One, to say the least, thoughtless and improper statement by Montenegrin Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic overshadowed numerous strong and very important messages that were delivered yesterday in Potocari on the day when 50 more victims of the Srebrenica genocide were buried.
Although the verdicts of the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia are completely clear and precise, based on numerous material evidences, statements of witnesses, surviving victims and even those who directly bloodied their hands, the first man of the Government of Montenegro said that “genocide was not committed against Bosniaks but against people, it was not committed by armies but by politicians”.
And it was. The genocide in Srebrenica was committed only against Bosniaks, people from one nation and for one reason only, because they were designated as the perpetrators as a non-Serb population that should simply disappear, and the traces that they ever existed should be buried deep in the ground, and then take their dismembered bodies and transfer clothes from one to another, then the third, then the fourth, then the fifth, and who knows how many other location.
But, it did not take long for Abazovic to publicly apologize and say that genocide was committed against Bosniaks.
However, one such statement should not be allowed to overshadow much stronger and more important ones, for example, such as the statements of the representative of the World Jewish Congress Menachem Rosensaft and the Dutch Minister of Defense or the Women in Black from Belgrade.
Rosensaft said, among other things, that those who deny the genocide cannot be allowed to continue spreading their lies with impunity and to shamelessly try to shift the blame to the victims, as was done last year in the report of the self-styled independent commission appointed by the authorities of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity.
“Today and tomorrow we stand in complete solidarity with the survivors and their families. Let’s dedicate ourselves together to permanently inscribing the genocide that happened in Srebrenica in the annals of humanity for the sake of memory, but also for the sake of warning,” said Rosensaft yesterday.
Namely, the words that should also be remembered are those of the defense minister of the Netherlands, Kajsa Ollongren, who said at the commemoration in Potocari that her country bears part of the responsibility for the failure of the international community in Srebrenica in 1995.
“The Netherlands also participated there with the best of intentions. Even then, our soldiers continued to do what they could to complete the task and protect the helpless people. We cannot remove the suffering, but what we can do is look history squarely in the eye. There is only one culprit for the terrible genocide, the Bosnian Serb army. Thanks to the court in The Hague, most of those responsible have been prosecuted,” said the minister.
However, she admitted that the failure of the international community to prevent the genocide was partially the failure of the Netherlands, and she apologized for that.
“The memory of July has connected Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the Netherlands forever. We went through these darkest days together. It is our moral duty to always tell the truth about everything and expose the lies,” emphasized the Minister of Defense of the Netherlands and added that the voice of truth will be heard everywhere and always.
Finally, we must not forget the brave activists of the Women in Black group from Serbia who arrived at the Potocari Memorial Center yesterday, where they symbolically paid tribute to the victims, but also sent a message that the genocide in Srebrenica will never be forgotten. They sent the same message in the center of Belgrade yesterday.
The whole world knows one truth – genocide was committed against Bosniaks in Srebrenica.
The genocide in Srebrenica took place from July 13th to 19th, 1995, after Serbian forces entered the protected zone on July 11th. On those days, 8.372 unarmed men and boys from the area of the Srebrenica enclave were killed in Srebrenica, and they were killed by the soldiers of the Army of the RS and the special Serbian military unit Skorpioni.
More than 50 verdicts were handed down to criminals who planned and carried out the genocide of Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995. More than 8.000 Bosniaks were killed in the genocide, and criminals from the ranks of the Serbian army received at least 700 years in prison, not including five life sentences.
The first person to plead guilty to the Hague Tribunal and at the same time the first person convicted of this crime was Drazen Erdemovic, a former member of the Tenth Detachment of the Main Staff of the Army of RS, who was sentenced in November 1996 to five years in prison. After three and a half years in prison, Erdemovic was released, and based on his testimony from August 2001, General Radislav Krstic was convicted.
The most recent verdict for the genocide in Srebrenica was the verdict against the war criminal Ratko Mladic, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
