Survivors and mourners at the 19th year anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. Flickr/Taylor Mc. Some rights reserved.July 11, 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Twenty years since “never again” came simply to mean “again”, when 8,372 Bosnian Muslims were rounded up in the hot valleys of eastern Bosnia and executed by the Bosnian Serb Army, led by General Ratko Mladić, while the “international community” bolted.
What is often forgotten outside of Bosnia is that Srebrenica was the culminating act of the genocide. The systematic killings began in 1992. Approximately 677 concentration camps were set up across the country for the rape of Bosnian Muslim women, torture and mass executions. Grave crimes of unimaginable destruction were committed in these camps. The Bosnian Serbs themselves coined the term “Etničko čišćenje” (ethnic cleansing) to define their strategy, which was publicly announced on 12 May 1992.
The campaign was based on the “Six Strategic Goals of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina” and was announced by then Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic and these strategies were unanimously adopted by the majority of Bosnian Serbs at the Assembly. The document is a proof of mens rea, the political intent to commit genocide. It depicts Bosnia’s “Wannsee moment.”
