Boris Johnson's Vile Comments on 1995 Slaughter of 8,000 Muslims Have Re-Emerged
The Prime Minister has yet again caused outrage as more vile comments from his past as a political commentator come to light.
Boris Johnson, noted for his disgustingly racist and homophobic comments, has perhaps even sunk to a new low, however, as he victim-blamed the Muslims persecuted during the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre, stating that the dead “weren’t exactly angels”.
“All right, I say, the fate of the Srebrenica was appalling. But they weren’t exactly angels, these Muslims.”
The column published a mere two years after the slaughter by The Telegraph came as a retort to Bianca Jagger who had written an essay that rightfully accused Western countries of collaborating in the Bosnian Serb atrocities against Muslims.
So far-right are the comments from Johnson that they are even out of step with Margaret Thatcher who two years before the massacre had sharply condemned western leaders, including then Prime Minister John Major, saying they “lack[ed] the resolve to take stronger action on behalf of Bosnia’s embattled Muslims.”
Speaking in the House of Lords, Lady Thatcher urged Britain to help arm Bosnian Muslims and undertake “aggressive” airstrikes against Serbian positions.
“If these governments are not moved by those pictures of death and suffering, if they are not moved by the position of ethnic cleansing in Europe, two million refugees, mass graves being found in Croatia, then they should be. We cannot let things go on like this. It is evil.”
The comments from Johnson are far from the first offensive and Islamophobic comments to come from the pen of Johnson, disgustingly describing Black Africans as ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ and comparing Muslim women to ‘letterboxes’, stating that students who appeared at school or in a lecture “looking like a bank robber” should be asked to remove their attire.
In 2005, Johnson stated that Islamophobia is ‘a natural reaction’ and he would later go on to state his belief that ‘Islam is the problem’.
While the Prime Minister’s open Islamophobia has always been an open secret, that he would descend into excusing crimes against humanity is an issue that will rightfully worry Muslims across the country.
The Srebrenica massacre involved the murder of 8,000 Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and around the Bosnian town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. Perpetrated by Serbian units from the Bosnian Serb Army under the command of Ratko Mladić, the besieged enclave of Srebrenica had been declared a “safe area” under UN protection. However, the UN failed to demilitarize and Dutch soldiers in Srebrenica did not prevent the town’s capture or the subsequent killings. The atrocity was the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War.
Mladić was sentenced to life for genocide, including the Srebrenica killings, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in 2017. Radovan Karadžić, the President of the Bosnian Serb administration, was also found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment, later extended to life.
Advertisement