Honouring the righteous

In Britain, a lot of people think Parliament has either become useless, venal or both. Few would look to it for moral guidance. Not so in Serbia, where the nation’s legislature has condemned the 1995 Srebrenica murder of 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina – Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II – for the first time.

In 2004, I was involved in getting the Bosnian Serb authorities to admit their role in the crime. Reluctantly, they admitted that their forces participated in the killings, but many condemned the resolution at the time. So the Serbian move is significant.

But the road to reconciliation in the Balkans is still long. Although some perpetrators have been prosecuted at The Hague Tribunal, former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic remains at large, believed to be either in Serbia or in the Serb part of Bosnia.