It was in Srebrenica genocide. Now, among the worst horrors of humanity and modern wars there is also the massacre committed in 1995 in Eastern Bosnia. When 8000 Bognacchi men and boys were murdered in cold blood by the Bosnian Serb forces led by General Mladic, with the sole aim of “giving” the city to the Serbian people. An ethnic cleansing who aimed to physically eliminate his brother-enemy, shot and buried in mass graves, many bodies have yet to be discovered. He also caused the deportation of 30 thousand women, girls and childrendelivered into the hands of executioners and rapists by the same UN troops who were supposed to protect them.
The United Nations General Assembly voted by majority in favor of the resolution: from next year, July 11th will be International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide.
With all due respect to the Serbs of Belgrade, and the Bosnian Serbs of Republika Srpska, who strongly opposed the initiative promoted by Germany, Rwanda and supported by 17 mostly Western states (including the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain). With all due respect to Hungary, Belarus, China and Russiawho voted “no”. And the latter threatens serious damage to the “peace and security” of the region after the UN vote. It is not possible to veto at the General Assembly, but the anti-Western alliances of those with Vucic’s Serbia and Dodik’s Republic appeared to be a strong and clear geopolitical message.
“We are not a genocidal nation,” thundered the Serbs from various quarters, while flags and graffiti populated Belgrade and Banja Luka, although the reference to the Serbian people as a whole as responsible for Srebrenica is not mentioned in the text. President Vucic made a three-finger gesture, in the name of pan-Serbian nationalism, after the vote. There were 19 against, 68 abstentions, including the United Arab Emirates, Milei’s Argentina and Lebanon, but the majority was in favor (84 states).
That day, July 11, 1995, Serbian general Ratko Mladić felt like God, writes Emir Suljagić in Postcard from the pit: it emptied that Bosnian town, Srebrenica, and Emir, who thought he was already dead, as soon as he came of age, instead saved himself, among 8,000 massacred. «Mladić had the absolute power to decide on anyone’s life». The general looked at Suljagić’s identity card, asked him what he was doing and then told him that he could go.
The Bosnian massacre of twenty-nine years ago, which was long considered the worst since the Second World War, was declared genocide by the International Court of Justice and the Hague Criminal Tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. About fifty people were convicted, including Mladic himself, the “executioner of Srebrenica”, who is serving a life sentence in Scheveningen prison, the Netherlands. It’s still, Radovan Karadžić, president of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time, also in prison in The Hague. The court also indicted the Serbian president Slobodan Miloŝevic, who died during the trial.
The UN vote on Srebrenica, particularly in this moment of war, after the International Court of Justice has recognized the “fumus” of genocide in Gaza by Israel, has great historical importance. It urges Member States to condemn the denial of the massacre in Bosnia and the glorification of war criminals, calling for the remaining victims to be identified and for all perpetrators still at large to be brought to justice. In Srebrenica there was genocide, and almost thirty years have passed. Many countries, starting from the USA, have supported the resolution with conviction, while in today’s scenarios the definition creates doubts and distinctions.
#Srebrenica #genocide #vote #mend #history #worst #massacre #Serbia #Russia #China #oppose