As part of the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, the humanitarian organization “Bosnia Appeal” and the BHDINFODESK portal based in Birmingham, England, for the tenth time actively led the action “Twitter in commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide” – #SrebrenicaGenocide or #Srebrenica, launched by ten years ago.
After the end of the action, information was given to the BHDINFODESK agency by the IT project coordinator Adis Burazerovic from London stating that the goal of this media campaign was for the messages that marked the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide to reach 100 million active Twitter users.
In this way, a vote would be raised for those Srebrenica residents and other BiH citizens who cannot vote because they were killed in the genocide from 1992 to 1995, Avaz news portal reports.
“On the very days of the anniversary of the genocide, from July 11 to July 16, during this campaign, our volunteers managed to reach over 100 million Twitter users, which was an extraordinary result,” said Burazerovic.
Fifty years after the world said “Never Again” to the horrors of the Holocaust, genocide took place on European soil.
The name Srebrenica has become synonymous with those dark days in July 1995 when, in the first ever United Nations declared safe area, thousands of men and boys were systematically murdered and buried in mass graves. The victims, predominantly Muslim, were selected for death on the basis of their identity. This was the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.
Although Srebrenica is the only mass killing in Balkan wars that has been officially ruled as genocide by the international courts, this atrocity was only the final act in a much broader genocidal strategy—euphemistically dubbed “ethnic cleansing”. The Srebrenica genocide was the planned, systematic, and industrialised conclusion of a four year campaign of forced deportation, torture, mass murder and systematic sexual violence by Bosnian Serb forces in service of their goal to create a “Greater Serbia”. Some Bosnian Serb historians and politicians continue to deny that genocide and ethnic cleansing took place.
Genocide does not happen overnight. It begins when hatred and intolerance are left unchallenged or are manipulated for political gain. With the fall of Yugoslavia, politicians in the region used divisive nationalism to gain power and influence. Propaganda and misinformation were utilised to spread first fear and then hatred, breaking apart decades of trust between vibrant and integrated communities and turning neighbour against neighbour.
