Remembering Srebrenica: When the world failed to stop a genocide

On the 25th anniversary of the massacre, a thousand bodies remain missing, writes Kim Sengupta

In 2013, Serbia’s president officially apologised for Srebrenica but refused to call it genocide (AFP/Getty)

The cemetery at Potocari is a place of peace now, apple blossoms float in the breeze among the rows of pale white gravestones. There are a few bereaved families with the memories of those they lost. Funerals are still taking place; last year one was held for the remains found of 33 men. Eight more will be buried on Saturday, on the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.

The deaths in July 1995 were in a bloody conflict of the type which it was thought Europe would not experience again after the Second World War: one of sectarian killings, mass rapes, deportations and concentration camps.

But even by those standards, what happened in the town in Drina Valley has become a dark symbol of murderous ethnic cleansing. In 2004 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that the killings of 8,000 Bosnians constituted genocide, a crime under international law.

The discovery of bodies, or more often parts of them, in the years since then is a reminder of the slaughter that took place. Around a thousand bodies are still to be found. The youngest victim buried last year was 16-year-old Osman Cvrk, and the oldest Saha Cvrk, aged 82.

Srebrenica is also a reminder of the international community’s failure to carry out its duty to protect. The tens of thousands of Bosnians who had sought refuge there were meant to be in a designated “safe area” of the United Nations. But the United Nations Protection Force troops present failed to prevent the town’s capture by Serbian forces or the executions and abuse that followed.

Serbian forces occupied the town, separated the males, ranging in ages from teenagers to elderly men, and killed them in batches over a number of days. The overwhelming majority were shot. A few, according to a French policeman attached to the UN force, were burned alive. Girls and women were raped and, say witnesses, babies had their throats slit.

“We know who killed my uncle, and they know it, what some Serbs say will not change that, they cannot erase history,” 29-year-old Ibrahim Medhmedovic told The Independent. “It is a sadness that our family has to carry, the death of an innocent man. There are other families who don’t even know what has happened to their fathers, brothers, and sons. If there are Serbs who know what happened to them, it would be a kindness to give the information.”

Medhmedovic, who now lives in Canada, continued: “We do not blame the Serbian people for what happened, we blame the soldiers and politicians who did it at the time. What happened should be remembered so such things do not happen again.”

The international tribunal has subsequently tried the Serbian leaders – Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic – for the massacre in The Hague. Sixty defendants were convicted in cases there, as well as courts in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, and sentenced to a total of 700 years in prison.

Mladic was found guilty of “genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and inhumane forcible transfer in the area around Srebrenica”. He has appealed against the verdict. Karadzic was convicted of genocide. Milosevic, who died during his trial, was indicted on charges of “genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and violations of the laws of war”.

It had been the Dutch battalion of the UN force which had failed to act in Srebrenica – something which had become a matter of soul searching in a country which prides itself on its liberal values and tradition of helping people in distress such as taking in refugees from conflict zones.

In 2002 the then Dutch government resigned after a damning report into the role of the country’s soldiers in Srebrenica. Last year the country’s supreme court upheld a ruling that the Netherlands had partial responsibility for the massacre, and concluded that families of 350 men who had been forced to leave the Dutch base and were shot by the Serbs may claim compensation.

The Dutch had been among the international representatives at the commemorations of the massacre. Around 100,000 people were expected to attend this year’s funeral, with more than 10,000 taking part in a peace march. But the arrangements have had to be drastically altered because of the coronavirus pandemic and a recent rise in infections in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Munir Habibovic, the president of the 2020 Peace March subcommittee, spoke of the difficulties of organising the event: “What has happened has definitely interfered with our plans because we did not what kind of regulations will be in place. We will do the best we can with peoples’ safety in mind.”

Hamdija Fejzic, the president of the 25th commemoration organising committee, said: “We will try to respect all the official restrictions on gatherings, but it will be difficult. We shall appeal for as few people as possible to attend the funeral. We shall try to use the space available to keep a distance between the participants. People can also watch the proceedings that will be live on TV.”

Accusations and recriminations about the killings have continued over the years. The UN forces were blamed for failing to disarm the Bosnian army that had been carrying out attacks on Serbs before the massacre.

In April 2013, Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic officially apologised for the massacre, but he refused to call it genocide. In July 2015, Russia, at the request of Republika Srpska and Serbia, vetoed a UN resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre as genocide. Serbia called the resolution “anti-Serb”. Both the European Parliament and the US Congress subsequently adopted resolutions reaffirming the description of the killings as genocide.

Last year the National Archives in Kew released hitherto classified documents on British communications during the war. Some of the UK intelligence assessments held that the Serbian headquarters did not have any initial plans to overrun Srebrenica, and only did so after repeated attacks on Serbian supply lines by Bosnian forces.

Since then there have been many atrocities around the world and another devastating war in Europe, in Ukraine. And while there is mourning for Srebrenica, there are those who celebrate the massacre. Anders Breivik, the right-wing extremist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011 had high praise for the “honourable crusader” Karadzic in his “manifesto”. Brenton Tarrant, while driving to the mosques he would attack in Christchurch, killing 51 people, played a Serbian marching song in homage to Karadzic.

On the 15th anniversary of the massacre in 2010, Barack Obama said: “We have a sacred duty to remember the cruelty that occurred here, and to prevent such atrocities from happening again. We have an obligation to victims and to their surviving family members. And we have a responsibility to future generations all over the globe to agree that we must refuse to be bystanders to evil; whenever and wherever it occurs, we must be prepared to stand up for human dignity.”