Today Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, visited Croatia to make an opening speech at the conference ”Further EU Enlargement in South Eastern Europe – the road ahead,” hosted by the Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO). We must ask publicly whether Bildt is really the best person to talk about the peaceful future and the EU integration of countries with recent history of war? Have we forgotten about his views on the history of the region, and how he behaved in the past?

During the war in the former Yugoslavia, Carl Bildt served as a Special Envoy from both the EU and the UN, but did little or nothing to stop the killings he witnessed. Have we forgotten how he watched Milošević's back and repeatedly stated that he was “a nice guy”? He did not acknowledge the killings of civilians in Srebrenica, but called them in his memoirs “the prisoners of war.” Carl Bildt repeatedly took a stand as a witness at the ICTY in the cases connected to war actions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has not, in our opinion, done enough to protect the victims of genocide in Srebrenica.

More recently, from 2000 to 2006, Bildt was on the board of the Lundin Petroleum (former Lundin Oil) and is currently being investigated by the international public prosecution office for crimes performed under international legislation.

In the report “Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights” (2003),the Human Rights Watch elaborated the Lundin Petroleum's wilful blindness to the devastation in the Block 5A, southern Sudan, where 200 000 people were forcibly displaced and 10 000 murdered in order to 'clear' the area and give the Lundin Petroleum and other oil companies clean access to the land. Atrocities included killings, rape, child abduction, torture, destruction of schools, markets and clinics, as well as burning of huts and animal shelters. ECOS (European Coalition on Oil in Sudan) states in their report “UNPAID DEBT: The Legacy of Lundin, Petronas and OMV in Sudan, 1997-2003” (2010) that the beginning of oil exploration in the Block 5A in Southern Sudan set off a spiral of violence as the Sudanese government and its loyal forces set out to secure and take control of the oil fields. War had been going on for years in the area, but oil exploitation and export remainedthe main objective and principal cause of the majority of war crimes. In its report, ECOS is urging Sweden, Austria and Malaysia to investigate whether the Lundin Petroleum (then Lundin Oil), in consortium with the Petronasand OMV, were brakingthe international law between 1997 and 2003. The Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt was on the Board of Directors of the Lundin Petroleum at that time.

Atrocities similar to those in Southern Sudan have also been committed in the Ogaden province in Ethiopia, where Lundin Petroleum had been looking for oil and receiving protection from the Ethiopian military. When Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson went to Ogaden in 2011 and tried to find out more about the oil companies’ relation to the war in the region, they were arrested, accused for terrorism and sentenced to prison. The journalists spent 14 months in Ethiopian prison before being released, and Carl Bildt was accused for not doing enough to help out.

And as if this wasn't enough, Bildtis also known for being a well-paid lobbyist for the Bush administrationand for pushing for the war on Iraq in 2003.

Before daring to speak to others about peace, Carl Bildt should acknowledge all thewar crimes he witnessed in the past and take responsibility for his own involvement in war activities and devastation.

For the Human Rights House:

Sanja Sarnavka

President of the Board

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