Elham Asaad Buaras

100 Muslim leaders, MPs, and organisations have signed an open letter, calling on British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to apologise for a recently uncovered comment about the Muslim victims of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide in Bosnia. The letter was penned on July 10, the eve of the 25th anniversary of the genocide.

The Srebrenica genocide saw the mass killings of more than 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War. The massacre is considered the worst episode of mass murder in Europe since the Second World War and as well as the killings, more than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area.

Two years after the genocide, Johnson wrote an article challenging Bianca Jagger’s support for more direct intervention against the Serbian Army in the Bosnian war. He wrote, ‘Alright, I say, the fate of Srebrenica was appalling. But they weren’t exactly angels, these Muslims’. Johnson has never apologised for the comments.

Shazad Amin, CEO of MEND, says, “The Prime Minister has a long history of racist and Islamophobic comments. However, on the eve of the commemoration of the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust, it is deeply offensive to the Muslim community in the UK and around the world that he has made such insensitive comments and not apologised for them. We call upon him do so without delay”.