By Talha Ozturk
BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) Srebrenica genocide was awarded, said Bosnian Croat President Zeljko Komsic on Tuesday referring to the decision to award this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature to Peter Handke, an Austrian author who denies the genocide.
Komsic stressed that the genocide was rewarded in Sweden today.
“Hate speech can be expected from someone who denies the genocide, but hatred from the award-giving side is extremely destructive,” said Komsic.
He added that they will continue to fight for justice.
“It is an act of hatred against the relatives of the victims,” said Komsic.
Handke, 77, openly supports Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 at the international tribunal in The Hague on trial for war crimes and genocide.
He claimed that the Muslim Bosniaks in Sarajevo had killed themselves, adding that he never believed that the Serbs had committed genocide in Srebrenica.
Several countries including Turkey boycotted the award ceremony.
Turkish, Albanian, Kosovar and Croatian envoys to Sweden did not attend the ceremony.
Awarding the Nobel Prize to Peter Handke will only encourage “enemies of Islam and humanity”, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’ said on Tuesday.
“It is a shame and disgrace to award a person who defends and praises a murderer who shed the blood of tens of thousands of Muslims,” Erdogan said, referring to the 2019 Nobel Laureate in Literature Peter Handke, an Austrian writer who is accused of denying the 1995 Bosnian genocide.Turkish president called on people of conscience to react over the controversial award.
“Those lecturing Turkey about democracy and law rolled out the red carpet for dictators and terrorists who killed tens of thousands of people,” said Erdogan.
Meanwhile, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic congratulated Austrian author Peter Handke for winning this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.
“Please receive my most sincere congratulations. As a Nobel Prize laureate, you are inscribed among the immortals. This award is an award for your outstanding literary work, for your knowledge and creativity, but also for your unrivaled moral qualities, for courage and dignity to fight for your ideals of a prominent intellectual,” said Vucic on the presidential site.
Vucic also invited Handke to visit Serbia.
“Serbia regards you as a true friend and I will avail myself to the opportunity to say that we perceive your Nobel Prize as having been won by one of us. Now, along with Ivo Andric, we are celebrating yet another of our Nobel Prize winners,” said Vucic.
[Photo: People stage a protest against the Nobel literature award to Austrian author Peter Handke, who denies the genocide in Bosnia and rhapsodises Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, in Stockholm, Sweden, 10 December 2019. Photographer: Atila Altuntaş/AA]
