Thirty years after the beginning of the atrocities in Srebrenica that culminated in genocide in 1995, Luka Cekic and I -- on behalf of the IIP -- paid a visit to the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center and Cemetery in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The visit was organized by an engaged young Austrian who is spending his civil service at the Center. We spent an emotional two days talking to relatives of victims who manage the Center, and I signed a Memorandum of Understanding to serve as the basis for future cooperation between the Center and the IIP for the years ahead. In the coming weeks, the IIP will publishing several interviews completed by Luka Cekic during our visit. In this blog, I will try to present some reflections and conclusions -- particularly in light of the recent atrocities committed in Ukraine.
Europe’s guilt and responsibility
Many people are shocked by what is happening in Ukraine today, with the massacre of civilians in Bucha serving as a symbol for many other atrocities committed in Ukraine -- as far as we know, by Russian forces. But we should not forget the many other atrocities and massacres that are part of our shared history. Colonial powers committed many such crimes, but they were followed by “internal” massacres, from Rwanda to Cambodia. The many wars inside Europe have also added to the number of massacres, with names such as Lidice -- when Nazis killed the entire population of a village in revenge for the killing of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich -- becoming infamous.
The massacre of Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire has also become increasingly recognized thanks to expanding scholarship but also due to the continued denial by Turkish politicians. In this case too, European powers accepted or even supported the Ottoman/Turkish atrocities -- only advocacy by the Armenian diaspora in Europe changed the minds of European politicians and intellectuals. With all this dark history, Europe and especially the EU -- which aspires to build a New Europe -- has a substantial responsibility to prevent new massacres and genocides with all the power that it has. Furthermore, the EU should be more actively supporting the Memorial Center’s activities as a precondition to decrease divisions and support genuine reconciliation.
US hypocrisy
It is not only Europe that has many black marks in its history. The US has committed many atrocities, from its conquering of territory from native peoples through to its wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Concerning the US, a recent article by Fintan O'Toole in the New York Review of Books underlined the particular hypocrisy of US politicians in its response to war crimes, often demanding international judicial proceedings against crimes committed by other nations but insisting on exemptions for its own citizens -- as if they could not commit similar crimes.
In his article titled “Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes,” O’Toole writes: “When bad things are done by American armed forces, they are entirely untypical and momentary responses to the terrible stresses of war.” He concludes: “What the U.S. must give up is the comfort of its exceptionalism on the question of war crimes. It cannot differentiate itself sufficiently from Putin’s tyranny until it accepts without reservation that the standards it applies to him also apply to itself.”
The special case of Srebrenica
The long series of crimes committed in the name of nations and nationalists should not prevent a consideration of their peculiarities and specific human tragedies. Some of these massacres have been officially declared as genocides because they were “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,“ as the UN defined it in 1948. This is especially true for the massacre in Srebrenica.
Three decades after the military attack and siege of Srebrenica, we visited the site where the massacre took place in 1995 after the city’s years-long occupation. The cemetery for the victims and the adjacent genocide memorial underscores not only the significant number of those killed but also the individual tragedy connected with each and every person. It also demonstrates the treacherous words and declarations of Bosnian Serb generals, such as Ratko Mladic, who promised to do no harm to the people if all arms were surrendered.
Trust should be based on facts
The trust given to these words by the officers of the UN troops in charge of Srebrenica are particularly disappointing. Their naïveté and passivity in view of facts on the ground had disastrous consequences for thousands of Bosnian citizens. They were overly focused on their own safety and their inability to deviate from rules -- even if this meant that thousands of people who were guaranteed protection would be killed. UN officials promised protection and safety but offered neither. Still today, some visitors from the former UN troops speak abstractly about a tragedy but do not recognize the concrete failures of the past.
I still remember the words of French general Philippe Morillon, who, when he became a Member of the European Parliament, spoke about the impression left by Mladic. UN officers spoke with him and received nice promises, but without arms or defense capacities, the people of Srebrenica could only rely on international safeguards – which were ultimately hollow.
It is true that international troops and their commanders had no easy job, especially in view of their small numbers and the strong resistance by Serb forces to the deployment of UN troops. Nevertheless, the lack of necessary skepticism towards the words of leaders such as Mladic is shocking and disappointing. Not only did the local UN commanders fail, but also all those who trusted the words of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic, Mladic, and other Serb military and political leaders ultimately lost the war, but not before they ordered the massacre of civilians. Today, these figures are still considered to be heroes in some Serb circles.
Deniers do not give up
Srebrenica is today part of the Republika Srpska (RS), which does not provide a comfortable or easy environment for the work of the Memorial Center, as it primarily concerns the Muslim population. Many Serb officials still deny what happened at Srebrenica -- some speak vaguely of tragic events or, at most, massacres that commonly happen during wars. But the massacre against the predominantly Muslim population was not a spontaneous incident. The activities restricting the movement of the Muslim population -- resulting in starvation and extreme deprivation -- began well before the killings in July 1995. It was a systematic policy formulated and implemented by Serb authorities against their Muslim neighbors beginning in spring 1992.
Thus, beyond giving the survivors a place to commemorate those who were killed and providing younger generations with information about what happened, the Center must fight against deniers and propaganda funded by the RS.
Dr. Hannes Swoboda, President of the International Institute for Peace (IIP), started his career in urban politics in Vienna and was elected member of the European Parliament in 1996. He was Vice President of the Social Democrat Group until 2012 und then President until 2014. He was particularly engaged in foreign, enlargement, and neighborhood policies. Swoboda is also President of the Vienna Institute for International Economics, the Centre of Architecture, the University for Applied Science - Campus Vienna, and the Sir Peter Ustinov Institute.