By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief
BRUSSELS/SREBRENICA/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Europe marks the 30th anniversary of the “Srebrenica massacre”, its worst single atrocity since World War Two.
Roughly 1,000 victims are still missing from the mass killings by Serb forces of more than 8,000 mainly Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica- a tragedy still haunting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 3 million people.
The Srebrenica massacre happened in the Bosnian War, one of the bloodiest episodes during the breakup of Yugoslavia into independent states, an armed conflict covered by a Worthy News reporter at the time.
After several violent incidents, the war is commonly seen as having started in April 1992 when the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was internationally recognized.
Yet on July 11, 1995, Dutch soldiers who were supposed to protect Srebrenica as “a United Nations safe haven” stood aside. They watched as Bosnian-Serb General Ratko Mladić directed his troops to place women and the youngest children on buses for transport to majority-Bosniak areas.
Then, over the following days in July 1995, he oversaw the systematic murder of at least 8,372 men and boys, according to U.N. estimates. There were reportedly also some women and girls killed in the atrocity.
Mladić’s troops dumped the bodies in mass graves. But later, to cover up their crimes, they exhumed and then reburied the remains in multiple sites, making it more challenging to identify all victims.
OUTNUMBERED TROOPS
While Dutch troops were outnumbered, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that at least 350 of the slain Bosnians could have been saved but were ejected from the Dutch peacekeepers’ base.
The court found that this happened despite being “in serious jeopardy of being abused and murdered” by Bosnian Serb forces.
Earlier in 2002, seven years after the event, the Dutch government finally admitted it could have done more to prevent the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica and resigned.
However, it was seen as a symbolic gesture as it occurred just under a month before the general elections, which were already planned.
Fast forward to Friday, the president of the EU’s executive European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the massacre “cast a shadow that stretches across generations” and “stands among the darkest chapters in Europe’s collective history.”
She added, “It is our duty to remember and to preserve the truth, so that future generations know exactly what happened.” She pledged that “the European Union will never forget what happened in this town”.
Von der Leyen, who was born in post-war Germany, stressed, “We acknowledge our past and recognise our responsibility for failing to prevent and stop the genocide. We will also never allow history to be rewritten.”
ETHNIC TENSIONS
The EU leader lashed out at still simmering ethnic tensions in the Balkans, saying “we firmly reject and condemn any denial, distortion, or minimisation of the Srebrenica genocide, as well as the glorification of war criminals.”
She stressed, “Political leaders have a great responsibility in that regard, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina and across the western Balkans.”
Von der Leyen added: “I want to send a message to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina: the European Union stands with you. We remain fully committed to supporting your country on its path toward EU membership. Your political leaders should do their part so your country can find its place at the heart of our Union, where it belongs.”
Her statement came while at a ceremony on Friday, in the Srebrenica area, the partial remains of seven victims were to be buried alongside 6,750 already interred.
Survivors, families, and dignitaries walked along rows of white gravestones. Some prayed and cried at the gravesides or sat motionless, heads buried in their hands.
“I feel such sadness and pain for all these people and youth,” said Sabaheta, a woman from the eastern town of Gorazde.
Many thousands of Bosnian Muslims, also known as Bosniaks, had been murdered over the preceding three years of war in this part of the north-eastern corner of the country.
SHOCKING WORLD
However, the scale and speed of the Srebrenica slaughter finally shocked the world into decisive action to end the conflict, which ended with the Dayton Peace Accords at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on November 21, 1995.
While three decades after the genocide, memories in the rest of the world are beginning to fade, the sprawling murder scene in the hills and fields around Srebrenica still coughs up its bones.
The Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, the memorial-cemetery complex on the outskirts of the town, is a small rocky island in a sea of denials, constantly buffeted by hostile waves.
It was forced to close down in March after Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian leader of the ethnic Serbian entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, threatened to drive out Bosnian state authorities and declare his Republika Srpska independent.
Dodik and other leaders have refused to recognize the Srebrenica massacre as genocide and even glorified those involved in the crime.
Occasionally, Dutch veterans revisit the site of one of the most shameful chapters in their country’s military history, as they failed to prevent the massacre.
They join those for whom the wounds of history have not yet healed completely.
HANGING WOMAN
Friday’s ceremony also comes 30 years after a photograph made newspaper front pages worldwide in July 1995.
It showed a woman in a white skirt and red cardigan hanging from a tree in a wood outside Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The caption read: “The Hanging Woman”.
It told of the betrayal of Srebrenica, where the worst genocide in Europe since the Second World War happened just days before it was taken.
The photo symbolised the murderous “ethnic cleansing” taking place across Bosnia and the despair and hopelessness of the Bosnian Muslims. It was also seen as an indictment of the broader world’s general indifference to the grim reality of what was happening on Western Europe’s doorstep and its failure to stop it.
This woman was one victim in a conflict that would leave 100,000 dead, 20,000 to 50,000 women and girls raped, and around 2.7 million people displaced
Her name was Ferida Osmanovic, 31. Her husband, Selman, 37, was among the more than 8,000 men and boys taken from Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces and slaughtered.
Former Bosnian Serb warlord General Ratko Mladić, the so-called “butcher of Bosnia” who was behind the Srebrenica massacre, lost his appeal at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague against a life sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Radovan Karadžić, a Bosnian Serb former politician who was also convicted on similar charges related to the Srebrenica massacre and other crimes, also lost his appeal. His sentence was increased to life imprisonment.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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