Update April 10, 2022: War in Ukraine: Gordon Brown backs Nuremberg-style trial for Putin - BBC News
Continuing with original post:
Ukraine President Zelenski called the massacre of civilians in Bucha genocide and Biden accused the Russians of war crimes. There are often references to Srebrenica in comments from officials and pundits to it in reminding us of the most recent experiences in post-World War II with the horrific ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, 1991-1995. The turning point in US and Europe getting more involved to stop the slaughter was an incident in a town in Bosnia where every male was marched out of town by Serbians, gunned down, and buried in a mass grave for one reason: they were Muslim. The resulting international tribunals resulted in the Bosnian Serb leader being found guilty and imprisoned. Eventually, Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Bosnia's neighbor, Serbia, was voted out of office and turned over to the tribunal in the Hague. He died of natural causes while awaiting trial in prison. Milosevic was accused of being the inspiration and mastermind of the bloody attempt to incorporate northern Bosnia into greater Serbia and to rid the region of Muslims, there since the Ottoman takeover in the 15th century. Bucha may be Ukraine's Srebrenica. I wrote the following column published in the local Grand County newspaper, the Sky Hi News in July 2015. Bosnia today is the poorest country in Europe, with the Bosnian Serbs threatening to instigate another civil war to deal with their unfinished business and suspected to take inspiration from Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
This March's rallies in the Serbian capitol of Belgrade supported Putin's aggression. . While Bosnia does not border Russia, the parallels are still frightening. Bosnia is more or less under control of the EU which still has peacekeepers there. In light of the Ukraine conflict, the EU doubled their peacekeeper military there and the French fighter jets are doing flyovers to remind the Bosnian Serbs to cool it. The fate of Putin could also resemble Milosevic's, He has been warned. The international tribunal and the UN have many on the ground in Ukraine documenting Russian atrocities and those responsible with a view for future Hague or UN related trials.
The original 2015 column and an explainer of Srebrenica: Imagine if every male, man and boy, in Grand County were assembled, hands tied behind their backs, marched to a killing field, and shot dead for one reason: they were all of the same religion, an identified ethnic group, hated by a superior force.
Something like that took place twenty years ago in a city with a population a little larger than our county. You say that must have happened in Africa, maybe Rwanda? It is difficult to believe that such a horrendous event also took place in an industrialized European country, especially since the Western world had hopefully learned its lesson from the Holocaust.
The world is just now coming to grips with its failure to stop the worst genocide in Europe since World War II. July 11 in Bosnia, former President Bill Clinton and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, prime ministers, presidents, a queen, from Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Turkey, Serbia, and Jordan ( Angela Merkel of Germany paid her respects earlier), marked the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, occurring in a conflict which gave birth to the term “ethnic cleansing”.
On July 11, 1995, 8,372 men and boys were marched to the countryside, shot to death, and their executioners attempted to cover up the slaughter by moving the bodies, scattering body parts, and burying them so that no one would know. A few of the victims played dead or hid under other bodies to escape and testify to the world. Thanks to DNA and forensic recovery of the remains, all but 1000 have been identified, and another 136 coffins with parts of identified victims, were buried in the memorial ceremonies Saturday.
Oh, you say, the Muslims did it? (In Bosnia at that time, the largest ethnic group was Muslims). Wrong. The killers were Bosnian Serbs , Christian Orthodox, and the victims were killed for one reason. They were Muslim.
It was a bloody incident in a bloody war as the former Yugoslavia broke apart in 1991 and the province of Bosnia struggled to gain its independence, with ethnic Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslims engaged in a civil war to determine governance. Bosnia’s population was a little more than Colorado’s. Over 100,000, mostly Muslims, died before Srebrenica and in smaller incidents of ethnic cleansing. The United Nations had already intervened and had established Srebrenica as a safe haven, but some Dutch peacekeepers were held hostage and courts later ruled the Netherlands liable for their failure to protect those in a safe haven.
News of the massacre resulted in the following month with NATO retaliatory air strikes against Bosnian Serbs The Dayton Accord three months later ended the Bosnia conflict, thanks mostly to the belated leadership of the US. Joined in a federation with a Croatian/Muslim entity, Bosnia Serbs gained autonomy. War crimes trials of Bosnian Serbs accused of responsibility for Srebrenica are still taking place in The Hague.
The US last week introduced a resolution in the UN to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide, but Russia, to its shame, yet historically allied with Serbia, vetoed it. Showing more grace, the prime minister of Serbia attended the commemoration ceremonies and endured rocks thrown at him by impassioned activists.
Post note: The Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was found guilty in the Hague in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Felicia Muftic is a columnist with the Sky Hi News, Grand County, Colorado
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Highly recommended:http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/11/europe/bosnia-srebrenica-massacre-commemoration/ and listen to the audio version.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/world/europe/srebrenica-genocide-massacre.html?_r=1
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