Tens of thousands of people gathered in Srebrenica on July 11 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Muslims in the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.
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Following the Russian veto, the European Parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives recognized the crime as genocide and foreign dignitaries – including Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Jordan’s Queen – repeated the word in their speeches.
At the time of the genocide, Vucic had been secretary-general of the far-right nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), which openly pushed the campaign of terror against Bosnia’s Muslims.
Aleksandar Vucic had just laid a flower at a monument to thousands of victims buried there when the crowd started to boo and chant “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great). A group of women from Belgrade, Serbia, who for years have been demanding Serbia admit to its role in the slaughter, yelled “responsibility!” and “genocide!”
Bodyguards whisked Aleksandar Vucic through mad mourners shouting and booing while a crowd surged up the hill behind the delegation as they ran for their cars.
Earlier this year Pope Francis visited Bosnia-Herzegovina to urge the country’s Orthodox Serbs, Muslims and Catholic Croats to overcome the wounds of war that killed more than 100,000 people, and encourage peace and reconciliation across the country.
Starting on July 11, 1995, for three days, the ethnic Serb forces gunned down Muslim boys and men in and around Srebrenica.
The Guardian writes: “The only survivors were those who hid under dead bodies and crept away, once night had fallen”.
Many Serbs dispute the term, the death toll and the official account of what went on – reflecting conflicting narratives of the Yugoslav wars that still feed political divisions and stifle progress toward integration with Western Europe. “You can not deny the truth”, Kada Hotic, who lost her son and husband in the massacre, told Vucic. Back in Washington President Barack Obama referred to the massacre as “genocide” and said the USA would mourn the loss of the victims.
Potočari; the burial of 600 coffins at the Potočari memorial centre During the 1992-95 war, the United Nations declared Srebrenica a safe haven for civilians.
The outnumbered Dutch could only watch as Serb soldiers rounded up about 2,000 men for killing and later hunted down and killed another 6,000 men in the woods. “In my dreams I talk to my brother and my nephews and my friends who perished on this path”, he said.
A ex- Dutch Defence Minister, Joris Voorhoeve, has claimed that a secret agreement between the US, Britain and France not to use air power against the Serbs amid concerns over hundreds of captured United Nations peacekeepers made it easier for Bosnian Serbs to overrun Srebrenica.
Vucic was formerly a disciple of the “Greater Serbia” ideology behind much of the bloodshed that accompanied Yugoslavia’s demise, in which at least 135,000 people died, 100,000 of them in Bosnia.
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“All of my family members are here under these tombstones”.
