Date: September 22, 1992
Author: Valentina Krčmar and M. Tkovic, Mothers for Peace – Bedem Ljubavi (Toronto Chapter)
Addressed to: Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the United Nations
View the Original Letter: krcmar book 2_Part31.pdf
About This Letter
Written in September 1992, this brief but powerful protest letter from Mothers for Peace – Bedem Ljubavi to Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, stands as a concise yet devastating critique of international double standards and moral blindness.
Signed by Valentina Krčmar and M. Tkovic, the letter denounces the UN’s decision to allow Milan Panić, the self-proclaimed President of “so-called Yugoslavia,” to address the organization — even as his forces continued their campaigns of ethnic cleansing and destruction across Croatia and Bosnia.
“For as long as the controlling powers give chance to these types of dictators to voice their opinion, there is no chance for peace in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina — and the world itself.”
In a single paragraph, the letter captures what many in the Croatian diaspora and humanitarian community felt at the time — that the UN’s diplomacy had become a platform for aggressors rather than a defense for victims.
It is an indictment not only of the institutions that failed to act, but also of the moral collapse of the international order that enabled the atrocities of the early 1990s to unfold unchecked.
