110 HRES 679 IH: Expressing the sense of the House of
U.S. House of Representatives
2007-09-25
text/xml
EN
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Whereas H. Res. 199 and S. Res. 134 (109th Congress)
resolved that from April 1992 to November 1995, Serb forces committed
aggression and genocide against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its
population, with the direct support from authorities in Serbia and
Montenegro;
Whereas the perpetrators and the supporters of the
aggression and genocide, including the Yugoslav People’s Army and its Ministry
of Interior, the Army of Republika Srpska, the Police of Republika Srpska, and
other regular and paramilitary forces under Serb control, intended to destroy,
through slaughter, rape, torture, and expulsion, the unique multiethnic culture
of Bosnia and Herzegovina woven through a thousand years of tolerance, respect,
mutual trust, and dignified coexistence of all of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s
ethnically and religiously diverse citizens;
Whereas the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) has found numerous Serb political and military officials
guilty of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of
genocide against the non-Serb population of the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina;
Whereas the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its
judgment of February 26, 2007, ruled that the execution of more than 7,000
civilians in and around Srebrenica in July 1995 by the institutions of the then
self-styled Republika Srpska entity, and in particular its army and police, was
a crime of genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;
Whereas Srebrenica and other areas of eastern Bosnia from
which the victims of genocide hail continues to be under the jurisdiction of
the Republika Srpska entity and its institutions, especially the Police of
Republika Srpska, that committed genocide;
Whereas the ICJ also ruled that Serbia had violated the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by failing
to prevent the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and punish its
perpetrators;
Whereas the ICJ’s judgment declares that significant
sections of the documents detailing the proceedings of the Supreme Defense
Council of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro)
were redacted and therefore not available to the ICJ at the time of that
judgment;
Whereas the findings of the RS Srebrenica Commission
report unequivocally stated that Republic of Srpska’s Interior Ministry (i.e.
the Police of Republika Srpska) has failed to provide specific data on
several hundred individuals deployed in Srebrenica in July 1995 under the
direct or indirect auspices of the RS
;
Whereas the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia
and Herzegovina concluded that the Srebrenica Commission must complete
the list of names, currently standing at 892, of those implicated in the
Genocide who are currently employed in BH or Republic of Srpska institutions,
and forward a completed list to the BH Prosecutor and to the
ICTY.
;
Whereas all countries are obliged not to recognize as
lawful the situation created by the crime of aggression and the crime of
genocide, as well as to cooperate in the application of measures designed to
eliminate the consequences of such crimes;
Whereas the General Framework Agreement for Peace in
Bosnia and Herzegovina (commonly referred to as the Dayton Peace
Accords
), that was made possible through the strong leadership of the
United States, ended the aggression, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its non-Serb
population, but it failed to achieve its intended goal of reversing the effects
of those crimes;
Whereas due to the failure to ensure sustainable return of
refugees and displaced persons to their homes of origins, as guaranteed by
Annex VII of the Dayton Peace Accords, the Constitution of Bosnia and
Herzegovina (Annex IV of the Dayton Peace Accords) has evolved into an
ethno-territorial arrangement that now institutionalizes the results of the
genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia and
Herzegovina;
Whereas one of the most ominous of the ethno-territorial
provisions of this Constitution is an entity voting mechanism, which allows a
small number of Serb deputies from Republika Srpska in the Parliament of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, constituting less than one-quarter of the Parliament, to block
any proposed legislation or decision;
Whereas the entity voting mechanism has
been used to block various crucial State-level legislation, including the
proposed changes to the Citizenship Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina which in its
current form threatens to permanently deny over 500,000 Bosnians their Bosnian
citizenship, effectively continuing the project of genocide and ethnic
cleansing;
Whereas 300,000 Bosnian-Americans live in the United
States as fully engaged citizens with a significant potential to further
strengthen the ties between the United States and Bosnia and
Herzegovina;
Whereas the political leadership of the Republika Srpska
entity has continuously blocked all attempts to move beyond the
ethno-territorial basis of the Dayton Constitution and create a fully
democratic and functioning system of government, as has been demonstrated by,
among other things, the Republika Srpska entity’s unwillingness to agree to the
reform of the police force structures within Bosnia and Herzegovina in line
with the standards demanded by the European Union;
Whereas Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that
the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina need a stronger energetic state
capable of advancing the public good
and pledged that the United States
will remain a dedicated partner to Bosnia and Herzegovina as it moves toward
further Euro-Atlantic integration;
Whereas Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
Nicholas Burns has unequivocally stated that the Dayton Peace Accords
cannot be the way that the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina organize
themselves for the next ten years
and that it is time for [the
people of] Bosnia and Herzegovina … to go beyond the Dayton Accords and to
build a modern constitutional state
;
Whereas the European Parliament and the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe have recently adopted Resolutions calling for
an in-depth reform of the Dayton constitutional arrangements, and particularly
for the reduction and elimination of the entity voting mechanism;
Whereas there continues to be, within Republika Srpska
ethnic exclusivity, which has effectively discouraged and prevented the return
of the ethnically-cleansed non-Serb population to this region of Bosnia and
Herzegovina; and
Whereas the constitutional arrangements of Bosnia and
Herzegovina must satisfy the interests of all of its people by guaranteeing
full civil, cultural, individual, and religious rights to all citizens of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and promoting the integration of the entire region of
Southeast Europe into the Euro-Atlantic political and security structures: Now,
therefore, be it
That—
(1)it is the sense of
the House of Representatives that—
(A)Bosnia and Herzegovina should begin the
process of adopting a new constitution that is based on civic representation
and that fully eliminates the ethno-territorial arrangements which reflect and
institutionalize the effects of the genocide, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina;
(B)the new
constitution should advance the principles of civic democracy, full equality of
citizens, tolerance and protection of all ethnic groups, and should reflect the
highest standards of individual human rights and liberties;
(C)the new
constitution should eliminate the ethnic power-sharing principles that reflect
the ethnic divisions imposed by the perpetrators of the genocide, crimes
against humanity, and war crimes;
(D)the new
constitution must restructure the ethno-territorial organization of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and eliminate its division into entities, cantons, and
municipalities with a view to creating a single, unified economic space and
increasing efficiency and sustainability of the country and its governing
apparatus;
(E)the entity voting
mechanism, which has proved to be a serious obstacle to the functioning of
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Parliament, must be eliminated;
(F)Srebrenica and
other areas of eastern Bosnia should be placed under the exclusive jurisdiction
of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to ensure that the
situation created by genocide is not recognized as lawful;
(G)the police reform
in Bosnia and Herzegovina must create a single police structure, replacing
entity police forces with a single police at the state level, and in particular
eliminating the Police of the Republika Srpska entity, which was identified in
the ICJ judgment as one of the institutions of Republika Srpska that
participated in the commission of the crime of genocide;
(H)the Republika
Srpska entity cannot persist under its current name which represents the
ethnically-exclusive political philosophy of its founders and which perpetuates
the effects of the genocide and ethnic cleansing;
(I)Serbia must
immediately honor its international legal obligations towards Bosnia and
Herzegovina, stemming from the Convention on the Prevention and the Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide and the ICJ judgment, by immediately apprehending and
transferring to the ICTY all individuals indicted for participating in the
commission of the crime of genocide, particularly Radovan Karadzic and Ratko
Mladic; and
(J)it is in the
national interest of the United States that all individuals who are responsible
for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Herzegovina
should be held accountable for their actions, and the Republika Srpska entity,
Serbia, and Montenegro must therefore fully cooperate with the ICTY;
(2)the United States
reaffirms its strongest support for the independence, sovereignty, and
territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and supports the
transformation of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a state with governmental
institutions commensurate with EU and NATO membership, as this will ensure a
lasting peace and greater prosperity for all of the people and states of the
entire region; and
(3)the House of
Representatives calls for an immediate, refocused, and concentrated diplomatic
effort by the United States to achieve the objectives stated in this Resolution
in order to achieve definitive success in reversing the effects of genocide in
Bosnia and Herzegovina and building a modern, functional, self-sustainable, and
a fully democratic state.