Remembering Srebrenica

Jeremy Jones, Director of International and of Community Affairs of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, was a featured speaker at the Sydney Commemoration of the mass murder of civilians in 1995 at Srebrenica, Bosnia.

The 20th Anniversary Commemoration, at the Bosnian Community Centre in south-west Sydney on the evening of 11 July, brought close to 700 survivors, family members of victims and the broader community together under the banner “Never Again”.

The murder of approximately 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys has been the worst Crime Against Humanity on European soil  since the Shoah.

The emotionally charged evening featured presentations by young community members mourning grandparents, fathers and brothers, Islamic religious leaders, an historian, poet and four members of Parliament – federal Mp and son of Bosnian migrants Ed Husic and state MPs David Clarke, Walt Secord and Paul Lynch.

Introduced as a longstanding friend of the Bosnian community, Jeremy Jones talked of the impact on him  of his visits

to Sarajevo and Mostar in 2011 and 2012, where he met with Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders, academics and students, parliamentarians and journalists. He spoke of his visit to the Jewish cemetery in the Bosnian capital, where the monument to victims of the Nazis bears  damage inflicted by weapons fired during the same war in which the Srebrenica genocide and other horrendous crimes took place.

Jeremy Jones read a moving Jewish prayer for Srebrenica, written in London, which concluded

“Help us in our fight against vengeance, prejudice and hatred,

Strengthen us in our efforts to open benighted eyes, distorted visions through mistrust and misunderstanding,

Enlighten us so there shall never be destruction of your creation again.

May it be your will that the souls of the victims of Srebrenica genocide live in your eternal peace,

May their families and friends be comforted in their sorrow,

May it be your will that we learn to live together without prejudice and violence but respect one another as human beings”.

Ed Husic publicly thanked Jeremy Jones for his consistent, passionate and effective advocacy of religious freedom and Australian multiculturalism.