This Friday, July 11, the Muslim community of Bosnia commemorates at the Potocari Memorial the worst killing perpetrated in Europe since the Second World War.
This Friday, July 11, as every year, the new identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre will be buried during a ceremony organized at the Potocari Memorial, near the small town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, border of Serbia, where more than 8,000 Muslim men and adolescents were killed by the Serbian forces of Bosnia from July 11 to 16, 1995.
To date, 6,751 victims have been buried there, while 250 others have been buried in local cemeteries at the request of their families. More than a thousand victims have not yet been found. This year, 14 new identified victims will be buried during the July 11 ceremony.
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Official recognition as a genocidal act
The international criminal court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTI), active from 1993 to 2017, and the International Court of Justice, both recognized the massacre of Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica by the Army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia as an act of genocide, respectively in 2004 and 2007. The Srebrenica massacre is thus one of the only three genocides officially recognized by The UN with the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 and the Holocaust (the extermination of the Jews of Europe between 1941 and 1945), recognized by the International Military Court of Nuremberg.
On June 8, 2021, an international court confirmed the perpetuity conviction of Ratko Mladic, nicknamed the “Boucher of the Balkans”, The general at the head of the troops who had taken Srebrenica in 1995, for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In addition, on May 23, 2024, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution carried by Germany and Rwanda designating July 11 as the “International Day for Reflection and Commemoration of the Genocide committed in Srebrenica in 1995”. This resolution also invited the Member States to operate a duty of memory and to preserve the truth of the historical facts established on this tragic event through their education systems.
A conflictual memory, especially on the Serbian side
Nevertheless, the memory of the srebrenica massacre is far from consensus today, particularly in the Serbian neighbor. This also concerns the very territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Serbian Republic of Bosnia (one of the two autonomous regional entities of the country) which is experiencing a secessionist drift under the presidency of Milorad Dodik. The latter thus considers that the events of Srebrenica are a war crime and not a genocide, while in the streets of Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska, the criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic condemned to prison perpetuity by the ICTY are always celebrated as heroes. Radovan Karadzic is notably accused of having ordered the ethnic cleaning of Bosnians and Croats during the Bosnia and Herzegovin War.
A first step was taken in July 2015, when Aleksandar Vucic then Serbian Prime Minister went to the victims of the victims of the massacre where he had filed a flower in front of the names of the more than 6,200 identified and buried victims. He had condemned a “monstrous crime”, without using the word “genocide”.
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But in May 2024, at the UN, Serbian leaders had led a massive lobbying campaign to obtain the rejection of the resolution establishing an official commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre, including in its final version excluding any explicit mention of the responsibility of Serbia. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had been specially moved to New York for the occasion, and the President of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia Milorad Dodik had chosen, as a ultimate provocation, to relocate his council of ministers in the very commune of Srebrenica on the day of the vote.
Proof of the success of the Serbian influence work and the divisive character of the memory of Srebrenica beyond the Balkans, the resolution had obtained only 84 favorable votes, against 19 unfavorable votes and 68 abstentions, among which many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europe itself had exposed its divisions on the subject, since Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia were part of the abstainentist delegations while the Hungary of Viktor Orbán had opposed the adoption of the resolution, alongside China and Russia.
