Pirc Musar calls for absolute respect for ICC arrest warrants
Oswiecim, 27 January - President Nataša Pirc Musar attended a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on Monday, noting on the sidelines that numerous Slovenians suffered and died there. She called for respecting the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrants against those accused of war crimes.
Oswiecim, Poland
The Slovenian delegation at a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
From left to right: Janez Žmavc, a representative of the abducted children, President Nataša Pirc Musar, Mira Lipičar, a former camp inmate, and Culture Minister Asta Vrečko.
Photo: Matjaž Klemenc/President's Office
Oswiecim, Poland
Ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Photo: Matjaž Klemenc/President's Office
Oswiecim, Poland
Ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Photo: Matjaž Klemenc/President's Office
More than 1.1 million Jews died in Auschwitz, and some 2,300 Slovenians, including Jews and Roma, were taken there and half of them never returned home, the president told Slovenian reporters in Oswiecim.
During the Second World War, 58,522 Slovenians were held in concentration camps and more than 100 of their branches. More than 12,360 Slovenians died in gas chambers, crematoria or mass graves, she noted.
Pirc Musar stressed that even today, in Gaza and elsewhere, atrocities are being committed. She stressed that all states parties to the Rome Statute must respect the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court as the global successor to the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War.
"There can and must be no special circumstances, no exceptions to the arrest of this or that person accused of war crimes," Pirc Musar stressed. Relativising or disregarding the ICC arrest warrants for the prosecution of those accused of war crimes is nothing but disrespect for their victims, she said. Therefore, such attempts, whatever their intention, are totally unacceptable, the president believes.
She also stressed that Slovenia remains firm in its commitment to the ICC to arrest on the country's territory all those wanted by the court. Slovenia also remains firm in its belief that the Never Again! pledge is timeless and universal, she added.
The Polish government has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that despite the arrest warrant issued against him by the ICC he would not be arrested if he attends the ceremony.
The Slovenian delegation at the ceremony includes Janez Žmavc, a representative of the abducted children, and Mira Lipičar, a former camp inmate.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the ceremony, Žmavc said that young people have to make sure that the kind of horrors that have recently been happening in Gaza and Ukraine will not happen again. "No more war," said Lipičar.