More than 20 years have passed. And Bosnian Muslims are still awaiting real justice for the genocide committed against them during the Balkans conflict that paved the way for the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. For what has been delivered is, at best, rough justice. Yes, we understand that Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serbian commander, has been sentenced to life for war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. And also for the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995. That it has taken more than two decades to get here deserves nothing more than a slow clap. That Mladic has only been held to account for these acts of gross barbarity in one of seven municipalities merits nothing but disdain. For while the presiding judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) described these as being among the most heinous known to humankind; there was reportedly just not enough evidence to prove genocide elsewhere. Much has been made, retrospectively, of how the Butcher of Bosnia was able to go about such, well, butchery. There, in the very heart of Europe. At a time when what we know today as the EU was busy establishing its institutions; the very same that would swiftly transform it into an impregnable fortress for those fleeing NATO bombs and bullets elsewhere. This is laughable. The idea that the EU was founded on the hopes of peace and stability for all. For the Union, in its original incarnation, was a trading bloc; initially envisioned to counter rising American hegemony. With the anticipated bonus being that a Europe bound together by close economic ties would be less prone to turn on itself in those bloody and brutal ways of the past. Thus the following notion becomes equally ludicrous. The one suggesting that western leaders, by way of their prolonged inaction in the Balkans, sent a message to the rest of the world that it is permissible to kill others in order to further a right-wing ultranationalist agenda. It is not the message that is ludicrous. It is this holding up of an, until recently, colonising Europe as the custodian of enlightened morality. Yet it serves those who rule the world to have such ‘due process’ drag on and on. For while the ICTY is scheduled to shut up shop next month — much has happened since. There has been Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Thereby underscoring that such superficial trials serve not as a deterrent to those who would commit mass murder time and again. At best, these trials are manufactured distractions. To deflect the spotlight as the bloodshed shifts to other theatres of war. And to us, that is nothing more than blind, deaf and mute justice. * Published in Daily Times, November 24th 2017.