Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Official Report 844KB pdf

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Srebrenica Genocide (21st Anniversary)

The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S5M-00007 in the name of Michael Russell, on commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I ask members to leave the chamber quietly.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes that the 21st anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica in Bosnia, in which over 8,000 Bosnians, mostly men and including many young men, were murdered, takes place in July 2016; understands that the United Kingdom’s Srebrenica Memorial Week organised by the charity, Remembering Srebrenica, will run from 10 to 17 July with the theme, 21: Coming of age – time to act; is mindful that many Bosnian young people did not have the chance to celebrate their coming of age as a result of the massacre and the war; considers that it has never been more important to engage with all young people and teach them that racial and religious hatred can lead to genocide, and hopes that the events of the commemoration will inspire people to challenge hatred of all types and work to create a more cohesive and tolerant society.

17:35  

I welcome to the gallery members of the UK charity Remembering Srebrenica, including one or two people who were in Srebrenica when Jenny Marra, Lesley Thomson, the then Solicitor General, and I visited last year.

On that sunny September afternoon, a group of us sat at the very beautiful Srebrenica-Potocari cemetery in Bosnia and Herzegovina, among the 6,377 graves, and listened—at times in tears—to Nura Begovic and Nedzad Avdic talk about genocide. They were talking about genocide not in the abstract, but in the personal: genocide that had changed their lives for ever. Nura is one of the mothers of Srebrenica, who have been one of the driving forces that have led to the kind of remembrance that we are having today. They are the mothers of sons, the wives of husbands, the sisters of brothers whose bodies, broken into parts and scattered at first across the countryside of Serbia and Bosnia, now lie in Potocari.

I do not have time today to go into the precise story of what happened in Srebrenica or in the Bosnian war. Suffice it to say that, on our continent, in the lifetime of everyone in this chamber, not only was genocide committed but we—the world—failed to stop it. It was not our only failure. We failed to intervene to lift the longest siege of modern times—the siege of the beautiful European city of Sarajevo, where thousands died and hundreds of thousands of people suffered starvation and privation that is unimaginable to us here. We failed to halt the ambitions of a murderous dictator, who had planned such an event for years. However, at Srebrenica we failed, collectively, to protect a civilian population who had come to the international community for help in order to try to save their lives.

Twenty-one years ago next month, at Potocari, a few kilometres outside the village of Srebrenica, the Dutch United Nations force that was meant to be safeguarding the safe haven allowed itself to be overrun and in so doing created the opportunity for the Serbian army to eliminate almost the entire male population of the area—to ethnically cleanse the village.

That is the action, or inaction, for which the mothers wished to see legal culpability established. Theirs were voices that would not be silenced. Eventually they took the United Nations and then the Dutch Government to court for breach of their duty of care to the population that they were meant to be protecting. They also encouraged the international community to embark on a series of trials at the Hague which has led to a number of convictions for genocide and mass murder. We are talking about genocide and mass murder, on our continent, very much within our lifetimes, and carried out by people the victims regarded as friends and neighbours and inflicted on people among whom the killers had lived.

Nedzad was just a boy at the time; he was a son and a brother. The story that he told us in the sunshine that afternoon was almost too horrific to hear. That day he was taken to a school and kept in an upstairs classroom with his father and uncles while they heard the sounds of others being abused and murdered. Later he was taken from his family and driven in the back of a truck to a place where he dug a grave. Then he was shot and left to die under a pile of bodies. Although he was badly wounded, by a total accident he was found by another victim who was also wounded. In a perilous state they managed to survive—not over days, but over weeks—as they made their way through hostile countryside to safety. They were the only two who survived of the several hundred who were herded into the school rooms, and they were among the very few survivors out of the more than 8,000 who disappeared.

When the international community began to realise what had happened, the Serbian army took steps to cover their tracks. Mass graves were reopened and bodies broken up and taken to be reburied elsewhere. The task of finding, identifying and laying to rest those bodies has taken two decades. It is still going on. The total number of victims is more than 8,000, which means that more than a thousand gravestones are still to be erected. The astonishing work of the International Commission on Missing Persons has resulted in an extraordinarily high number of positive identifications made while progressing an amazing range of new techniques for identification and DNA matching that are being used elsewhere. The commission’s work has given closure to so many families—to so many mothers. It has ensured that justice can be done in terms of bearing witness to the massacre that took place.

Today’s debate is about bearing witness, as is the work of Remembering Srebrenica and the involvement in that work of a wide range of individuals from across faith groups, civic Scotland and this and other Parliaments. It is mirrored by work in the other parts of the UK under the same charitable umbrella. That work is focused not just on the past, vital as that is, but on helping Bosnia and Herzegovina to move into the future.

Bearing witness means three things. It means going to see and being prepared to look and listen no matter how hard the experience. It means being willing to talk about those things in one’s everyday setting, including here, and sharing the experiences of the visit as we are doing here today. It means resolving to campaign and to work for a world in which, by the awareness of past genocide, we are able to prevent such future tragedies.

In the world in which we live, in the surroundings in which we work, it is sometimes possible to believe that such things cannot happen, but they can. As Primo Levi, a Jew who saw at first hand the horror of the Holocaust observed, if it happened then it can happen now, if it can happen here it can happen anywhere, and if it happened to them it can happen to us. That is the message of Srebrenica. That is Nura’s and Nedzad’s message. It happened then, it happened there and it happened to them. It must never happen again, but to ensure that we remember, we must talk and we must witness. That is what we do this afternoon: remember and bear witness to every single one of those people on the 21st anniversary of their death—on the 21st anniversary of genocide in Europe.

17:42  

I thank Mike Russell for securing the debate and for his powerful contribution this evening. I alert members to my entry in the register of interests and the fact that I sit on Remembering Srebrenica’s Scottish board, although I admit that I have been a rather sporadic attender of late.

As so often seems to be the case, this past week has been a tumultuous one for Scottish and UK politics. It would be easy, given the circumstances, for those of us in this chamber to focus our energies inwards, to get caught up in the political bubble that surrounds us. This debate is a counterweight to that. It is a stark, timely and necessary reminder that our responsibilities go far beyond the here and now.

In less than a fortnight’s time, the UK will mark Srebrenica memorial week, the 21st anniversary of modern Europe’s darkest hour.

In July 1995, General Ratko Mladic and the Serbian forces under his command stormed the town of Srebrenica and embarked on a systematic campaign of mass murder. UN peacekeepers, monitoring what had been declared a safe zone, proved unable to live up to their name. Evil was allowed to flourish on a continent that had previously sworn “Never again.” In all, 8,000 men and boys lost their lives. Women were subjected to the most horrific sexual violence. Families were wiped out and those of us looking on from afar had to reconcile ourselves to the fact that genocide had once again touched Europe’s shores.

Twenty-one years on, those young Bosnians would have been entering adulthood—starting families, building careers—with all the hope, fear and excitement that that particular journey brings. Consequently, Remembering Srebrenica has chosen the phrase “Coming of age” to mark this year’s commemorations. It is a tribute to the thousands murdered in cold blood before they had the opportunity to make their mark on the world.

That senseless loss and terrible waste of potential stalks Bosnia to this day and it is right that members from across the chamber have travelled to Bosnia to see at first hand the work that is being done to piece society there back together. I strongly encourage new members to make the trip should the opportunity arise. I know how moving Mike Russell, Jenny Marra, Jim Wallace and others found their journey to Srebrenica, just as I did.

Since my visit last February, I have been continually struck by the strong links that bind our two nations, which were forged in Bosnia’s hour of need. Scots manned aid trucks that brought relief to Sarajevo when it was under siege; we as a country welcomed refugees who were fleeing the conflict; and forensic scientists from Scotland went to help to connect bones to names and enabled families to say a proper goodbye.

In return, Bosnians have set up home in this country. As someone who has had the privilege of representing our largest city and now the capital, I know the important contribution that the Bosnian diaspora makes to Scotland.

In honour of those links, the First Minister spoke at the St Giles service last year that was organised by Remembering Srebrenica and led by the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This year’s commemorations will take place on Friday 15 July at Cathcart old parish church; members are free to attend and I encourage anyone who can to do so.

Before then, Scotland and Bosnia will meet in a rather different setting—we will face off in Glasgow as part of the football homeless world cup. The game will have its competitive edge, but I hope that the occasion will provide some opportunity for us to reflect on the shared ties between our two peoples.

That common spirit must shine through. What transpired in Srebrenica will always be a dark stain on our continent but, instead of ducking that truth, we must face it head on and learn from it. That means tackling prejudice where we see it, standing up to hatred and showing our young people that there is a better way.

We must never be complacent and simply presume that such atrocities have been confined to history. When I look around the world and think of Christians in the middle east or Muslims in Myanmar, it is clear that intolerance persists. We must find our voice, stand together and—in memory of the 8,000 who were lost 21 years ago—continue to fight to make the world a better place. Then and only then may the horrors of Srebrenica be put to rest.

17:47  

Like others, I thank Mike Russell for gaining time for this important debate. The subject is very hard. It is difficult to accept that we are talking about something that happened as recently as 21 years ago, which is within the lifetime of all the members who are in the chamber. It is 21 years since the Srebrenica genocide. In the life of the human race, that is hardly a heartbeat—it is just yesterday.

Many of those who died were young men and women and, tragically, they were not the only ones. As I revisit eyewitness accounts, photos and newspaper articles, I see the horror, the terror and the sorrow. I see families—people like us who sought to live.

The Balkans were a crucible of the first world war and experienced significant difficulties throughout the 20th century that culminated in what happened with the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. The push for democratic reform after the end of the Soviet Union was met with oppression and civil war burst out all over the region.

Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo cascaded into chaos as Miloševic orchestrated his campaign. The media in the area portrayed families of other ethnicities as rapists or violent killers; the media condoned and indeed encouraged violence towards them. The venom that was kindled incited hatred that caused perhaps 140,000 deaths and certainly ruined millions of lives. In another context, Margo MacDonald said, “The living shall envy the dead.” Perhaps that was how many of those who survived felt.

Srebrenica was emblematic of the ethnic hatred that Slobodan Miloševic and Ratko Mladic stirred up. In Srebrenica, they conjured terror and murder that were aimed squarely at the Bosniak Muslim population. It was a programme of ethnic cleansing.

In a witness account, one woman recounted how she left Srebrenica to find safety, only to be raped upon arrival in Tisca. Another survivor recounted the harrowing tale of the death of young boys and a 14-year-old rape victim. She said:

“They took some boys who were about ten or eleven. We never saw them again. Everyone was in a panic, trying to hide their boys. While this was going on, the girl slipped off to the side, took a scarf, tied it around her neck and hanged herself ... By the time we found her she was dead.”

The events were fuelled by a vicious campaign of xenophobia. Thousands upon thousands died, millions were displaced and the use of sexualised violence and torture was commonplace. A tragic capacity for hatred and racism lives in the human race.

We must remember all those who died, and support those who survived. There is nothing so toxic to civilization as violence and nothing so toxic to the spirit as hatred. Today, the lessons are as important as ever. When Senator Robert F Kennedy, who himself met a violent end, talked about the disease of violence in our civilization, he said:

“We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.”

I will conclude by going back 100 years and quoting a little bit of poetry by W B Yeats that was written at the time of the first world war:

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

17:51  

It is perhaps a prescient time to be having this debate on the 21st anniversary of the horrific genocide that took place in Srebrenica. We live in a very uncertain world, in which not a week seems to pass without reports of another terror attack, such as yesterday’s in Ankara, and conflicts continue to rage with human devastation in Syria and Iraq. Here at home, emotions rage too, as the economically dispossessed rail against the system and the reverberations threaten the very stability of Europe.

It is 21 years since the genocide in Bosnia. I was lucky enough to go to Bosnia last September as part of a delegation from Scotland that was led by the Very Rev Lorna Hood. I had anticipated the trip with a mixture of intrigue and dread—dread because I knew that I would be deeply affected by what I heard and saw there. Ruth Davidson had warned me of the emotional impact that it would have, and she was right.

I thank Michael Russell ffor securing this important debate and I thank him and the people in the public gallery for their companionship. As you know, Presiding Officer, and as President Michael Higgins told us earlier today, when bearing witness it is very important to be in the company of supportive and morally empathetic people.

I had not anticipated the incredible enjoyment that I would get from the trip. Bosnia is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It is a fragile place, but perhaps more beautiful for its fragility.

Michael Higgins said to us this afternoon that we often seem to walk by conflict. During the trip to Sarajevo, I found myself wondering what I was doing that summer, when 8,000 men were slaughtered by the Serb army in the hills of Srebrenica. I was preparing to start university that summer. I was 17 years old, working in a shop in Dundee. I had finished school and had a place at one of this country’s finest universities. I had all the opportunities in the world, while young men my age were marched in columns through the hills of Srebrenica, executed and had their bodies scattered in many locations.

This morning, as I thought about this debate, I cast my mind back to what I took away from that trip. My key conclusion—and one that we have discussed in this Parliament—was that the future economic prosperity of Bosnia, that still-fragile country, rested on the future of the European Union. We had had lunch with the British ambassador, who had left me under no illusion about EU candidate status being Bosnia’s greatest hope of swiftly building a future for the country’s economy, in which 60 per cent of people are currently unemployed. I then turned my mind to the Brexit vote less than a week ago, when I think that people were attracted to voting leave because they continued to feel dispossessed, economically insecure, isolated and helpless and were prepared to take the risk.

In the Parliament today, President Michael Higgins reminded members of the moral responsibility on us all to prevent instability, war and atrocity, and to foster peace and cultural understanding in our communities. It was a salient and indeed prescient message, which does not seem overly straightforward in times of turmoil.

President Higgins took us back to the first principles of public service and politics, as does this debate. We must promote peace, stability and prosperity, and we must do all that we can to prevent the anger and sense of dispossession and grievance that can lead to tension, conflict and, ultimately, war and genocide. Mike Russell was right to remind us today that atrocities can happen anywhere.

In that spirit, I commend the board of Remembering Srebrenica for its work and I rededicate myself to supporting the charity’s work. There is nothing more important than promoting peace, bearing witness and doing everything in our power to prevent the horror of Srebrenica from ever happening again.

17:56  

I have never been to Srebrenica. In the winter of 1995, I was in Bosnia on an aid convoy with the Scottish charity Edinburgh Direct Aid, which was led by the inspirational Denis Rutovitz. I was in Mostar, Sarajevo, Tuzla and the recently besieged eastern Bosnian town of Goražde, which, had the Dayton agreement not been enforced in the weeks following the massacre at Srebrenica, would no doubt have suffered the same fate as its neighbour.

Memories of my two days in Goražde are etched in my mind. I remember the 4ft-deep trench that provided some protection from snipers for children as they moved between the town centre and their school. I remember walking through the town and my eyes adjusting to the complete darkness of the night sky in the absence of street or house lighting. I marvelled at the ingenious solution to the problem of generating electricity for essential use, by the local hospital for example: dozens of washing machine motors were strung across the River Drina and turned into mini-generators that were driven by the river’s flow, connected to the shore by makeshift cables. I saw how close the recently vacated Serb sniper positions were—a few hundred meters from the town centre, perched on the hills above.

I have been back to Bosnia in more recent times. In my previous career, one of the most fulfilling projects in which I was involved was the building of a factory in the north of the country to provide employment opportunities for people whose recent experiences were unimaginable to us. To this day, Bosnia bears the scars of war. Houses that were selected and destroyed on the basis of their owners’ ethnicity still stand in ruins. Bullet holes mark the walls of municipal buildings.

The Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995 was one of the most shameful periods of European history. It saw the worst massacre since the Holocaust and the deaths of 200,000 people, the vast majority of them Muslim. Prior to the war, Sarajevo was a bustling, modern European city. It hosted the 1984 winter Olympics—the Torvill and Dean Olympics. It was a melting pot, with mixed marriages between those of different faiths and no faith. There was the rich diversity of a centuries-old, white indigenous Muslim community in the heart of Europe—people who were ethnically and visually no different from their Christian neighbours. That co-existence was anathema to the purveyors of hate who perpetrated the war. That is a timeless lesson for us all.

The massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica was one of the most high-profile atrocities of the war. It led to the eventual realisation among western powers that the policy of appeasing the ethnic cleansers would not succeed. The Dayton agreement, enforced by NATO troops, came shortly thereafter.

However, let us not forget the siege of Sarajevo, which was longer than the siege of Leningrad, with its 10,000 deaths, mostly by sniper fire as civilians went about their daily lives. Nor should we forget the ethnic cleansing in countless towns and villages.

We must also not forget the shameful behaviour of the UK Government at the time, which focused on international powerplays rather than on the unfolding humanitarian crisis and resisted calls to allow even defensive materials to be provided to the Bosnian forces. Significant numbers of deaths of Bosnian soldiers defending their communities were due to head injuries caused by the simple lack of helmets. That was a tacit green light to the forces of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadžic as they prepared to overrun the eastern enclaves, the so-called safe areas, which were supposedly under the protection of the UN and the great powers but were, in reality, a death trap for their inhabitants.

Europe has come a long way from the nightmare that engulfed the continent some 70 years ago. When I was younger, we believed that lessons had been learned. The events of the Bosnian war proved that belief wrong. We must never forget the ease with which modern, civilised societies can descend into the worst of atrocities. We must always understand and guard against the ethnic hatred that ends so easily in nightmares like Srebrenica.

18:00  

I congratulate Mike Russell on giving the Parliament an opportunity to commemorate these appalling atrocities. Whether in four minutes, four days or four weeks, it is impossible to do justice to the magnitude of the suffering caused by the massacre to generations of Bosniaks. It is worth remembering that Bosniak men, women and children were not only murdered but starved to death, denied water and medical supplies, raped, viciously harmed, ignored and dehumanised.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia estimates that between 25,000 and 30,000 women and children were forcibly removed from Srebrenica. Buses that were meant to remove them from the UN base in Potocari to Muslim territory never reached their destination.

Perhaps the most shocking fact about the massacre is that, as other speakers pointed out, it was able to be carried out in 1995 in Europe. It was a televised war, and UN protection force—UNPROFOR—troops were in Srebrenica when the atrocities took place. The world was watching. How could it have happened? As then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in 2005 at the 10 year commemoration of the atrocities:

“we made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality and non-violence which, however admirable, was unsuited to the conflict in Bosnia. That is why, as I also wrote, ‘the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever.’”

Make no mistake: what happened in July 1995 was a decision of the Bosnian Serb Administration and army to eradicate Muslim Bosniaks from eastern Bosnia. The magnitude of what happened was shaped by a variety of ill-considered decisions on the side of those who were supposed to protect the Bosniak people.

Bosnian Serb forces had regularly cut off food, water and medical supplies since 1992 but, after Srebrenica was declared a safe area by the UN Security Council in 1993, the threat of its being overrun by surrounding Bosnian Serb forces was deemed averted and the world’s attention shifted to Sarajevo. The town was demilitarised, and UNPROFOR soldiers were put in place to protect the enclave. However, after criticism from UN Security Council members, the original request of 37,000 troops for six safe areas across Bosnia was downscaled to 7,600.

There was more to what unfolded than simply a series of unfortunate assessments, as there are strong indications that significant loss of Bosniak lives in Srebrenica may have been accepted beforehand, although nobody knew or wanted to know what would actually transpire. Western Governments and the UN were aware of directive 7, issued by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic three months before the massacre, which ordered

“combat operations”

to

“create an unbearable situation of total insecurity, with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica or Žepa.”

Over the years, it has emerged that, during discussions between western diplomats and Bosnian Serb military leader Mladic, it was repeatedly implied that three enclaves, including Srebrenica, would be sacrificed.

Last year, The Observer reported that it had independently verified records that the UK and US Governments were aware of the impending massacre from early June, but failed to inform the Dutch Government, while Dutch UNPROFOR troops were guarding the safe area. Furthermore, reports coming from the base indicating the takeover early in July were pretty much dismissed. There were misunderstandings and administrative cock-ups in the arrangement of air strikes and, on 11 July, about 400 peacekeepers were left to defend an enclave without a humanitarian corridor that was bursting at the seams with 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniaks.

Only a year earlier, the failure of UN troops to intervene in Rwanda had contributed to the genocide of the Tutsi minority. At Srebrenica, UN soldiers again stood aside. Could they have stopped the massacre? Possibly not, yet a warning of dire consequences for the perpetrators—let alone intervention—would surely have mitigated and disrupted it. Would the Serbs really have carried out such slaughter knowing that they would have to fight a UN that could call up well-equipped NATO reinforcements?

UN inaction was nothing less than shameful; clearly, nothing had been learned from Rwanda. Bosniak men were turned away from the enclave towards a near-certain death; men and boys outside were singled out; men and boys who attempted to flee to Bosnian-controlled areas were attacked—and so unfolded the massacre that we commemorate today. The question always remained to what extent that massacre and other crimes against humanity could have been prevented, although it cannot be emphasised enough that war crimes like that happen because of those who choose to commit them.

Twenty-one years on, those who ordered that atrocity have been convicted of war crimes or are mostly dead. The survivors of the atrocity and their families continue their lives as best they can. The states that constituted the former Yugoslav republic have gone their separate ways. Nevertheless, the importance of commemorating the event, and acknowledging that we could have done things differently, can never be overstated.

18:06  

I thank Mike Russell for securing this important debate and for sharing his experience of his visit to Srebrenica. He has shown clearly the impact that such visits can have.

As Mr Stevenson observed, for most of us in this chamber, Srebrenica remains fresh in the memory—the darkest moment of a war on this continent that, as others have observed, we watched unfold on our television screens. For our children and young people, 21 years is a generation ago and a part of history that they may know little about.

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys had their lives taken from them in the cruellest ways imaginable, but the genocide at Srebrenica did not just take their lives. It shattered the lives of thousands more people: their families, friends and whole communities.

The genocide was described by the United Nations as the worst crime in Europe since the second world war. The horror of Srebrenica is not just that so many people were brutally killed in the prime of their lives, but that it happened when they were under international protection. As Mike Russell said, that is a tragedy that could and should have been prevented. It represents a failure of the international community. It is fair to say that it shames us all.

I pay tribute to the work of Remembering Srebrenica, which works tirelessly to keep the memory of Srebrenica alive in the UK, and to its Scottish board under the leadership of the Very Rev Dr Lorna Hood. Whether it is the development of education packs for teachers, the holding of commemorative events or visits to learn at first hand about the genocide, Remembering Srebrenica ensures that the horror of the genocide is not forgotten.

The Scottish Government is proud to support the work of Remembering Srebrenica. Indeed, I had the immense privilege of launching Remembering Srebrenica’s Scottish education pack in Edinburgh at Portobello high school last November. The lesson pack is a vital tool in helping our children and young people to understand and learn from the genocide at Srebrenica.

Today we take a moment to remember the Scots who went to the aid of Bosnia, during and since the war. Edinburgh Direct Aid delivered more than 2,000 tonnes of aid during the war. Christine Witcutt, an Edinburgh Direct Aid volunteer, was killed by sniper fire in 1993; her name lives on in the Christine Witcutt Centre in Sarajevo, which provides much-needed day care for disabled children. Following the war, Adam Boys was instrumental in setting up the International Commission on Missing Persons, which used DNA identification technology to reunite thousands of families with the remains of their loved ones.

It is as important as it has ever been that we, and our children and young people, understand the consequences of hatred. Srebrenica showed us what can happen when politicians encourage the growth of hatred and division. We, as politicians, have to understand that our rhetoric has consequences. Recent events, including some quite close to home, have shown us the terrible consequences of stirring up suspicion and mistrust. They have shown us—if we were in any doubt—that if people are fed poison and bile, sometimes they will respond, and in the most terrible ways. We cannot just say, “Well, it was only words, and I didn’t mean it like that”. We should all take seriously the idea that our words can lead to actions, and we must be conscious of that.

At times, I have been horrified to see the demonisation of people who have simply exercised their rights—rights that, for now, we all share—to travel and work in another country. We have also seen the demonisation of people who are fleeing war and terror, who want only a place of safety where they can live in peace.

If we think back to just a generation ago, the people who were making that journey in search of refuge were escaping the war in Bosnia. Some of them found a home in Scotland, where they are now well-established and valued members of our communities. We are now welcoming refugees from Syria, over 800 of whom have so far joined our communities under the Syrian resettlement programme.

If I am permitted to do so, I will talk about what might be called a formative experience of my own. In 1992, as a very young student, I went with an aid lorry to the Croatian town of Osijek, which was then full of refugees from the horrors of Vukovar. The town was being subjected to aerial attack almost daily; it is not an experience I will readily forget.

We must learn the lessons of the past, which sadly are still being repeated today. They show us why we must not just pay lip service to equality, but why we must live by the principles of equality and tolerance, and why we must strive to eliminate prejudice, discrimination and hate crime, wherever we see it.

On 11 July, the genocide at Srebrenica will be remembered in commemorations around the world, but the lessons it teaches us are with us every day. As other members have said, they were pointed to very directly in the speech from Uachtarán na hÉireann, Michael D Higgins. We must remember the lessons that he taught us today and we must remember those who lost their lives, those who never got the chance to come of age, and those whose lives can never be the same again. We say, “Never again” and now, more than ever, we must pledge to ensure that we mean what we say.

It is unusual for me to be in the chair at a members’ business debate so I commend all the speakers in this extremely interesting debate on a highly sensitive and tragic subject.

Meeting closed at 18:12.