika Srpska: The struggle for Freedom
We are writing to you to express our profound alarm at the release of former Sputnik and Russia Today host Boris Malagurski’s film, Republika Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom, across Europe. The Serbian-Canadian director has now publicly expressed his intent to extend the film’s tour beyond Europe, and we seek reassurance that all measures will be taken to discourage his denialism from being disseminated in the United States.
There are two bases on which we believe condemnation of this film by US representatives is needed. Firstly, the film’s trailer, which has been released in the public domain, glorifies the founding of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity in the 1992-1995 Bosnian War as a fight against “slavery” and a “struggle for freedom”. This is a continuation of the director’s years of public relativisation and denial of the crimes committed in the RS’ name, including the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995, which the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found was committed by the Republika Srpska’s VRS army, at the behest of Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić.
Secondly, the United States has a long-standing special relationship with the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is evidenced by the significant and active Bosnian diaspora in the United States, who continue to contribute to American culture, as well as the ongoing diplomatic cooperation between our two nations. Through the difficulties of post-war peace-building, Bosnians have been able to rely on the United States to honour the victims of the war and to defend truth over revisionism. If Mr. Malagurski were to be given the impression that his film is welcome in the United States, we believe this would be contrary to the bedrock of the US-Bosnian relationship that American-Bosnians have come to cherish.
Lest we forget that the Bosnian War saw over 100,000 Bosnians murdered in campaigns of genocide and ‘ethnic cleansing’. In the territory claimed by the ‘Republika Srpska’ authorities, concentration camps such as Manjača, Omarska and Trnopolje were established by Serb forces, in which thousands of non-Serb civilians were detained, tortured, and killed. The culmination of this genocidal campaign was the mass killings in the Srebrenica Genocide of July 1995. Boris Malagurski’s film revises this painful history of 1992-1995 through its mis-framing of genocidal crimes as a “struggle for freedom”. In doing so, the film whitewashes crimes against humanity that were found to have been committed by the ICTY, including the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995. We therefore ask for all possible measures to be used to condemn Republika Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom in the United States.
There are two bases on which we believe condemnation of this film by US representatives is needed. Firstly, the film’s trailer, which has been released in the public domain, glorifies the founding of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity in the 1992-1995 Bosnian War as a fight against “slavery” and a “struggle for freedom”. This is a continuation of the director’s years of public relativisation and denial of the crimes committed in the RS’ name, including the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995, which the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found was committed by the Republika Srpska’s VRS army, at the behest of Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić.
Secondly, the United States has a long-standing special relationship with the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is evidenced by the significant and active Bosnian diaspora in the United States, who continue to contribute to American culture, as well as the ongoing diplomatic cooperation between our two nations. Through the difficulties of post-war peace-building, Bosnians have been able to rely on the United States to honour the victims of the war and to defend truth over revisionism. If Mr. Malagurski were to be given the impression that his film is welcome in the United States, we believe this would be contrary to the bedrock of the US-Bosnian relationship that American-Bosnians have come to cherish.
Lest we forget that the Bosnian War saw over 100,000 Bosnians murdered in campaigns of genocide and ‘ethnic cleansing’. In the territory claimed by the ‘Republika Srpska’ authorities, concentration camps such as Manjača, Omarska and Trnopolje were established by Serb forces, in which thousands of non-Serb civilians were detained, tortured, and killed. The culmination of this genocidal campaign was the mass killings in the Srebrenica Genocide of July 1995. Boris Malagurski’s film revises this painful history of 1992-1995 through its mis-framing of genocidal crimes as a “struggle for freedom”. In doing so, the film whitewashes crimes against humanity that were found to have been committed by the ICTY, including the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995. We therefore ask for all possible measures to be used to condemn Republika Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom in the United States.
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