Project on the Srebrenica massacre: so that nobody cheers the perpetrators anymore


Status: 07/11/2021 3:27 p.m.

Even 26 years after the Srebrenica massacre, there are still people who deny or relativize the atrocities. A summer school at the Potocari Memorial wants to contribute to the reappraisal.

From Srdjan Govedarica,
ARD studio Vienna

The Potocari Memorial near Srebrenica. 50 young women and men are discussing a lecture they have just heard. They come from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro, among others. Under the motto: “Truth, Justice, Prevention”, they talk to experts in a summer school for four days about the genocide in Srebrenica, the worst crime in Europe since the Second World War.

The youngest victim was a newborn

The 17-year-old Ilija Djuricic from the Serbian Bor is in Bosnia for the first time: “I know the basic things about Srebrenica, which almost everyone in Serbia knows. That’s why I’m here to find out more,” says he.

The then UN protection zone Srebrenica is captured by Serbian-Bosnian troops in July 1995. In the following days, under the leadership of Ratko Mladic, they murder more than 8,000 Bosniaks. The oldest known victim is a 94-year-old man, the youngest a newborn girl.

“These people wore a Serbian uniform, with the Serbian flag and our state of Serbia supported them and we therefore have a collective responsibility,” says the young Serb Ilija Djuricic about the perpetrators. “I am very sorry that our current government is behind what it should not do under any circumstances.”

“The purpose of the summer school is prevention”

Velma Saric helped organize the unusual summer school in Srebrenica. The 42-year-old heads the “Post conflict research center” – an NGO that deals with coming to terms with the war: “The whole point of the summer school is prevention,” she says. It is about “bringing young people together into a group who is convinced that it is important to prevent future crimes and genocide – as well as the risk of conflict arising again”.

8,372 people were murdered, but only 58 perpetrators have so far been convicted, according to an investigation by Velma Saric’s NGO. Most of them from the Yugoslav Tribunal in The Hague. Among them the main responsible Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. The tribunal has since ceased its work.

56 War Crimes Related Procedures

Since 2013, trials for war crimes have also been held before the Supreme Court in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Without the extensive preparatory work of the tribunal, this would hardly have been possible, says Mira Smajlovic, judge of the War Crimes Chamber: “If this evidence had not been collected in time – that is, at the time when the acts of war took place – it would probably be lost forever gone and could not have been used later in trials of those who committed war crimes. ”

The Supreme Court is currently working on 56 war crimes-related cases. A difficult task, among other things because many of the defendants are also citizens of Serbia and often resigned shortly before the verdict, says Judge Smajlovic.

This weekend, 19 victims of the massacre, who could only recently be identified, were buried in the memorial.

Image: EPA

“Hear the words of the victims”

She is nevertheless convinced that the remaining perpetrators from Srebrenica also belong to the Bosnian-Herzegovinian courts: “The general public can also participate in these court proceedings in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I mean above all citizens who come to the proceedings and the statements of the Witnesses can listen. And so they can see for themselves and immediately hear the words of the victims. ”

Alek Barovic from Podgorica also has the victims in mind. During a break between two lectures at the summer school in Srebrenica, the young Montenegrin says: “If you had asked Mladic’s victims whether they would rather see him in prison for 1000 years or whether they would prefer that those who still cheer him today, stop doing that and learn something – I think they’d prefer the latter because it’s much more important. ”

26 years of Srebrenica: “Truth, Justice, Prevention”

Srdjan Govedarica, ARD Vienna, July 11, 2021 2:38 p.m.



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