Fight needs to be put up against anti-Muslim sentiment: President Erdoğan

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emphasized that European Muslims were facing a systematic discrimination, and a fight needs to be put up against anti-Muslim sentiment today.

“European Muslims are systematically discriminated and their rights and freedoms are taken away,” Erdoğan said in a video message sent to the Leaders (Digital) Summit titled “Genocide: Lessons Learned from Srebrenica” on Nov. 1 marking the 25th anniversary of the beginning of talks for Dayton Peace Agreement.

“We see that the countries that teach the world about human rights and democracy take the lead in Islamophobia and xenophobia,” Erdoğan said.

“Racist terrorism spreads like the plague in many western countries, sometimes protected at the presidential level. The weight of attacks and assaults targeting Muslim places of worship, workplaces, masjids, and non-governmental institutional buildings has increased to worrying levels,” the president also said.

“It is high time to say ‘stop’ to this malign state of affairs and course of actions that threaten the future of humanity and the culture of coexistence of different faiths and cultures,” he said.

He noted that at a time of increasing economic distress and rising social tensions due to the coronavirus pandemic, significant tasks and duties fall upon all people and all heads of states who uphold democracy, freedoms, peace and justice.

“The genocide, which occurred 25 years ago in Srebrenica, the heart of Europe, has been engraved as a black stain on the history of humanity. Despite the passing of a quarter-century, the pain caused by our 8,372 Bosnian brothers and sisters, brutally murdered, continues to wound our hearts,” Erdoğan said.

The president said that sadly the demands for justice made by those who lost their loved ones during the genocide were not fulfilled completely, and most of the perpetrators did not receive the punishment they deserved.

“Those who handed over our brothers and sisters taking shelter under the protection of the United Nations to their murderers have not given an account of their responsibilities. Even worse, humanity, especially the European politicians and media outlets, did not take the necessary lessons from the Srebrenica genocide,” he stated.

“The massacres we witnessed in many parts of the world from Syria to Yemen and Arakan to New Zealand, are the most painful examples of this. The international organizations that have watched the Srebrenica genocide have just remained bystanders in the face of these atrocities in recent years,” he noted.

One should be bravely vocal about the wrongs and misdeeds that are seen to prevent a recurrence of the genocide in Srebrenica, and one should look for solutions together, he said.