How to commemorate Srebrenica 30 years on?
People around the world marked the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre on Friday. In July 1995, during the Bosnian war, Bosnian-Serb forces invaded a protection zone set up by the United Nations and killed over 8,000 Bosniaks. The crime is now internationally recognised as genocide. A look at Europe's press shows why remembrance is still so important.
Denial continues
The annual demands from Brussels and other capitals are ignored in Belgrade, criticises Jutarnji list:
“This year too, as we mark the 30th anniversary of the massacre, the messages from the EU and the entire international community are the same as ever. There are calls for respect for the victims, for concrete and honest efforts by politicians towards reconciliation, and for the genocide not to be denied or played down in any way. And this is the message from the EU at a time when the Serbian leadership is denying the genocide in Srebrenica and those who call things by their name are under massive attack.”
Branding demonstrators as traitors
Politika criticises the Serbian government for using the issue to discredit the opposition:
“The students are preparing to acknowledge during their protests in Belgrade that the Serbs are the first genocidal people in the world - this is the poisonous message that labels as traitors and Serb-haters those who have been demonstrating for months, demanding the truth and early parliamentary elections. ... Srebrenica has been reactivated in an attempt to discredit the students, the demonstrators, the opposition and the rebellious people.”
Europe died here too
Writer Rosella Postorino describes in La Stampa the conditions under which the commemorations are taking place:
“Today, as we find ourselves in the paradox of a union of sovereign and nationalist states; today, when that union also includes 'illiberal' democracies and migrants are brutally rejected, locked up and deported. ... Today, when 300,000 people have died in Ukraine and there are EU states that are friendly towards Putin; today, when Europe is failing to take a stand on the more than 50,000 dead in Gaza; today, when there is talk of an arms race in Brussels, I think of how 30 years ago [South Tyrolean Green MEP] Alexander Langer travelled to Cannes, where the heads of state were gathered, to warn that Europe would die or be reborn in Bosnia. A few days later, the genocide in Srebrenica became a sentence passed on the fate of us all.”
Repeating old mistakes
Europe has learned nothing, Ouest-France scowls:
“Putin's strategy in Ukraine is largely inspired by Slobodan Milošević's strategy at that time: the same manipulation of history, the same recourse to ultra-nationalism, the same use of 'proxies', the same alliances with local criminal groups, the same use of brute force, the same conviction that the division of the international community allows him to act with impunity. ... The timidity and division of the Europeans, the powerlessness of the international community and the murky game played by the Americans are still the ingredients on which Putin relies. ... Europe is paying dearly now for the lessons it failed to learn from the Srebrenica massacre!”
Prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina's disintegration
The Irish Times describes the fragility of peace in this region:
“Republika Srpska is led by autocratic Serb nationalist and Putin admirer, Milorad Dodik, who was sentenced in February to a six-year ban from politics and a year in prison for his defiance of [Christian Schmidt of the international community's Office of the High Representative]. His aim is independence, though he denies it, and he is now planning a referendum on a draft new RS constitution whose provisions would be tantamount to secession. Bosnia and Herzegovina's disintegration would be a disastrous recipe for a resumption of violence.”