KAREN PEIRCE ONCE AGAIN SEIZED THE OPPORTUNITY TO LECTURE OTHERS AND PASS JUDGMENT WHERE SHE HAS NO RIGHT TO DO SO

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 8 /SRNA/ - President Milorad Dodik said that the right to remembrance is not a crime, nor is the right to a funeral a threat, but that no one can take away the right to resist colonial moralizing, not even UK Special Envoy for the Western Balkans Karen Peirce, who once again passes judgments that are not hers to make.

Dodik stressed that Peirce had once again used the opportunity to lecture others and pass judgments that, by any standard, she has no right to make, adding that the idea that an entire people and free individuals could be prohibited or restricted from exercising their right to attend a funeral borders on monstrous. “In what she, driven by a desire to once again play the colonial game of hatred, calls offensive epithets, every reasonable person saw a simple fact: the Serbian people freely gathered at the funeral, expressed their emotions for the deceased, and did so without a single word or gesture that went beyond the bounds of respect and basic human decency,” Dodik wrote on X. He noted that Peirce had for years boasted about the Bonn Powers and a colonial approach in the heart of Europe, and that she was the last person who should lecture others about principles, international law, or morality. He added that officials from the current US administration had told her that they would never boast about the Bonn Powers, either privately or publicly. “Enough with Britain lecturing us. Especially when we remember that the latest British involvement was aimed at preserving and strengthening Christian Schmidt, while the ultimate goal was to turn BiH into a dumping ground for migrants whom it wants to expel from its own territory,” Dodik wrote. Dodik said it was even sadder and almost cynical when Karen Peirce mentioned the Second World War in her condemnation of Serbia. “There is no record of anyone from the United Kingdom — a country that was in the EU together with Croatia — ever condemning the 2008 funeral of Dinko Šakić in a Ustasha uniform. Silence then, moralizing now. That is not a principle. It is selective political instrumentalization,” Dodik pointed out. According to him, the Serbian people, like any other people, have the right to genuine emotions towards a period that, for them, was a struggle for survival and a struggle to prevent the past from repeating itself — a past against which Peirce did not see fit to warn others when they were burying war criminals in Ustasha uniforms. “While Karen Peirce lectures others, people in the Balkans will continue to die, bury their dead, and remember. The right to remembrance is not a crime. The right to a funeral is not a threat. And the right to resist colonial moralizing is a right that no one, not even Karen Peirce, can take away,” Dodik said.