Europe dies or is reborn in Sarajevo: no more neutrality between the aggressors and the aggressed

So we went to Cannes to demonstrate in front of the heads of state and government, for Bosnia-Herzegovina . “Enough with the neutrality between the aggressors and the aggressed, let’s open the doors of the European Union to Bosnia, we need to reach a turning point!”. We weren’t very many – just a few thousand – and the Pannellians prevailed in Italy. The bulk of the militants of solidarity for the former Yugoslavia hadn’t been able to and perhaps didn’t even want to.

From Spain, on the other hand, many came, especially from Catalonia; from France many committees, few or very few instead from Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Great Britain and Germany. Many of the European parliamentarians had signed - the majority of the Greens and the Radicals, significant Christian Democrats and Socialists, some exponents of the left, several representatives of the European Berlusconi supporters ("Forza Europa", now integrated into the Gaullists), liberals and regionalists. Many good names among the signatories, from the former UN Commissioner José Maria Mendiluce (Spanish Socialist) to Otto of Habsburg, from Daniel Cohn-Bendit to Corrado Augias, Francisca Sauquillo, Michel Rocard, Arie Oostlander, Giorgio La Malfa, Pierre Carniti, Glenys Kinnock, Antonio Tajani, Catherine Lalumière, Bernard Kouchner. Only about twenty of them actually came to Cannes on June 26, 1995. Over a hundred Bosnian refugees who wanted to reach Cannes from Italy were instead blocked at the Ventimiglia border: “ there, once again Europe doesn’t want us, ” was the bitter comment. A demonstration at the border at least made their intention visible.

After the demonstration in the square, Jacques Chirac himself receives us, a dozen of us are admitted to meet with him and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hervé de la Charette, half an hour before the start of the summit: to our appeal he responds that yes, freeing Sarajevo from the siege is a priority, but that there are no good and bad guys, and that there is no need to wage war. We look at each other, the Belgian Green MP Magda Aelvoet and I, both long-time pacifists: how strange to be practically accused of being warmongers by the neo-Gaullist president who a few days earlier had announced the resumption of French nuclear tests in the Pacific! And here is what many of us had elaborated and signed: after three years, all of us, humble or powerful, are witnessing the now banalized daily life of a war whose targets are women, children, old people, deliberately targeted by unreachable snipers or hit by deadly howitzers that shoot out of nowhere.

It took three years and, above all, a hostage-taking by the UN peacekeepers, an unprecedented event in the history of the international community, for European political leaders and media to recognize that in this war there are aggressors and aggressed, criminals and victims. Three years of a useless policy of “neutrality” that has deprived us of all credibility with the Bosnians and of all respect from the aggressors.

We have now reached a point of no return. Either we draw the consequences that are imposed and strengthen our presence - mandate of the blue helmets, clear stance against the aggressors - and, ultimately, refuse to be complicit in the strategy of purging and homogenizing the population of Bosnia, or we give in to the intolerable blackmail of the Bosnian Serb forces, withdrawing from Bosnia and thus inflicting on the United Nations its greatest humiliation just as the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the UN is being celebrated.

Today more than ever before we must arm ourselves with dignity and values . And above all repeat that “never again” that has resounded throughout Europe since the end of the Second World War. Today more than ever before we must defend ourselves , in Bosnia, against those who push for ethnic and religious cleansing as a political ideal and impose it by perpetrating crimes against humanity. If the current situation is the result of the disorderly, defeatist and contradictory policies of our governments, the European Union as such has remained silent, impotent, absent.

Europe must bear witness and act! It is necessary that, thanks to Europe, the integrity of the Bosnian territory and the security of its borders are finally guaranteed. But this is not, it is no longer enough. To recover a debt that has been largely used up, the European Union must today demonstrate a courage and political imagination unprecedented in its history. Europe can do it, Europe must do it. It owes it as much to the Bosnians as to itself. Because this is a condition for its rebirth.

Let us therefore go in large numbers to Cannes to demonstrate to the heads of state and government that : the resolutions of the Security Council, in particular those that guarantee free access of aid to the victims, must be applied; the siege of Sarajevo and the other encircled cities must be lifted and the safety zones effectively protected; the blue helmets must not be withdrawn, their mandate must not be restricted, on the contrary the international presence in Bosnia must be strengthened; faced with a policy of so-called neutrality, we are on the side of the attacked and the victims; in the spirit of solidarity that must animate the Europe that we want, the internationally recognized Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina must be invited to join the European Union fully and immediately.

Europe, in fact, dies or is reborn in Sarajevo.

Every day until July 3, you will find on this site a selection of texts by Alex Langer, chosen from the archive of the Alexander Langer Foundation, to whom we extend our thanks for their availability. The first text that we have re-proposed was “ Decalogue for inter-ethnic coexistence “.

Alex Langer's appeal "Europe is dying or reborn in Sarajevo" was published in the magazine "La Terra vista dalla Luna" on June 25, 1995. This was one of the last, and perhaps the most famous, of his public interventions, written a few days before his death. The article resumed the requests and the appeal that Langer had personally brought to Cannes on the occasion of the demonstration before the European heads of state and government.