It’s time for us to stop denying the facts – Serbia funded and armed the Bosnian Serb regime that massacred thousands of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995.
It’s been 25 years, but it’s as if not a single day has passed since the start of the Bosnian Serbs’ offensive against Srebrenica.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces – who were generously aided and abetted by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Serbia with money, manpower, arms and other resources – started the killings of innocent men, women and children that would, over a span of several weeks, result in 8370 civilian corpses.
These people were then secretly buried in mass graves, only to later be reburied in secondary graves, and after some time, reburied again, in tertiary graves. Bones, parts of bodies, clothing and victims’ belongings were repeatedly mixed up in these attempts to conceal the crime.
This is one of the reasons why the genocide in Srebrenica is still an ongoing issue. Every year, there is the excruciating process of identifying newly-found human remains and matching them to the actual people whose families still wait in limbo to bury their dead.
This year, once again, recently-identified remains are being buried at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre. The genocide will continue at least until the last remaining bone is properly put to rest.
Debates about whether this was a genocide or not are an appalling distraction which is a part of an ongoing campaign to cover up Serbia’s involvement in the killings of these people, a campaign that has been supported by most of the general public in Serbia, the current and past Serbian authorities, and the country’s media.
Meanwhile the so-called international community, which failed to protect the Bosniaks in 1995, will make its declarations and put on a sad face again today, even while it is still enabling Milosevic’s successors both in Serbia and Bosnia to continue hurting and offending the families of the dead.
What is unquestionable is that the international community will not in uncertain terms demand any kind of acceptance of responsibility or public display of remorse, or necessary changes in schools’ curricula, textbooks, or state-run media, in Serbia or Bosnia’s Serb-run entity Republika Srpska.
Instead, the hurt will continue – Serbs will continue to openly dispute proven facts, adding insult to injury for those who suffered the most and who are still suffering.
No shame, no remorse
For Bosniaks, July 11 is still an inexpressibly painful and insufferably hot summer day, as it has been for a quarter of a century.
This year, nine more victims will be buried at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre – the youngest victim identified over the past year was 23, the oldest was 70 years old.
Let us say their names: Salko Ibisevic and Hasan Pezic. And seven more: Sead Hasanovic, born in 1971, Alija Suljic, born in 1969, Hasib Hasanovic, born in 1970, Zuhdija Avdagic, born in 1947, Ibrahim Zukanovic, born in 1941, Kemal Music, born in 1968, Bajro Salihovic, born in 1943.
All were unarmed men, mercilessly killed by forces under the command of Ratko Mladic, who is currently benefitting from good Dutch medical treatment and due process before the UN court in The Hague as he appeals against his sentence for genocide and other crimes.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a supporter of Bosnian Serb forces during the genocide, doesn’t care, and nor does his government, about the pain that Srebrenica and Bosnia will go through again today by reliving it all. On the contrary – they, just as their predecessors, have been prolonging that pain by engaging in a campaign of denial.
The people of Serbia, at least the overwhelming majority of them, are with their president and government in this regard. They’re at best ignorant about what our country has done, and at worst complicit in defending the indefensible, just as they did when Slobodan Milosevic was president.
In Bosnia, the wounds are still wide open, the pain remains unspeakable for the families and all those affected by Serbia’s aggression, while Serbs’ representatives proudly stand with convicted war criminals and by doing so, effectively support what they did.
There’s no shame, no remorse, not even an acknowledgement of the Serbian state’s involvement in the genocide in Bosnia. The denial campaign continues in full force, on every level, in schools, universities, cultural establishments, tabloid media – and even some of the so-called liberal media.
But Serbia will not find peace with itself as long as it glorifies our wartime past, our war criminals, our warmongers, our proud genocide deniers – all of whom are still among the intellectual, political and media elites.
We will not find peace, until our people are educated about the involvement in Serbia’s aggression during the 1990s of our political, military and religious leaders – many of whom are the same people as in 1995, and who are still dominating the public arena with their lies and hatred.
But maybe that’s what a society which supported Milosevic in 1995, and 25 years later continues to support his political heirs and lackeys, deserves after all – to live in perpetual hate, proud of those who remain the worst of us, living in a carefully maintained illusion that Serbia wasn’t responsible for atrocities all across the former Yugoslavia.
Maybe Serbian society deserves this illusion – but the remains of the nine bodies being buried today at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre are real. They were real people whose families deserve at least a day of peace and silence, but they will not get even that because the noise coming from perpetrators, deniers and their supporters is so overwhelming.
Because of this, in Bosnia, time has stood still – it’s been 25 years since the genocide in Srebrenica, but it’s as if not a single day has passed.