More than 8.300 Bosniaks were killed in Srebrenica in 1995, and today international far-right extremists are turning the criminals from that time into heroes, and portraying the genocide as a supposed “defense of Europe.”
Emir Suljagic, genocide survivor and director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, said in an interview: “We must not forget that Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was the first testing ground for the global far right.”
According to media reports, neo-Nazis from across Europe traveled to BiH during the war in order, as the current general secretary of the NPD (Heimat) party later said, “to kill Muslims.”
The connection between Serbian nationalism and global far-right terrorism has not disappeared. On the contrary, Serbian nationalism, along with the denial and glorification of the genocide in Srebrenica, is today a central narrative of the international far right.
Genocide as the peak of nationalist violence
Furthermore, the media explain what happened in Srebrenica in July 1995. It is stated that these crimes marked the deadly peak of Serbian nationalism and became synonymous with the horrors of the war in BiH.
However, it is emphasized that genocidal violence occurred in other parts of BiH as well: schools were turned into concentration camps, hotels into places of systematic rape, and the capital Sarajevo was under siege for 1.425 days – the longest siege in the 20th century.
More than two decades after the war in BiH, on March 15th, 2019, Brenton Tarrant attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people during Friday prayer. From his car stereo blared a Serbian war song: “Karadzic, lead your Serbs.”
From a modified version of that song, later titled Serbia Strong / God is a Serb, the far-right meme Remove Kebab developed, which is still used by the global right as a symbol. In his manifesto, Tarrant described himself as a “remover of kebab.”
Serbian nationalists as icons of the global right
Why the obsession of a far-right attacker from New Zealand with Serbian war criminals? It is explained that the reason lies in a racist propaganda myth that was already operating during the war in BiH: the genocide in Srebrenica is portrayed as a preventive strike against alleged Muslim extremists in Europe.
Radovan Karadzic, co-responsible and convicted for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, later called the genocide “just and holy,” and a defense against an alleged “Islamic caliphate.” For followers of that ideology, the murderers are heroes who defended the European continent and tried to preserve the “Christian heritage.” The war in BiH, in which more than 100.000 people died, in that distorted narrative becomes a symbolic battle between Christianity and Islam.
The myth of the Christian “Fortress”
Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik said during his trial a significant sentence: “If the far right in Europe ever succeeds again, it must distance itself from the ideas of the old school.” By “old school,” he meant National Socialism. At the same time, he called for the creation of a “new identity.”
That new identity is reflected in his manifesto. In it, he mentioned Kosovo 143 times, Serbia 341 times, Albania 208 times, and BiH 232 times. In Breivik’s vision of Southeast Europe, “Serbs” fight against “Muslims” to “liberate” the European continent from them. Breivik was particularly fascinated by how Karadzic presented the war in BiH to the West – in his logic, BiH was an “unnatural” society because it was multicultural.
It is pointed out that Bosniaks were also subjected to slaughter in the past, during World War II, when Serbian Nazi collaborators tried to annihilate them. But in that ideology, the victims of genocide are mocked, their murder relativized, denied, or portrayed as self-defense.
Breivik allegedly met Milorad Ulemek during a trip to Liberia in 2002, according to suspicions of the Norwegian police. Ulemek joined the “Serbian Volunteer Guard” of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan at the start of the war in BiH and participated in the battle for the northeastern town of Bijeljina.
The bloodbath in Bijeljina as a dress rehearsal
The massacre in Bijeljina at the beginning of the war, in April 1992, was later described as genocidal and is recorded in one of the most well-known war photographs from BiH. United States (U.S.) photojournalist Ron Haviv captured the image of Redzep and Tifa Sabanovic, a Bosniak married couple. They lay on the ground while one of Arkan’s men kicked the woman’s body with full force.
“Bijeljina was the dress rehearsal for the war,” said later journalist Jusuf Trbic, who is from Bijeljina. “What they did in Bijeljina, they did later in other towns.”
That means: mosques were leveled to the ground. Women were raped. Houses were looted, and residents executed. Milorad Ulemek was sentenced in 2005 to a total of 55 years in prison for murder. His lawyer denied the meeting with Breivik. Nationalist criminals like Ulemek enjoy cult status among far-right groups across Europe for their militancy and deep anti-Muslim racism. Something that remains firmly rooted today in the places where the genocide was committed.
Within the BiH entity Republika Srpska (RS), denial and glorification of the genocide in Srebrenica have been constant occurrences since the end of the war. Many perpetrators of crimes now hold high positions in the police and army. Political support for the far-right president of the entity, Milorad Dodik, who also denies the genocide, comes mainly from neighboring Serbia and from Russia.
In the years after the war, most Serbian media and political elites denied that the genocide in Srebrenica ever happened – instead, it was claimed to be part of an international anti-Serb conspiracy. Over time, the propaganda machine evolved. Now, the Serbian population is being told that BiH is inhabited by radical Muslim extremists. Serbian “terrorism experts” later claimed that the victims of Srebrenica, all civilians, were actually jihadists.
These are words eerily reminiscent of what attackers like Breivik and Tarrant wrote in their manifestos. All this despite the fact that the genocide in Srebrenica is documented in hundreds of thousands of pages and confirmed by numerous verdicts, both domestic and international.
Srebrenica today
The Srebrenica Memorial Center is today located in the village of Potocari, a few kilometers from Srebrenica. That’s where the base of about 450 Dutch United Nations (UN) soldiers was located, who were in charge of protecting civilians, and in front of whose gates the butchers ultimately carried out the selection of victims. Today, mostly genocide survivors work at the Memorial Center. They testify, give interviews, document, and archive.
In the spring of this year, the Memorial Center had to be closed for the first time. The safety of the employees could no longer be guaranteed due to the situation after the arrest warrant for Dodik was issued.
