 The final item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 7 in the name of Michael Russell, on commemorating the 21st anniversary of Shrevanit's genocide. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Would those members leave the chamber quietly? Would those members who wish to speak in the debate please press the request to speak buttons as soon as possible? I call on Michael Russell to open the debate. Mr Russell, seven minutes please. I welcome to the chamber and the gallery members of the Sebrinica UK charity, and indeed one or two of the people who were in Sebrinica last year with myself and Jenny Marra, and the then solicitor general Leslie Thompson. On that occasion last year, on a sunny September afternoon, the group of us sat at the very beautiful Sebrinica Potokari cemetery in Bosnia-Herzegovina, among 6,377 graves, and listened at times in tears to Nora Begavic and Nesded Advic to talk about genocide. Not genocide in the abstract but genocide in the personal, genocide that has changed their lives forever. Nora is one of the mothers of Sebrinica. They have been one of the driving forces that has led to this type of remembrance today. The mothers of sons, the wives of husbands, the sisters of brothers whose bodies broken into parts, scattered at first across the entire countryside of Serbia and Bosnia now lie in Potokari. Presiding Officer, I do not have time today to go into the precise story of what happened in Sebrinica or in the Bosnian war. Suffice it to say that on our continent, in the lifetime of everyone in this chamber, not only was genocide committed, but we, the world, failed to stop it. It was not our only failure. We failed to intervene to lift the longest siege of modern times in the beautiful European city of Sarajevo, where thousands died, hundreds of thousands suffered starvation and privation, unimaginable to us here. We failed to halt the ambitions of a murderous dictator who had planned such an event for years. But Sebrinica, we failed collectively to protect a civilian population, which had come to us, to the international community, in order to try and save its life. Twenty-one years ago next month, at Potokari, a few kilometres outside the village of Sebrinica, the Dutch UN force that was meant to be safeguarding the safe haven allowed itself to be overrun. The so-doing created the opportunity for the Serbian army to eliminate almost the entire male population of the area, to ethnically cleanse the village. That is the action, or inaction, for which the mothers wished to see legal culpability established. They were voices that would not be silenced. Eventually they took the United Nations and then the Dutch Government to court for their breach of their duty of care to the population they were meant to be protecting. They also encouraged the international community to embark on a series of trials at the Hague, which led to a number of convictions for genocide and for mass murder. Genocide and mass murder on our continent, very much within our lifetimes, done by those the victims regarded as friends and neighbours, done to those amongst whom the killers had lived. Ned Zedd was just a boy at the time. He was a son and a brother. The story he told us in the sunshine that afternoon was almost too horrific to hear. On the day, he was taken to a school and kept in an upstairs classroom with his father and his uncles, whilst they heard the sounds of others being abused and murdered. Later, he was taken from his family and driven in the back of a truck to a place where he dug a grave. Then he was shot and left to die under a pile of bodies. Badly wounded as he was by a total accident, he was found by another victim, himself also wounded. In a perilous state, they managed to survive, not over days but over weeks, as they made their way through hostile countryside to safety. There were the only two who did so, out of the several hundred who were herded into the schoolrooms and amongst the very, very few, out of the over 8,000 who disappeared. When the international community began to realise what had happened, the Serbian Army took steps to cover their tracks. Mass graves were reopened, bodies broken up and taken to be reburied elsewhere. The task of finding, identifying and laying to rest those bodies has taken two decades. It is still going on because a total number of victims is more than 8,000, meaning that there are more than 1,000 gravestones still to be erected. The astonishing work of the international commission for missing persons has resulted in an extraordinarily high number of positive identifications, while taking forward an amazing range of new techniques for identification and DNA matching that are being used elsewhere. It has given closure to so many families and to so many mothers. It has ensured that justice can be done in terms of bearing witness to the massacre that took place. This debate today is about bearing witness, as is the work of Serbian UK and the involvement in that work of a wide range of individuals from across faith groups, from Civic Scotland, from this Parliament and other parliaments. It is mirrored by work in the other parts of the UK under the same charitable umbrella. Its focus is not just on the past, vital as that is, but also on helping Bosnia Herzegovina to move into the future. Bearing witness means three things. It means going to see and being prepared to look and listen no matter how hard the experience is. It means being willing to talk about those things in one's everyday seating in this place and to share the experience of the visit as we are doing here today. It means resolving to campaign for and to work for a world in which, by the awareness of past genocide, we are able to prevent such future tragedies. In the world in which we live, in the surroundings in which we work, it is sometimes possible to believe that such things cannot happen, but they can. As Primo Levi, a Jew who saw at first hand the horror of the Holocaust, has observed, if it happened then, it can happen now. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. If it happened to them, it can happen to us. That is the message of Serbian Ychew. That is Noura Nezdedd's message. It happened then, it happened there and it happened to them. It must never happen again, but to ensure that we must remember, we must talk, we must witness. That is what we do this afternoon. We must remember and witness to every single one of those people on the 21st anniversary of their death, on the 21st anniversary of genocide in Europe. I thank you very much, Mr Russell. I call Ruth Davidson to follow by Student Stevenson. Ms Davidson, five minutes are there abouts, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to thank Mike Russell for securing this debate and for his powerful contribution this evening. I alert members to my register of interests and the fact that I sit on the remembering Shrebenitza at Scottish Board, although I must admit that I have been a rather sporadic attender of late. As so often seems to be the case, this last week has been a tumultuous one for Scottish and UK politics, and it would be easy given the circumstances for those of us in this chamber to focus our energies inwards to get caught up in the political bubble that surrounds us. This debate is a counterweight to that. It is a stark, timely and necessary reminder that our responsibilities go far beyond the here and now. In less than a fortnight's time, the UK will mark Shrebenitza memorial week, the 21st anniversary of modern Europe's darkest hour. In July 1995, General Raddko Mladic and the Serbian Forces under his command stormed the town of Shrebenitza and embarked on a systematic campaign of mass murder. UN peacekeepers monitoring what had been declared a safe zone proved unable to live up to their name. Evil was allowed to flourish on a continent that had previously sworn never again. In all, 8,000 men and boys lost their lives, women were subjected to the most horrific sexual violence, families were wiped out and those of us looking on from afar had to reconcile ourselves to the fact that genocide had once again touched Europe's shores. 21 years on, and those young Bosnians would have been entering adulthood, starting families, building careers, with all the hope, fear and excitement that that particular journey brings. That is why, remembering Shrebenitza, I have chosen the phrase, coming of age, to mark this year's commemorations. It is a tribute to the thousands that were murdered in cold blood before they had the opportunity to make their mark on the world. This senseless loss and this terrible waste of potential stocks Bosnia to this day—and it is right that members from across this Parliament have travelled to Bosnia to see at first hand the work to peace that society back together again. Should the opportunity arise, I would strongly encourage new members to make this trip. Just like me, I know how moving Mike Russell, Jenny Marra, Jim Wallace and others found their journey to Shrebenitza. Since my own visit last February, I have been continually struck by the strong links that bind our two nations forward in Bosnia's hour of need and the Scots that manned the aid trucks that brought relief to Sarajevo when it was under siege. The fact that we, as a country, welcomed in refugees who were fleeing that particular conflict and the forensic scientists who came from Scotland and helped to connect bones to names enabling families to say a proper goodbye. In return, Bosnians have set up home in this country and as someone who has had the privilege of representing both our largest city and now the capital, I know the important contribution that Bosnian diaspora makes to Scotland. In honour of those links, last year the First Minister spoke at St Giles service, organised by Remembring Shrebenitza and led by the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This year's commemorations take place on Friday 15 July at Keith Cart Old Parish Church, and members are free to attend. I would encourage anyone who is able to do so. Before that, Scotland and Bosnia will meet in a rather different setting. We will face off in Glasgow as part of the city's and the world's football homeless world cup. While the game will have its competitive edge, I hope that the occasion will provide some opportunity for us to reflect on the shared ties between our two people. It is this common spirit that must shine through. What transpired in Shrebenitza will always be a dark stain on our continent, but instead of ducking this truth, we must face it head on and we must learn from it. That means tackling prejudice where we see it. It means standing up to hatred. It means showing our young people that there is a better way. We must never be complacent and simply presume that such atrocities have been confined to history. Indeed, when I look around the world today, and I think of Christians in the Middle East or Muslims in Myanmar, it is clear that intolerance persists. We must find our voice. We must stand together, and in the memory of those 8,000 who were lost 21 years ago, we must continue to fight to make the world a better place. Then and only then, may the horrors of Shrebenitza be put to rest. I call Stuart Stevenson to be followed by Jenny Marrow. I thank Mike Russell for getting time for this important debate. It is, of course, a very hard subject. It is difficult to accept that we are talking about something as recent as 21 years ago, in the lifetimes of everyone who is here 21 years since the Shrebenitza genocide. Of course, in the life of the human race, that is hardly a heartbeat. It is just yesterday. Many of those who died were young men and young women, perhaps, but tragically not only them. As I revisit eyewitness accounts, photos, newspaper articles, I see the horror, the terror, the sorrow, I see families, I see people simply like us who sought to live. The Balkans, of course, was a crucible of the First World War. Throughout the 20th century, there were significant difficulties culminating in what happened with the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. The push for democratic reform after the end of the Soviet Union was met with oppression. Civil war burst out all over the region. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo cascaded into chaos as Milosevic orchestrated his campaign. The media in the area portrayed families of other ethnicities as rapists or as violent killers. The media condoned, indeed, encouraged violence towards them. The Venom, the kind old incited hatred that caused, perhaps, 140,000 deaths, but it certainly ruined millions of lives. Margot MacDonald, in another context, said that the living shall envy the dead, and perhaps that was how many of those who survived may have felt. Srebrenica was emblematic of the ethnic hatred that was stirred up by Slobod Dan Milosevic and Radgo Mali Dic. In Srebrenica, they conjured terror and murder, aimed squarely at the Bosniac Muslim population programme of ethnic cleansing. Witness accounts—one woman recounted how she left Srebrenica to find safety, only to be raped on arrival in Tisga. A survivor recounted the harrowing tale of the death of young boys and a 14-year-old rape victim. She said that she took some boys who were about 10 or 11—we never saw them again. Everyone was in panic trying to hide their boys. While that was going on, the girls slipped off to the side, took a scarf, tied it round her neck and hanged herself. By the time we got to her, she was dead, all fuelled by a vicious campaign of xenophobia. Thousands and thousands died and millions were displaced, and the use of sexualised violence and torture was commonplace. That is a tragic capacity that lives in the human race for hatred and racism. We must remember all those who died but support all those who survived. There is nothing so toxic in civilisation as violence, nothing so toxic to the spirit and civilisation as hatred. Today, those lessons are as important as they ever were. Senator Robert F Kennedy, himself meeting a violent end, said on the disease of violence and our civilisation, that we must recognise that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let the spirit finish any longer in our land. Let me briefly go back 100 years to WB Yeats and quote a little bit of poetry to conclude. Written at the time of the First War, the blood dim tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Is perhaps a prescient time to be having this debate on the horrific genocide that took place in Srebrenica on its 21st anniversary? We live in a very uncertain world, a world where not a week seems to pass now without reports of another terror attack like yesterday's in Ankara, and conflicts continue to rage with human devastation in Syria and Iraq, while here at home emotions rage too as they economically dispossess rail against the system and we find reverberations threatening the very stability of Europe. It is 21 years now since the genocide in Bosnia, and I was lucky enough to go to Bosnia last September on a delegation from Scotland led by the very Reverend Lorna Hood. I had anticipated the trip with a mixture of intrigue and dread, dread because I knew that I would be deeply affected by what I heard and saw there. Ruth Davidson had warned me of the emotional impact that I would find that it would have, and she was right. I thank Mike Russell for securing this important debate tonight and also for his companionship and those of the people in the gallery on that trip. It is very important, Presiding Officer, as you know, when bearing witness to being in the company of supportive and morally empathetic people, as President Michael Higgins told us earlier today. What I hadn't anticipated was the incredible enjoyment that I would get from the trip also, because Bosnia is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It is a fragile place, but perhaps more beautiful for its fragility. Michael Higgins said to us this afternoon that we often seem to walk by conflict. I found myself, during the trip to Sarajevo, asking myself what I was doing that summer, as 8,000 men were slaughtered by the Serb army in the hills of Srebrenica. I was preparing to start university that summer. I was working in a shop in Dundee, a 17-year-old Finnish school, and I had a place at one of this country's finest universities. I had all the opportunities in the world. While young men, my own age, were marched through the hills of Srebrenica in columns, executed, and their bodies scattered in many different locations. As I thought about this debate this morning, I cast my mind back to what I took away from that trip. My key conclusion and one of those that we have been discussing in this Parliament since was that the economy and the future and prosperity of Bosnia, which is still a fragile country, rested on the future of the European Union. The British ambassador and the lunch that we had with him had left me under no illusion that candidate status for the EU would be Bosnia's greatest and swiftest hope of building a future of an economy where 60 per cent of people are currently unemployed. I turned my mind to the Brexit vote less than a week ago, where I believe that people were attracted to vote leave because they continue to feel dispossessed, economically insecure, isolated and helpless and are prepared to take that risk. President Michael Higgins reminded us today in this Parliament of the moral responsibility on all of us to prevent war, atrocity and instability and to foster cultural understanding and peace in our communities, a salient and prescient message and one that does not seem overly straightforward in times of turmoil. He took us back to the first principles of public service and politics today. I think that this debate takes us back to first principles of public service too, promoting peace, stability and prosperity and doing all that we can to prevent anger, dispossession and grievance that can lead to tension, conflict and ultimately war and genocide. Mike Russell was very right today to remind us that these atrocities can happen anywhere. In that vein, Presiding Officer, can I commend the board of remembering Srebrenica for the work that they do and rededicate myself today to supporting their work, as there is nothing more important than promoting peace, bearing witness and doing everything in our power to prevent the horror of Srebrenica ever happening again? Thank you. I've McKee to be followed by Kenneth Gibson as the last speaker in the open debate. Thank you Presiding Officer. I've never been to Srebrenica in the winter of 1995, I was in Bosnia on an aid convoy with the Scottish Charity, Edinburgh Direct, led by the inspirational Dennis Rottovitz. I was in Mostar in Sarajevo in Tuzla and in the recently besieged eastern Bosnia town of Garajda, which had the date agreement not been enforced in the weeks following the massacre of Srebrenica, I would no doubt have fallen the same fate as its neighbour. Memories of my two days in Garajda are etched in my mind. I remember the four foot high trends providing some protection first from snipers for children moving between the town centre and the school building. My eyes adjusting to walking through the town in the complete darkness of the night sky a result of the lack of street or house lighting. I marveled at the ingenious solution to generating electricity for essential uses, like the local hospital, where dozens of washing machine motors strung out across the river. I turned into many generators, driven by the river's flow and connected by makeshift cables back to the shore. I saw the closeness of the recently vacated Serb sniper positions a few hundred metres from the town centre perched on the hills above. I've been back to Bosnia in more recent times. In my previous career, one of the most fulfilling projects I was involved in was building a factory in the north of the country, providing employment opportunities for those whose recent experiences were unimaginable to ourselves. Bosnia to this day bears the scars of war. Houses selected were destroyed based on the ethnicity of their owners still standing ruins. Bullet holes marked the walls of municipal buildings. The Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995 was one of the most shameful periods of European history. The worst massacre since the Holocaust resulted in 200,000 deaths to the vast majority of the Muslim. Sarajevo, prior to the war, was a bustling modern European city, the site of the 1984 Torrelandine Winter Olympics, a melting pot of mixed marriages between those of different faiths and of none. The rich diversity of a century's old white indigenous Muslim community in the heart of Europe, ethnically and visually no different from their Christian neighbours. That coexistence was anathema to the purveyors of hate who perpetuated the war, a timeless lesson for us all. The massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica was one of the most high profile atrocities of the war, the one that led to the eventual realisation among the western powers that the policy of appeasing the ethnic clansor would not succeed. The dating agreement enforced by NATO troops followed shortly thereafter, but let us not forget the siege of Sarajevo longer than the siege of Leningrad, with its 10,000 deaths, mostly by sniper fire as civilians went about their daily lives. Or the ethnic clansor in countless towns and villages. The shameful behaviour of the UK Government at the time focused on an international power place, rather than on the unfolding humanitarian crisis. Resisting calls to allow even defensive materials to be provided to the Bosnian forces, significant numbers of deaths and injuries to the Bosnian soldiers defending their communities were due to head injuries caused by the simple lack of helmets. Signalling tacit green lights to the forces of Rackham Ladwych and Arwan Caradgeach, as they were prepared to overrun the eastern enclaves, the so-called safe areas, supposedly under the protection of the UN and the Great Powers, in reality a death trap for their inhabitants. Beside, Europe has come a long way from the nightmare that engulfed the continent some 70 years ago. When I was younger, we believed that lessons had been learned. The events of the Bosnian War proved that belief wrong. We must never forget the ease with which modern civilised societies can descend into the worst of atrocities. We must always understand and guard against the ethnic hatred that ends so easily in nightmares such as Srebrenica. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, congratulate Mike Russell for giving Parliament an opportunity to commemorate those appalling atrocities. Whether in four minutes, four days or four weeks, it is impossible to do justice to the magnitude of the suffering caused by the massacre to generations of Bosniaks. It is worth remembering that Bosniak men, women and children were not only murdered, they were starved to death, denied water and medical supplies, raped viciously, harmed, ignored and dehumanised. The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia estimates that between 25,000 and 30,000 women and children were forcibly removed from Srebrenica. Buses meant to remove them from the UN base in Potocari to Muslim territory and never reached their destination. Perhaps the most shocking fact about the massacre, as other speakers have pointed out, was that it was able to be carried out in 1995 in Europe. It was a televised war and UN pro-war forces were in Srebrenica when these atrocities took place. The world was watching. So how could it happen? As then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in 2005 at the 10-year commemoration of the atrocities, I quote, we made serious errors of judgment rooted in a philosophy of impartiality and non-violence, which, however admirable, was unsuited to the conflict in Bosnia. That is why the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever. Make no mistake, what happened in July 1995 was a decision of the Bosnian Serb Administration and Army to eradicate Muslim Bosniacs from eastern Bosnia. The magnitude of what happened was shaped by a variety of well-considered decisions on the side of those who were supposed to protect the Bosniac people. Bosnian Serb forces had regularly cut off food, water and medical supply since 1992, but after Srebrenica was declared a safe area by the UN Security Council in 1993, the threat of being overrun by surroundings by Bosnian Serb forces was deemed averted and the world's attention shifted to Sarajevo. The town was demilitarised and UN pro-war soldiers were put in place to protect the enclave. However, after criticism from UN Security Council members, the original request of 37,000 troops for six safe areas across Bosnia was downscaled to 7,600. There was more to what unfolded than simply a series of unfortunate assessments, as there are strong indications that a significant loss of Bosniac lives in Srebrenica may have been accepted beforehand, although nobody knew or wanted to know what would transpire. Western Governments and the UN were aware of directive 7 issued by Bosnian Serb leader Radavan Karadzec three months before the massacre, which ordered, I quote, combat operations to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity of life with no hope of survival or life for inhabitants of Srebrenica and Zipa. Over the years it has emerged that during discussions between Western diplomats and Bosnian Serb military leader Mladic, it was repeatedly implied that three enclaves, including Srebrenica, would be sacrificed. Last year, the observer reported that it had independently verified records that the UK and US Governments were aware of the impending massacre from early June, but failed to inform the Dutch Government while Dutch UN trough for troops were guarding the safe area. Fuller more, reports coming from the base indicated the takeover early in July, but were pretty much dismissed. There were misunderstandings and administrative cock-ups in the arrangement of airstrikes, and on 11 July about 400 peacekeepers were left to defend an enclave without a humanitarian corridor that was bursting at the seams of 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniacs. Only a year earlier, the failure of UN troops to intervene in Rwanda contributed to the genocide of the Tutsa minority and its Srebrenica UN soldiers against to the side. Could they have stopped the massacre? Possibly not, yet a warning of dire consequences for the perpetrators, let alone intervention, would surely have mitigated and disrupted it. Would the Serbs really have carried out such slaughter knowing that they would have to fight a UN that could call up well-equipped NATO reinforcements? UN in action was nothing less than shameful, clearly nothing had been learned from Rwanda. Bosniac men were turned away from the enclave towards a near-certain death, men and boys outside were singled out, men and boys attempting to flee to Bosnian controlled areas were attacked and so unfolded the massacre would commemorate today. The question always remains to what extent this massacre and other crimes against humanity could have been prevented although cannot be emphasised enough that war crimes like this happened because of those who chose to commit them. 21 years on, those who ordered this atrocity have been convicted of war crimes or are mostly dead. The survivors and their families of the atrocity continue their lives as best they can. The states that constituted the former Yugoslav Republic have gone their separate ways. Nevertheless, the importance of commemorating this event and acknowledging that we could have done things differently can never be overstated. I thank Mike Russell for securing this important debate and for sharing his experience of his visit to Srebrenica. He has clearly shown the impact that such visits can have. As Mr Stevenson observed, for most of us in this chamber, Srebrenica remains fresh in the memory, the darkest moment of a war on this continent that, as others have observed, we watched unfold on our television screens. For children and for young people, 21 years is a generation ago and part of history that they may know little about. Over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys had their lives taken from them in the cruelest ways imaginable. However, the genocide at Srebrenica did not just take their lives, it shattered their lives of thousands more people, their families, friends and whole communities. That was a genocide that was described by the United Nations as the worst crime in Europe since the Second World War. The horror of Srebrenica is not just that so many people were brutally killed in the prime of their lives, but that it happened when they were under international protection. As Mike Russell has said, this is a tragedy that could and should have been prevented. It represents a failure of the international community, which I think it is fair to say shames us all. I pay tribute to the work of Remembrance Srebrenica, which works tirelessly to keep the memory of Srebrenica alive in the UK and to the Scottish board under the leadership of the very Reverend Dr Lornaud. Whether it is the development of education packs for teachers, the holding of commemorative events or visits to learn firsthand about the genocide, Remembrance Srebrenica is ensuring that the horror of this genocide is not forgotten. The Scottish Government is proud to support the work of Remembrance Srebrenica. Indeed, I had the immense privilege of launching Remembrance Srebrenica's Scottish education pack here in Edinburgh at Portobello High School last November. This lesson pack is a vital tool in helping our children and young people to understand and learn from the genocide at Srebrenica. So today we should take a moment to remember the Scots who went to the aid of Bosnia both during and since the war. Edinburgh direct aid delivered over 2,000 tonnes of aid during the war. Christine Whitcott, an Edinburgh direct aid volunteer, was killed by sniper fire in 1993. Her name lives on in the Christine Whitcott Centre in Sarajevo, which provides much needed daycare for disabled children. Following the war, Adam Boyce was instrumental in setting up the International Commission on Missing Persons, which, as others have mentioned today, used DNA identification technology to reunite thousands of families with the remains of their loved ones. It is as important as it has ever been that we and our children and young people understand the consequences of hatred. Srebrenica showed us what can happen when politicians encourage the growth of hatred and division. We, as politicians, have to understand that our rhetoric has consequences. Recent events, including some quite close to home, have shown us the terrible consequences of stirring up suspicion and mistrust. They have shown us, if we were in any doubt, that if you feed people poison and bile, sometimes they will respond and in the most terrible ways. We cannot just say, while it was only words and I did not mean it like that, we all of us should take seriously that our words can lead to actions and we must be conscious of that. I have to say that I have been horrified at times to see the demonisation of people who have simply exercised their rights, rights that for now we all share to travel, to work in another country. We have also seen the demonisation of people fleeing war and terror who only want a place of safety where they can live in peace. However, if we think back just a generation ago and the people making that journey in search of refuge were those escaping the war in Bosnia, some of them found a home in Scotland where they are now well established and valued members of our communities. We are now welcoming refugees from Syria, over 800 of whom have so far joined our communities under the Syrian resettlement programme. If I may be permitted to do this, I also think back to what might be called the formative experience of my own. In 1992, as a very young student, I went with an aid lorry to the Croatian town of Osiec, which was then full of refugees from the horrors of Vukovar. The town was being subjected to aerial attack almost daily. It is not an experience, I will readily forget. I believe that we must learn the lessons of the past, which sadly are still being repeated today. They show us why we must not just pay lip service to equality but why we must live by the principles of equality and tolerance and why we must strive to eliminate prejudice, discrimination and hate crime wherever we see it. On the 11th of July, the genocide at Srebrenica will be remembered in commemorations around the world, but the lessons that teach us are with us every day. Of course, there are lessons that others have pointed out. We were pointed to very directly in the speech to us today from Ohtaran Laharing, Michael D Higgins. We must remember the lessons that he taught us today and we must remember those whose lives were lost, those who never got the chance to come of age and those whose lives can never be the same again. We say never again and now more than ever, we must pledge to ensure that we mean what we say. Thank you very much. It is unusual for me to be in a chair or to members' debate. I commend all the speakers in this debate, which I found extremely interesting and a highly sensitive and tragic subject, and I commend you all for that. I now close this meeting.