Date: April 26, 1993
Author: Valentina Krčmar, Toronto, Ontario
Addressed to: Letters to the Editor, The Globe and Mail
View the Original Letter: krcmar book 3_Part2_Part7.pdf
About This Letter
In this powerful letter dated April 26, 1993, Valentina Krčmar responds to an article published in The Globe and Mail titled “Protect Town, Canadians Told,” which discussed the peril facing UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica. Her words, written in the spring of 1993 — two years before the Srebrenica genocide — reveal her remarkable foresight and moral clarity as she warns of the world’s indifference to unfolding atrocities.
Krčmar opens by challenging the very notion of “peacekeeping,” questioning whether peace was being kept at all as civilians were slaughtered and entire cities destroyed.
“The situation in Srebrenica, and around it, and the possible predicament of our ‘peacekeepers’ (are they keeping any peace?) would be — interesting, very interesting.”
She reminds readers that Croatians and Bosnians had long been warning the world about Serbian brutality and expansionism, yet their pleas were ignored by governments, the media, and humanitarian organizations.
“We, Croatians and Bosnians, warned the world about the brutality of the Serbian regime and its reign over Croatia and Bosnia. Sadly, no one listened to us; we were ignored by our governments, media, and many organizations — quite a few of them boasting to be humane.”
Krčmar exposes the inequity in Canadian aid distribution, pointing out that even as Serbs committed acts of aggression, they continued to receive international assistance:
“The help was sent by Canada to former Yugoslavia in a ratio of 55% to Bosnia, 19% to Croatia, and 13% to Serbia. Please just think about this ratio… Along with the victims, the aggressor is fed too.”
Her outrage grows when quoting a statement from then-Minister Barbara McDougall, who warned that arming Bosnian forces would “send a terrible signal to the world.” Krčmar dismantles this reasoning by recounting the chain of unchecked aggressions that had already unfolded:
“The Honourable Minister probably forgot that Slovenia was attacked, and no one helped; Croatia was attacked with terrible onslaught — houses were burned, people slaughtered, hospitals destroyed, many churches left in ruins. The world said nothing. Canada said nothing.”
She recalls the fall of Vukovar, a Croatian city annihilated in 1991, and the mass murder of hospital patients that followed:
“When Vukovar was falling we were calling and begging our representatives to do something, anything. Mr. Vance supposedly went to Vukovar to ‘save’ our wounded in hospital. The result of all that concern: over 3,000 people missing — the wounded, over 250 of them, in the mass grave after terrible torture.”
Krčmar’s letter is both testimony and indictment — a mother’s lament against global apathy and political cowardice. It exposes the moral contradictions of “peacekeeping” in the face of genocide and reveals the human cost of inaction years before the world would finally confront the horrors of Srebrenica.
