Date: April 13, 1993
Author: Valentina Krčmar, Thornhill, Ontario
Addressed to: Letters to the Editor, The Toronto Star
View the Original Letter: krcmar book 3_Part2_Part6.pdf
About This Letter
In this letter to The Toronto Star, published on April 13, 1993, Valentina Krčmar responds to an article titled “Unseen Carnage, Hellish Wars,” originally reprinted from The New York Times. Her response is one of moral outrage and disbelief — a raw, impassioned reflection on the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of global institutions amid the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia.
She begins by expressing her disillusionment with the United Nations, questioning its leadership and the moral blindness of the international community. Identifying herself as Croatian, Krčmar insists that her opinion is not rooted in nationalism but in humanity:
“I am Croatian by origin, but I think that if we all cared more about just humans, the world would be a much happier place.”
Krčmar condemns Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then Secretary-General of the UN, for his failure to act decisively while tyranny and genocide unfolded in Bosnia and Croatia:
“He is an incompetent and weak leader of the world organization that lost its direction... He led the UN at the time when every little tyrant got away with murder and plunder, be it in Croatia, Bosnia, Liberia, or Armenia.”
She reserves particular criticism for the UN’s peacekeeping strategy, pointing out the absurdity of sending soldiers from the disintegrating Yugoslav state to serve as peacekeepers in Croatia — a nation still under attack by those very forces:
“Perhaps their qualification to become peacekeepers was how many people they killed and how many women they raped.”
The letter expands beyond the Balkans to draw parallels with Liberia and Somalia, arguing that the UN’s inaction and selective empathy have allowed suffering to multiply worldwide.
“Maybe even Liberia and Somalia would have been better off if the UN had acted when we Croatians and Bosnians were begging for help — not in a war of religion or ethnicity, but in a war of aggression, murder, and simple land grab.”
Krčmar concludes with a moral call to conscience — a plea for the world to resist apathy and to raise its collective voice against tyranny:
“The solution is not this apathy that is all over the world, but the strong voices of us who cannot believe that a tyrant and butcher cannot be stopped.”
This letter captures Krčmar’s trademark blend of empathy and indignation — a voice that transcends politics to speak on behalf of ordinary people caught in the machinery of global indifference.
