The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights is extremely concerned that Serbia’s society is on its way to reconcile with hate speech and rehabilitate war mongerers whose oral and written statements, which had received ample coverage in the local mass media in the last decade of the 20th century, led many people to unwillingly go to war, to become killers and torturers either consciously or unconsciously. Such discourse caused many deaths, the maiming and plight of thousands of innocent people, ultimately resulting in the poverty and homelessness of millions of people. War mongerers sent others to the battlefields, while they themselves remained at a safe distance, building their own careers and amassing riches. The war mongerers are on the offensive again after keeping a low profile for a short while in (an unfortunately unjustifiable) fear of criminal prosecution for inciting ethnic, religious and racial hate. They have begun suing the people, who had shed light on their crimes, and seeking enormous compensations for the “pain they suffered and the assaults on their dignity”. They threaten and scorn those who are trying to call them to moral and disciplinary account and present themselves as the righteous and national benefactors in the media.
Organisations for the protection of human rights and democracy must firmly oppose this trend. They must stand by their compatriots who may again find themselves in trouble just because they are advocating honour and humaneness. The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights thus calls on all these organisations to establish a “Fund for Protection from War Mongerers” and donate it the funds they can; these funds would be used to provide expert assistance to all those who find themselves attacked by the former and present advocates of war and hate and to finance efforts to properly inform the public of such attacks and the assailants’ track records.
