Sep 14, 2011

Sanjak: Mufti says Serbia Provoking Crisis in Sandzak


Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina Chief Mufti Mustafa Cerić has accused Serbia of “increasingly discriminating” Bosniaks in Sandžak.

Below is an article publishse by B92:

He expressed concern that Serbia was provoking a new crisis hotspot in Sandžak.

“As Bosniak Muslims’ spiritual chief I want to draw attention of the international institutions and organizations, especially European ones, that Bosniaks’ religious and national rights are being violated in Sandžak and I express justified concern that organs of the state of Serbia are provoking a new crisis hotspot in Europe,” the Bosnia-Herzegovina chief mufti said in an announcement. 

He said that while Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina were still looking for the remains of the victims of genocide in mass graves Serbia was intensifying pressure, discriminating and violating their national and religious rights in an attempt to create “an atmosphere of fear and lynch just like during the pre-genocide period in Bosnia-Herzegovina”. 

Cerić pointed out in the statement that he strongly condemned discrimination against Bosniaks in Sandžak, aggression against the Islamic Community in Serbia and attacks on the Islamic religious teaching. 

“I give my full support to the Islamic Community in Serbia led by Mufti Muamer Zukorlić in their just fight to preserve freedom and autonomy of the Islamic Community and protect Bosniaks’ national rights in Serbia in accordance with the international instruments on human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the chief mufti stressed. 

“Pressures that the Islamic Community in Serbia and Bosniak national institutions in Sandžak have been permanently exposed to in the last several years in Serbia, including the attack of the competent Serbian ministries on the Islamic religious teaching which leads to an unacceptable disenfranchisement and marginalization of Bosniaks' religious and national rights, show that that a new area in which a state is brutally violating human and national rights of one people is appearing in the European continent,“ Cerić said. 

He added that Serbia had been involved in wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in the end of the 20th century and that some of those wars had ended with genocide, stressing that the International Court of Justice in The Hague had determined that Serbia had not fulfilled its international obligation to prevent genocide despite earlier warnings.