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International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, 11 July 2024

Today marks the first International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, one of the most heinous instances of ethnic cleansing to take place during the Balkan wars that followed the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Former UN Secretary Kofi Annan described it as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War.


International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, 11 July 2024
International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, 11 July 2024

In July 1995, after the Bosnian Serb Army of the Republika Srpska under the Command of General Ratko Mladić overran a UN ‘safe area’, at least 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were systematically separated and killed in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The area had been declared a ‘safe area’ under UN protection resulting from UN Security Council Resolution 819, passed on 16 April 1993. The resolution ordered all parties to the conflict to “treat Srebrenica and its surroundings as a safe area, which should be free from any armed attack or...hostile act”.

By March 1995, the area was protected by a force consisting of a few hundred lightly armed Dutch soldiers (Dutchbat), while all surrounding territory was controlled by Serb forces. Bosniaks in Srebrenica complained of attacks by Serb soldiers, while Serb forces complained that Bosniak forces were using the ‘safe area’, to launch a counter-offensive, which UN forces were failing to prevent.

On the 9 July Radovan Karadžić, president of the Republika Srpska issued an order authorising the capture of Srebrenica. Serb forces quickly overran the town and, in the process, some Dutchbat members were forced to surrender, while other retreated into the enclave. By 11 July, Serb Generals Ratko Mladić and Radoslav Krstić entered the deserted streets of Srebrenica, and the capture was complete.

What followed over the next days was the systematic genocide of Bosniak Muslim men and boys at a series of different execution sites and mass graves, in addition to other atrocities perpetrated against Bosniak civilians, for which Mladić and Krstić, along with Radovan Karadzic, would later find themselves standing trial before The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague after the war.

In the case of Prosecutor v. Krstić (2004), the appeals Chambers of the ICTY ruled that the massacre constituted genocide. The same designation was made in 2007 by the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest tribunal.

The resolution to commemorate the massacre on 11 July was adopted by the UN General Assembly, and sponsored by Rwanda and Germany. The text was modelled on a previous resolution that designated 7 April as the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

In introducing the draft resolution, Antje Leendertse, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Germany, stated that it ‘honours the victims’ of the massacre and ‘supports the survivors’, while it also: 

“underscores the role of international courts in fighting impunity and ensuring accountability for genocide, and contains language against genocide denial and glorification of perpetrators”.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk said in a statement:

The resolution is all the more important given the persistent revisionism, denial of the Srebrenica genocide and hate speech by high-level political leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in neighbouring countries”.

He also reminded leaders in the region of their responsibility to engage in constructive dialogue to build peaceful societies “where people can live safely and freely, without discrimination or fear of conflict and violence”.

The resolution included a reiteration of the General Assembly’s  “unwavering commitment to maintaining stability and fostering unity in diversity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

In concluding his statement on the first International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, High Commissioner Turk said:

 “I firmly stand against the denial of the genocide perpetrated in July 1995 in Srebrenica and of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed across Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 conflict, and other attempts to rewrite the  history of these events painstakingly documented through the judicial process”.

 

11 July 2024

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