Stockholm - Shortly before Tuesday's Nobel award ceremony,
Turkey and Croatia criticized the Nobel literature award to Austrian
author Peter Handke.
Croatia said it would not attend, while Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan described the winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in
Literature as "racist."
The Foreign Ministry of Croatia tweeted it will not attend the
ceremony for Handke, "a person supportive of Slobodan Milosevic's
Greater Serbian policy during the 1990s."
Earlier, diplomats representing Albania, Kosovo and Turkey said they
would boycott the Stockholm ceremony.
The Nobel Foundation, which manages the assets of Swedish
industrialist Alfred Nobel who endowed the literature prize and other
Nobel awards, had no comment on the stayaways.
Croatia had to fight Belgrade's forces for independence between 1991
and 1995, as well as ethnic Serb rebels who were backed by Milosevic.
As in Bosnia, the conflict had been marred by atrocities against the
population.
Protests against the award to Handke were planned in Stockholm later
Tuesday.
Co-organizer Teufika Sabanovic, who lost her father in the Srebrenica
massacre in Bosnia 1995, told dpa she hoped at least 500 people would
attend.
"I think it's important to do this," she said. "We must stand up."
Handke "is rewriting history, he's questioning genocide. This has
been proven," added Sabanovic, who came to Sweden in 1998.
Literature laureate Peter Handke speaks during his Nobel Lecture at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Picture: Jonas Ekstromer/TT News Agency/via Reuters
Members of the Mothers of Srebrenica, who for years have been
fighting against what they see as complacency in relation to the
Srebrenica massacre and other war crimes, were to take part in the
rally.
"Genocide has been carried out," Kadira Hotic, one of the prominent
Mothers, told a news conference in Stockholm late Monday. "No eraser
can erase the truth."
Hotic lost a son, husband and two brothers, along with other
relatives in Srebrencia.
The Serbs, commanded by the armed forces chief Ratko Mladic,
summarily executed around 8,000 boys and men after rolling into the
Srebrenica enclave, though it was a UN-protected safe haven.
The UN International Court of Justice ruled in 2007 that the massacre
was genocide.
Mladic and the wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan
Karadzic, along with several others, were found guilty of genocide in
Srebrenica and other atrocities at the UN International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Miolsevic died in detention in 2006 while facing a war crimes trial
at the UN tribunal in The Hague. Handke spoke at his funeral.
Last week, Swedish Academy member Peter Englund, a former academy
spokesman, said he would not take part in the events for Handke,
saying it would be "hypocritical."