UN Creates Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day

To commemorate the 29th anniversary of the “worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II”, the United Nations General Assembly voted in July 2024 to establish the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.” This day is meant to honor the lives over 8,000+ Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica who were forcibly taken from their homes and brutally slaughtered in mass executions by Serbian ethno-nationalist forces during the genocidal reign of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

During the Kosovo War in 1999, the former Serbian ultra-nationalist Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for orchestrating crimes against humanity in both Bosnia and Kosovo. The 66-count ICTY criminal indictment against the Serbian strongman included charges of crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes committed during the mid-1990s Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia.

Milosevic defiantly denied all war crimes charges and bizarrely defended himself without legal counsel during the first portion of his trial for being the worst war criminal since World War II. The 66-count war crimes indictment against Milosevic also included charges of forced deportation of approximately 800,000 Kosovo Albanian civilians from their homes and also the deportation and/or forcible transfer from Croatia of over 150,000+ Croat and other non-Serb civilians during the Balkan Wars.

On July 11, 1995, the town of Srebrenica, Bosnia- which was a protected enclave by the United Nations at the time- was captured by Milosevic’s Serbian forces. During the ensuing days, the Milosevic-backed Serbian soldiers brutally murdered approximately 8,000 Muslim men and teenage boys in a crime of “genocide” according to both the International Court of Justice (known as The World Court/ICJ) and separately by the ICTY.

The July 2024 UN resolution officially established the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, 11 July.” “This resolution seeks to foster reconciliation, in the present and for the future,” according to Germany’s ambassador to the UN Antje Leendertse. Although the current Serbian president said a commemorative day would only “open old wounds”, he did publicly acknowledge the horrific tragedy of Srebernica saying that he bowed his “head to all the victims of the conflict in Bosnia.” The UN resolution also condemns any denial of the genocide and urges UN member countries to “preserve the established facts” on Srebrenica for future generations. In a letter to other UN members, Germany and Rwanda described the vote as a “crucial opportunity to unite in honoring the victims and acknowledging the pivotal role played by international courts” since that time.

The war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic continued until his death in March 2006 when the former Serbian president was found dead in his jail cell from an apparent heart attack at the age of 64. Although his war crimes trial came to an abrupt end, two other major war crimes cases against major Serbian officials helped to define the tragic brutality of the Balkan genocide of the mid-1990s. According to France24 News, the Srebrenica massacre is “considered the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II”. 

The trial of Dr. Radovan Karadzic was another war crimes trial before the ICTY in The Hague, Netherlands. Radovan Karadzic was a trained medical doctor (psychiatrist) who ultimately became president of the Republika of Srpska as part of team Milosevic. Many years later, Karadzic was ultimately found guilty of 10 of 11 counts of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity resulting in lifetime imprisonment for his role in masterminding the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.

General Ratko Mladić and Karadzic were found guilty of being “individually responsible for the planning, instigation, ordering or otherwise aiding and abetting in the planning, preparation or execution” of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. According to historical accounts, the Milosevic-allied military forces- under the command and control of Karadzic and Mladić – brutally attacked the UN designated safe area of Srebrenica in July of 1995. As a result of these attacks, the Bosnian Muslim inhabitants of Srebrenica sought refuge near the UN compound in Potocari when the brutal genocide began against the Bosniak population.

“A truly terrible massacre of the Muslim population appears to have taken place,” according to a public statement from the ICTY. “The evidence tendered by the Prosecutor describes scenes of unimaginable savagery: thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers’ eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson. These are truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history,” the ICTY concluded.

If Karadzic was the political mastermind, the military mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre was General Ratko Mladić, the third member of the Milosevic regime trifecta to face justice at The Hague. A former military officer and convicted war criminal who led the Army of the Republika of Srpska, he was ultimately convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in 2017. The former Serbian general continues to serve a life sentence for his war crimes in The Hague.

As the top military officer for Milosevic’s political regime at the time, General Mladić was considered the mastermind of both the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo (which is considered to be the longest siege in modern European history) and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. During the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo, hundreds of thousands of the capital city’s citizens were targeted by Mladić’s snipers if they stepped outside and lived every single day of their lives under constant threat from Mladić goons. One of the deadliest crimes committed by Mladić’s soldiers occurred in February 1994 when the busy Sarajevo marketplace of Markale was bombed by a mortar shell, killing at least 67 people and injuring nearly 150 other shoppers that day. 

For his role as the military mastermind of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the ICTY charged Mladić with genocide and crimes against humanity, stating that he “was a member of a joint criminal enterprise whose objective was the elimination or permanent removal of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat, or other non-Serb inhabitants from large areas of [Bosnia and Herzegovina].” He fled for many years, first openly living under the protection of Slobodan Milosevic, but when Milosevic was arrested and indicted for his war crimes in 1999, General Mladić disappeared for many years. He was finally arrested in May 2011 and currently serves a life sentence for his genocidal crimes against Bosnia’s Muslim population.

The 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia was one of the worst genocidal mass murders since World War II. For nearly 30 years since Srebrenica, the Muslim population of the former Yugoslavia have faithfully honored their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons who were brutally slaughtered simply because of their Muslim identity. During this brutal etho-nationalist campaign launched by Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian allies, there were over 100,000+ people killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995- mostly Bosnian Muslims- and 2 million other people displaced from their homes simply because of their backgrounds. By honoring the 1995 Srebrenica massacre with an annual United Nations commemoration day, the UN member nations are stating that we as a global community will never forget this anti-Muslim genocide which occurred during our collective watch.