The House of Human Rights wonders why the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Carl Bildt, was invited to give an opening speech at the conference "Further EU enlargement in South-Eastern Europe - the way forward" organized by the Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO).
We must publicly ask the question whether Bildt is really the right person to speak about a peaceful future and the integration of countries within the EU, considering everything he has done in the recent past and how he has participated in the history of our region?
During the war in the former Yugoslavia, Carl Bildt was a special envoy for the European Union and the UN, but he did little or nothing to stop the killing. Instead, he supported Slobodan Milošević and persistently called him a "good guy." He did not consider the killings of civilians in Srebrenica to be a war crime. In his memoirs, he referred to the victims of Srebrenica as "prisoners of war." Carl Bildt, a former co-chair of the Peace Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, has testified repeatedly before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia about his actions during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he deeply believes he did nothing to protect the victims of the Srebrenica genocide.
More recently, from 2000 to 2006, Bildt was a member of the Board of Directors of Lundin Petroleum (formerly Lundin Oil), and is currently under investigation for crimes under international law by the International Public Prosecutor's Office.
In the report "Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights" (2003), Human Rights Watch writes about Lundin Petroleum's deliberate turning a blind eye to the devastation in Block 5A in southern Sudan, when 200,000 people were forcibly displaced and 10,000 people killed in order to 'cleanse' the area so that Lundin Petroleum and other oil companies would have open access to exploit the area. Atrocities included murders, rapes, child abductions, torture, destruction of schools, markets, clinics, burning of food, huts and animal shelters. ECOS (European Coalition for Petroleum in Sudan) describes in its report "Unpaid Debt: The Legacy of Lundin, Petronas and OMV in Sudan, 1997-2003" (2010) how the start of oil exploitation in Block 5A in southern Sudan triggered a spiral of violence in which the Sudanese government and forces loyal to it launched an operation to secure and take control of the oil fields. The war in the area had previously lasted for years, but the start of oil exports from Sudan made oil the main target and cause of the war. In its report, ECOS calls on Sweden, Austria and Malaysia to investigate whether Lundin Petroleum (then Lundin Oil), in consortium with Petronas and OMV, violated international law between 1997 and 2003. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was on the Board of Directors of Lundin Petroleum at the time.
Similar atrocities were committed in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, where Lunden Petroleum's oil fields were protected by the Ethiopian military. When Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson went to the Ogaden in 2011 to investigate and learn details about the oil company's connection to the war in the region, they were arrested, charged with terrorism, and sentenced to prison. The journalists spent 14 months in prison before being released. Carl Bildt was condemned by the Swedish public for not doing enough (or anything) to help them get free.
And as if that weren't enough, we can't help but mention that Carl Bildt is also known for being a well-paid lobbyist for the Bush administration. He actively advocated and lobbied for military intervention in Iraq in 2003.
Instead of talking about peace, Carl Bildt should publicly name all the war crimes he witnessed, then take full responsibility for failing to prevent them, and speak clearly about his own involvement and role in the war and destruction in our region and two countries on the African continent.
