Srđa Trifković

Biography

Trifković earned a BA (Hon) in International Relations from the University of Sussex in 1977 and another, in Political Science, from the University of Zagreb in 1987. Since 1990 he has held a PhD in modern history from the University of Southampton, and in 1991-1992 he pursued post-doctoral research on a Title VIII grant from the U.S. Department of State as a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution in California.

Beginning in 1980, he has been a radio broadcaster for BBC World Service and Voice of America and later a correspondent covering southeast Europe for U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Times during which time he was an editor for the Belgrade magazine Duga. In 1994–95 he acted as an "unofficial spokesman" for the Bosnian Serb government (while preferring to describe himself as a "Balkan affairs analyst with close links to the Bosnian Serbs"). He has published op-eds and commentaries in The Times of London, the San Francisco Chronicle, the American Conservative, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Alternative Right. He has been a commentator on numerous national and international TV and radio programs, including MSNBC, CNN, CNN International, Sky News, BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service and CBC. He has contributed to Liberty, the newspaper of the Serbian National Defense Council of America.

He has been an adjunct professor at the University of St Thomas in Houston, Texas (1996–1997), and, in August 1997, joined the faculty of Rose Hill College in Aiken, South Carolina. He has worked as a political consultant to Aleksandar Karađorđević, Crown Prince of Serbia, and to Former Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica, as an adviser to Biljana Plavšić and as unofficial representative of the Republika Srpska in London.

In February 2000, he testified to the Canadian House of Commons on the situation in the Balkans. In July 2000 he took part in a Congressional briefing organized by Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

In January 2003, Stephen Schwartz published an article in Frontpage magazine that falsely accused Trifković of supporting Slobodan Milošević. The magazine published an apology. In March 2003, he testified as a defense witness for Milomir Stakić at his trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Stakić was later convicted of extermination, murder and persecutions (but acquitted of genocide) and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment.

In June 2006, he was one of two dozen people who presented works at a symposium on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945, co-organized by two Serbian institutions and held at Yad Vashem Center in Jerusalem. In September 2008, he testified as a defense witness for Ljubiša Beara in the Popović et al. trial. Beara was later convicted of genocide, extermination, murder, persecutions and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In August 2011, responding to the claim that his work inspired Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik, Trifković rejected the idea that his work was a basis for the actions of this "mentally deranged narcissistic psychopath" any more than the "Beatles have inspired Charles Manson."

In 2013 he testified on behalf of Radovan Karadžić. Trifković denied being a former spokesman for Karadžić at a time he was a journalist and analyst reporting on Karadžić's activities.

He is also professor in Faculty of Political Science of University of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Writings on Islam

Trifković is the author of Sword of the Prophet: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, a book about the history and tenets of Islam which identifies the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as the greatest danger to Western values since the end of the Cold War. According to James Bissett, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia and a close associate of Trifković, Trifković sees the source of this threat in the absence of separation of church and state under Islam - because Islam is a way of life, Muslims are required to subordinate themselves to the teachings of Allah and live as members of the total Islamic community, calling into question their ability to give their political loyalty to a non-Muslim state. Trifković considers this to be a particularly important issue for the countries of Western Europe, with a population of over 50 million Muslims, and the United States (approx. 3.3 million).

Refusal of admission to Canada

In February 2011, Canadian authorities refused to allow Srđa Trifković to enter Canada to address a meeting at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver.

Trifković reported in the journal Chronicles that he was refused entry to Canada on 24 February 2011 on the "transparently spurious" grounds that he was "inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior official in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the minister, engages or has engaged in terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or genocide, a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6 (3) to (5) of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act."

He claimed his "inadmissibility" was due to contacts with the Bosnian Serb leaders in the early 1990s but claimed that the Canadian authorities' grounds for refusing him admission were "transparently spurious" and they had in fact yielded to a Bosniak-inspired campaign against him. The Canadian Institute for the Research of Genocide alleged that Trifković was promoting hatred, antisemitism and Islamophobia and accused him of publicly denying what New American termed the "alleged" massacre of Bosniaks at Srebrenica in July 1995, found by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to be a crime of genocide.

Works

Filmography