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APPEAL FOR PEACE IN EX-YUGOSLAVIA

The third year of war in ex-Yugoslavia is raging before our eyes, becoming more and more accustomed to such a sight: more than 200,000 victims, 2,000,000 deportees or exiles, towns and villages gone to ruin, buildings and bridges, hospitals and schools destroyed by gun shots, monuments of culture and faith profaned, all kinds of violence and tortures, mass rapes and humiliation, concentration camps and ethnic cleaning, the cruel murder of cities and memories, innumerable lives of common people crippled and torn forever. Human suffering cannot be summed up. Could things get further and worse? Such a question ought to be asked both to the aggressors and those "Gentlemen" who did almost nothing to stop this war raging in the heart of Bosnia and Croatia, on the border of the Mediterranean Sea, in the very heart of Europe itself.
What can be said about such a tragedy, and the inadequacy of UN to world changes? And what about NATO, still captive of the Cold War scenario, the European Union that is unable to get enough state power to guide Europe and remains just the union that many illuminate personages had foreseen at the end of the Second World War, the tormented Russia that tried in vain to undertake the role once belonging to the Soviet Union, languishing on the contrary in a huge political and cultural crisis, the UMPROFOR entrusted with the paradoxical and absurd role of "keeping peace" where there's no war? Still, what about all these slightly concealed games, the Great Powers and their interests, the broken "ceasefires", the constantly infringed agreements, derided pacts and ridiculed negotiators, overridden and derided international resolutions, the humanitarian convoys become object of murderous anger?
This Calvary starts and ends with Sarajevo, more than 1,000 days clenched in a fratricidal war that beats the sad record of the siege of Leningrad, and passes through Vukovar, Srebrenica, Gorazde, Mostar, Bihac. Is it not enough, gentlemen?
The multicultural and multinational reality of Bosnia-Herzegovina is being mortally hurt, along with our faith in a world where cultural and national pluralism ought to be possible and granted. Brutality and barbarism are fed by indifference and idleness. Funeral tolls have been resounding for more than three years, but the conscience of those who are entrusted to decide and play on our behalf has not been touched.
Europe is washing its hands of Bosnia's fate and its governments deny their responsibilities and go on blaming each other. Maastricht has morally capitulated before Sarajevo. Our values and principles are being mocked and our dignity was never as low as it is now. In such a humiliation we, Mediterranean intellectuals, can just cry out our wrath, even though lost in a desert as it often happened in the past.
In our ancient Naples, with its tradition of tolerance, its huge cultural and philosophical inheritance, in its port we throw once again our bottle in the sea, with our appeal to the remains of human conscience.
We address these words to call upon our friends in the Mediterranean area, Europe and the whole World to join and support us.

Naples, December 10th , 1994

The first subscribers
Pedrag Matvejevic', Antonio Bassolino, Claudio Azzolini, Claudio Magris, Vincenzo Consolo, Erri De luca, Raffaele La Capria, Gerardo Marorra, Luigi Malerba, Igor Man, Bruno Caruso, Vittorio Nisticò, Khaled Fouad Allam, Michele Capasso, Silvio Ferrari, Fulvio Tomizza, Walter Pedullà, Mario Agrimi.

 

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