25 years ago Serb forces captured the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, and carried out Europe's worst worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.. Around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed there over several days. They had been forcibly separated from the women and children. The Bosnian Muslims had found shelter in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War because it was supposed to be under UN protection. On 16 April 1993, one year into a civil war that began when Bosnia sought independence from Yugoslavia, the Security Council had passed Resolution 819 requiring all parties to treat Srebenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act.
However in July 1995, General Ratko Mladić and his Serbian paramilitary units overran and captured the town, Dutch UN peacekeeping forces were at the time accused of failing to do enough to prevent the massacre.The Muslim men and boys were told by the Dutch peacekeepers they would be safe and handed over to the Bosnian Serb army. They never returned. The Netherlands has since been found partly liable for the deaths of 300 Muslims killed in the Srebrenica massacre, The Hague appeals court upheld a decision from 2014 that ordered the Dutch state to pay compensation to the victims families. In August 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) concluded that a crime of genocide was committed in Srebrenica. Ever since, the survivors and the victims’ families have been fighting to obtain justice and recognition.
Srebrenica happened during a war with seemingly few rules of engagement, bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape. Essentially a territorial conflict, one in which people of difference looked back on times of peaceful coexistence, however fragile, and forward to ethnic separation, exclusion and to living apart.
When the attackers overran Srebrenica on July 11 and took peacekeepers hostage, about 25,000 Bosniaks fled to the UN base at Potocari on the city's outskirts. They sought refuge despite the scorching heat and catastrophic hygienic conditions. A day later, the attackers began to assault, rape and kill them. On July 12 and 13, girls, women and elderly refugees were loaded onto buses and driven to regions under Bosniak control. After murdering thousands of Srebrenica’s Muslims, Serbs dumped their bodies in numerous mass graves scattered throughout eastern Bosnia, in an attempt to hide the crime. Body parts are still being found in mass graves and are being put together and identified through DNA analysis. Almost 7,000 of those killed have been found and identified. Newly identified victims are buried each year on 11 July, the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995.
Nine newly identified victims were buried at a flower-shaped cemetery near the town, where tall white tombstones mark the graves of 6,643 other victims. "After 25 years we succeeded in finding his mortal remains, so they can be laid to their final rest," said Fikret Pezic, who buried his father Hasan.
The remains of some 1,000 victims of the massacre in the eastern town during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war are still missing.
Thousands of visitors usually attend the commemoration service and funerals but this year only a small number of survivors would be allowed at the cemetery due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dozens of world leaders, who were prevented by the coronavirus pandemic from attending the commemoration service in person, sent video messages Saturday in which they urged tolerance and reconciliation in Bosnia, a nation that remains deeply ethnically divided. They included Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince Charles.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, paid tribute to the victims on Saturday. Johnson said in a video posted on Twitter: “I want to join with you once more in mourning the victims of those terrible events, and to stand with the families in their fight for justice.
“As in so many cases from this conflict which brought violence and destruction across the western Balkans, many families still do not know what happened to their loved ones. Many perpetrators have still not been held to account.
“And there are those who would prefer to forget or deny the enormity of what took place. We must not allow that to happen. We owe it to the victims and to future generations to remember Srebrenica and to ensure it never happens again.”
Raab said in a statement: “On the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, we remember the victims and the anguish of their families. During my time in The Hague between 2003 and 2006, pursuing those responsible for this dark chapter in European history, I was reminded daily of the heinous cruelty perpetrated against the innocent. The UK is determined to end impunity and help rebuild those countries affected – as our commitment to the ICC and UK investment and support for Bosnia demonstrates.”
Johnson, however, is facing calls from 30 MPs to apologise for comments he made in the Spectator in 1997 regarding the genocide. In a letter to the PM, the cross-party group led by Labour’s Tony Lloyd wrote: “In 1997, when you were a political columnist for the Spectator, you wrote an article challenging Bianca Jagger’s support for more direct intervention against the Serbian Army in the Bosnian war.“You wrote: ‘Alright, I say, the fate of Srebrenica was appalling. But they weren’t exactly angels, these Muslims.’ As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the atrocity, it is unthinkable that you would publicly attend national memorial events, without having apologised for such comments.”
Some international speakers also addressed the continued refusal by Serb leaders in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia to acknowledge the extent of the Srebrenica slaughter and the ongoing suffering of its survivors.
Judge Carmel Agius, president of the U.N. court that is completing war crimes trials stemming from the breakup of Yugoslavia, warned in his video message that the victims of the Srebrenica massacre “continue to be tormented by those who attempt to deny their lived experiences, and, thereby, their very existence.
Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic were both convicted of and sentenced for genocide in Srebrenica by a special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In all, the tribunal and courts in the Balkans have sentenced close to 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the Srebrenica killings.
Bosnian Serbs, however, still celebrate Karadzic and Mladic as heroes. Some were even staging celebrations of “the 1995 liberation of Srebrenica” on the anniversary of the crime.
The Serbian Orthodox Church supported Mladic. Serbs celebrated the notorious paramilitary commander Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as "Arkan," as a hero. Now, a quarter of a century after the slaughter of Srebrenica, most Serbian leaders and many citizens still refuse to recognize it as a genocide; streets, schools and student dorms in Serbia are named after the convicted war criminals Mladic and Karadzic; and many of the men who were directly or indirectly involved in the 1995 massacre hold key positions in the country's political and economic sphere.
In fact, Bosnian Serb political leaders have consistently prevented the country from adopting a law that would ban genocide denial, with the Serb member of Bosnia’s presidency, Milorad Dodik, even publicly describing the Srebrenica slaughter as a “fabricated myth.”
Humanity has lived through the darkest of times, but few events have stained our collective history more than the Srebrenica genocide.Today we remember the victims, survivors and those still fighting for justice.The lesson from Srebrenica is that no society is invulnerable to prejudice and intolerance. We must all remain vigilant against these forces, and take positive action to build stronger, more resilient communities. We must continue to learn lessons from this tragic event, never forget and recognise the dangers of what can manifest when racism, prejudice, religious-hatred and discrimination go unchallenged and ethnic divisions are exploited by political leaders. We must reaffirm our commitment against all forms of hatred and prejudice which targets people because of their religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or beliefs
Here is a link to the official site of rememberance.:-
http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/
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