Bosnia commemorates 26th anniversary of Srebrenica genocide

 

 

 

26 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 independenc 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. 

The Srebrenica killings were the bloody crescendo of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, which came after the break-up of Yugoslavia unleashed nationalistic passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country's two other main ethnic factions Croats and Bosniaks .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. Because the bodies of the victims were originally dumped into mass graves, most of which were then moved in an effort to hide the atrocity, families were not able to bury the remains of their loved ones until they were found years later Body parts are still being found in mass graves and are being put together and identified through DNA analysis. Newly identified victims are buried each year on 11 July, the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995.

The remains of 19 such victims, including two teenagers, were laid to rest during  a ceremony today , held at a memorial  in Potocari in the eastern part of the country.

They joined the remains of 6,671 Srebrenica victims that have been buried at the cemetery so far, while another 236 people have been laid to rest elsewhere.

"I will bury only the scull of my brother but even it is not whole," Azir Osmanovic told reporters.

His brother Azmir was 16 years old in July 1995 when he tried to flee Srebrenica with a group of other teenagers as the Serbs captured the town, but entered a mine field, Osmanovic said.

"My brother and two other boys died there."

Azmir's scull was found in 2018 and identified a few months ago.

"I decided to bury him this year to have at least a place to pray for him.

"I don't think anything else could be found after all these years," Osmanovic said.

Most of the massacre victims were shot dead in groups of hundreds at different sites in the Srebrenica region.

"It's getting more difficult to find new mass graves," the memorial centre spokeswoman Almasa Salihovic said."We are still searching for more than one thousand victims."

A UN court sentenced both Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, to life in prison, notably for Srebrenica. 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.

 The massacre was declared a genocide by international and national courts, but Serb leaders in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia continue to downplay or even deny it despite the irrefutable evidence of what happened.The Serbian Orthodox Church supported Mladic, and Serbs celebrated the notorious  paramilitary commander Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as "Arkan," as a hero, and 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,  and on the eve of this year's massacre anniversary, the Serb member of Bosnia's joint presidency Milorad Dodik repeated his view that "there was no genocide."

"There is information that coffins (with victims remains) are empty, that there are no remains in them, they just put a name," he said quoted by the Bosnian Serb television RTRS.

Head of Bosnia's institute for missing people Amor Masovic labelled Dodik's comments "horrifying."

"At the memorial centre, there are victims of whom only one bone was found and buried."

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and the bloc's enlargement commissioner Oliver Varhelyi urged Balkan political leaders to face the past.

"There is no place in Europe for genocide denial, revisionism and glorification of war criminals," they said in a joint statement Saturday.

Also on Saturday a group of runners marked the genocide with a 227-km ultra-marathon, TRT World reported. The event has been held every year for the past 10 years. Runners start in the Croatian city of Vukovar and run in five stages until arriving in Srebrenica. 

In another event, thousands of people also finished a three-day walk around the Bosnian city to mark the escape of Muslim refugees, re-enacting the escape of Muslim refugees in 1995.

The 11th July has been designated as the official day of remembrance for the victims of Srebrenica. During this week each year, communities across the country,  honour the victims and survivors of the genocide, and pledge to create a better, stronger and more cohesive society.However the Bosnian government earlier this week failed to proclaim July 11 the national mourning day since ethnic Serb ministers opposed the move. 

 Every year, Remembering Srebrenica selects a theme that reflects an aspect of the genocide that must be commemorated, but also speaks to communities here in the UK.

The theme for 2021 is ‘Rebuilding Lives’ and this aims to honour the two million people who were displaced during the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the 1990s, shedding light on their stories and showing how they have rebuilt their lives.

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.We must reaffirm our commitment to put tolerance, kindness and respect at the heart of our communities so we and future and generations can build a better future without hatred, learning the lessons of Srebrenica and other genocides and do all we can to never allow evil like this to flourish again.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 and 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.

Remembering Srebrenica is a stark reminder of how important it is to stand up to any form of hatred of discrimination, which has no place in our society and we must do all we can to tackle inequalities and support those who need it the most.

Here is a link to the official site of rememberance.:-

http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/