On the recordMay 7, 2012
as we consider the many important issues currently before us, I believe it is worthwhile for us also to pause and recall past events that remain relevant to our work today. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a long-time member and Co-Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, I would like to remind my colleagues that it was approximately 20 years ago that the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina began. While seeking to find a peaceful path out of the Yugoslavia which was collapsing around it, Bosnia and its people instead became chief victims of the clearly senseless violence associated with that collapse. The ethnic cleansing of villages and the shelling of Sarajevo which we first saw in April 1992 were horrific, and little did we know how much worse things would get in subsequent months and years. It was in July and August of 1992 that we first saw the shocking pictures of the detainees in Omarska and other camps run by nationalist, militant Serbs, in northeastern Bosnia. The next year, we saw Croat militants destroy the famous bridge in Mostar for which the city got its name. In 1995, we saw Srebrenica before and after the genocide in which 8,000 people, mostly men and boys, perished.…
