UN declares 11 July Srebrenica massacre Remembrance Day
United Nations member states have voted to designate 11 July as an annual day of remembrance for the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The proposal from Germany and Rwanda was approved despite strong opposition from Serbia, which lobbied vigorously against the resolution. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic criticized the resolution as “politicized” and expressed concerns that it could unfairly implicate Serbia and the Serbian people in the genocide.
Ultimately, 84 member states voted in favor of establishing the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.” In contrast, 19 countries voted against it and 68 abstained.
This decision brings significant solace to the relatives of the more than eight thousand Bosniak Muslim men and boys who were killed in the massacre. Bosnian-Serb forces systematically murdered them after overrunning the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, where peacekeepers were supposed to protect them.
Under the command of Bosnian-Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, troops separated the men and boys from their families. Most were never seen alive again.
The tragedy extended beyond the immediate killings. In the months following the massacre, Bosnian-Serb forces exhumed mass graves and dispersed the remains across various locations to conceal the scale of the atrocity.
This scattering of body parts made identification challenging, and some families have waited decades to bury their loved ones. However, 29 years later, most families have been able to inter at least some remains at Potocari Cemetery, near the massacre site.
The International Commission on Missing Persons, which used pioneering DNA technology to identify over a thousand victims, praised the UN resolution in a statement.
“This solemn decision represents a significant milestone in acknowledging and honoring the memory of the victims and survivors of the Srebrenica Genocide,” it wrote, adding that the day of remembrance would act as “a poignant reminder of the enduring impact of genocide on individuals, families, and communities”.
This is not how Serbia’s government sees it. During the debate in the UN General Assembly, President Vucic warned that voting in favour would “open Pandora’s Box” – and lead to more resolutions, relating to other instances of genocide.
He hinted that Serbia might itself make such a proposal, pointing out there had never been a UN resolution addressing Serb victims of genocide – such as those murdered by the Nazi-allied regime in Croatia during the Second World War.
Mr Vucic insisted that the Srebrenica resolution was “not about reconciliation, not about memories, but about something that will open new wounds, not only in our region but also in this hall.”
Even in Serbia, however, some wonder why their government had been so strongly opposed to the resolution. After all, the proposal explicitly stated that only individuals had been convicted of genocide and that guilt “cannot be attributed to any ethnic, religious or other group or community as a whole”.
In 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled that genocide was committed at Srebrenica, but found that Serbia was not directly responsible or complicit. Judges did, however, rule that Serbia had failed to prevent the massacre. Three years later, Serbia’s National Assembly passed a resolution condemning the massacre and apologizing that more had not been done to prevent it.
In 2015, Mr Vucic – at that point prime minister – paid his respects in Srebrenica on the 20th anniversary of the massacre. Some protesters threw bottles and stones at him, but he promised he would “continue with [his] policy of reconciliation”.
Serbia – and its president – have shown consistency in some ways. Mr. Vucic has called the massacre “a horrible crime”. Neither he nor his country have ever conceded that it was genocide – but nor have they contested the genocide convictions of Bosnian-Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic at The Hague.
The president of Bosnia’s majority-Serb Republika Srpska region, Milorad Dodik, is a different matter. He has repeatedly denied that genocide took place at Srebrenica, even though Bosnia has a law criminalizing genocide denial. Other Serb nationalists have been delighted to take the same approach – and even glorify Mladic as a Serb hero.
Mr Dodik’s offensive antics may have prompted the UN resolution, as a way of reasserting that the massacre was indeed genocide – and that the anguish of the victims’ families should not be used for ethno-nationalist grandstanding.
The Republika Srpska president tried anyway. He threatened “the end of Bosnia and Herzegovina” if the resolution passed, with the “peaceful separation” of Republika Srpska. Those familiar with Mr Dodik’s regular secessionist outbursts rolled their eyes.
Following the vote, the Bosnian-Serb leader claimed victory. It was “not even an absolute majority,” he said. “Their plan to accuse the Serbs of being a genocidal nation failed”.
There never had been any such plan. But for politicians relying on nationalist support, pretending there had been was a convenient fiction.
