Serbs TRY IN VAIN to shrug off the ghost of Srebrenica

Saying that the world should never again witness a genocide like the one that befell the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995 seems like a simple thing to say. However, the stark differences among UN Security Council members on Wednesday on how to describe the Srebrenica massacre indicated that the opposite is true. 

Russia, a permanent member of the council, vetoed the British-drafted resolution, after calling it a “destructive document” that would not help the reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The defeated resolution would have termed the mass killing in Srebrenica – about 8,000 male Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered when ethnic Serb troops took the town in 1995 – “the crime of genocide” and would have called for such slaughter to never happen again. 

Even before being put to the vote, the bill had prompted an angry reaction from Serbs of all stripes, who say such a resolution demonises them.

“Our position is clear. No one denies that a crime happened in Srebrenica, but not genocide as Sarajevo persistently insists,” Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik told the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti in May. But that position is at odds with the opinions of most of the world, as witnessed by Monday’s memorial ceremony in London for the Srebrenica dead.”

The ... anniversary is a moment to remember the many thousands who lost their lives, their families and the missing, and the fact that for so many, including the Mothers of Srebrenica, the agony continues every day,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said during the Westminster Abbey ceremony. 

If anything, the UN resolution showed how deep the divides remain decades after the 1992-95 Bosnian war that saw the former republic of Yugoslavia descend into war, with Orthodox Serbs fighting Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats. 

More than 100,000 were killed and millions displaced, with Srebrenica standing out as the worst of the many atrocities.

The mass killing of able-bodied Bosniaks and the expulsion of ther est of the Muslim population from Srebrenica – their enclave in the mostly Serb eastern Bosnia – was declared a genocide by the International Court of Justice in 2007. The act was carried out by Bosnian Serbs, according to the ruling. 

The court also found that Serbia did not do enough to prevent it. Belgrade and Bosnian Serbs have blasted the British resolution before the UN as inflammatory and divisive. 

Officials have been questioning the magnitude of the crime, with Dodik outright denying that genocide occurred. 

“We have official information that there were fewer victims,” he said. For Serbia, it is not just a historical issue. 

Amid problematic relations with its breakaway province of Kosovo and questions about its relationship with its Orthodox-faith patron Russia, Srebrenica is another pitfall along its path towards eventual membership in the European Union. With that in mind, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic should distance himself from Dodik and his policies, Bodo Webber of the Washington-based Democratization Policy Council told the daily Danas ahead of the anniversary.

Vucic told Serbian state TV RTS on Monday that if the UN Security Council passed the resolution, it would have meant that Serbia and the Srpska Republic, the Serb half of Bosnia, would truly standalone, abandoned even by its traditional superpower ally Russia.

 “If that document clears the Security Council, without Russia vetoing it, the Srpska Republic will know that it only has Serbia and our country will know that in difficult times it can rely only upon itself,” Vucic said. 

Vucic only decided late Tuesday he would attend commemoration ceremonies. 

His ally, President Tomislav Nikolic, says he will not make the trip because he says Serb victims in the area should also be honoured. 

Mothers of Srebrenica, an organisation of Bosniak women dedicated to the men – sons, brothers and husbands – slaughtered at Srebrenica still says the Serb leaders are welcome at Saturday’s ceremonies, but not unconditionally. 

“If they want to come, so be it, if not, it’s their conscience,” member Kada Hotic told DPA in Sarajevo. “They don’t have to come if it’s under pressure, because the West expects them to. In that case, they should better not come.” Hotic, whose son, two brothers and husband were among those killed by the Serbs, said that she wants sincerity. 

“I want a honest answer, even if they say ‘I hate you,’ instead of feigning remorse to get a ticket for EU membership,” she said.” But they all did learn from this. They all know that they shouldn’t have,” she added. “Nobody is proud of this – the Serbs lost a lot, too, they lost their human pride and dignity and have to fight this stigma of a villain.”

Despite the gamesmanship around the genocide of Srebrenica, Hotic said that she is sure that all who were involved now regret it. “But they refuse to say it openly.”