What does Srebrenica mean to us?

“You are now protected by UN forces”, we heard the hoarse voice of Philippe Morillon, commander of the UN Forces in Bosnia, on the terrace of the Srebrenica field hospital on March 11, 1993. From across the street from the hospital, from the terrace of the local post office, to the people gathered in Srebrenica. One month later, on April 16, 1993, Srebrenica was declared a UN Protected Area. We thought that the killing and starvation in the besieged Srebrenica had ended, and that the world would protect Srebrenica. Two years later, on July 11, 1995, the UN protected area was captured. In front of a department store in Srebrenica, 300 meters from the seat of the commander of the UN force in Bosnia, French General Maurilion said: We are under the protection of the United Nations. “On July 11, we came to Srebrenica, Serbia, after the rebellion. It’s time to take revenge on the Turks in the area,” said Ratko Mladic, commander of the Serbian Army during the war. “Dahi and show the city to the Serbian people on the eve of another great Serbian holiday.”

The United Nations handed over the Protectorate to Ratko Mladic. The result of the occupation of Srebrenica was the commission of genocidal war crimes against the Bosniaks in the Protectorate. The world at that time deliberately handed over an unarmed people into the hands of criminals, a Protectorate that should be protected because the resolution of the largest organization in the world, the resolution of the United Nations Security Council, promised it. . The United Nations Court, the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice in the Hague, years after the occupation of Srebrenica and the crimes committed, would render a verdict that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica and that the perpetrators of that crime were the Bosnian Serb army and police forces. The entire military and political leadership of the Republic of Serbia was convicted of genocide.

In June 2015, on the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, the United Kingdom sponsored a resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning the Bosnian genocide and war crimes during the Bosnian War. This attempt failed due to a veto by the Russian Federation at the request of the Republic of Serbia.

The surviving genocide victims have been waiting for almost 30 years since the Srebrenica genocide, for the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution on May 23, 2024, condemning the Srebrenica genocide and establishing the International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide, on the proposal of Germany and Rwanda. The cleansing of the conscience of the United Nations, which has been going on for 30 years, is unlikely to be washed clean by this organization, which was founded to maintain peace after the Holocaust against the Jews by Nazi Germany. In the vote on the resolution, we can see what genocide and Srebrenica are in today’s world. We can see the morality and immorality of small and large countries, and we can see the faces of some of our brother countries, as they say. That is how their political representatives call those of us who died in the genocide. In this “brotherhood”, one of our high-level delegations, led by then Chairman of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic, received assurances from the President of Azerbaijan himself at a dinner in Baku (I was also present at the time), who compared Srebrenica and Nagorno-Karabakh and their representatives walked into the corridor during the vote on the resolution. We learned that Belgrade on the water was more important to some of our brothers than the genocide, and we learned from each member state separately what Srebrenica meant to them 30 years after the genocide. I know that there is anger and disappointment in certain countries, and if those of us who survived the genocide knew what Srebrenica meant to us, what Srebrenica meant to us Bosnians, to us and our country, at least in the areas of the country where the genocide did not take place, they would deny it.

There are many examples that clearly show what Srebrenica means to us. One of them is the fate of the six sons of Mehmet Alić and Hafka Alić from Podgaj near Srebrenica. In the early seventies, in order to give his family a better life, Mehmet went to Germany for work, but the war brought him to Germany. Hafka’s wife and her six sons Kadir, Behadir, Fadil, Muja, Nuria and Sakib stayed in Srebrenica. In July 1995, all six were found alive and they set out in a procession to Tuzla, and mother Hafka went to Potočare with her daughters-in-law and grandchildren, and then evacuated to Tuzla by bus. They were placed in a primary school in Doborovci near Gracanica. There she waited for news about the fate of her six sons. Months passed, and there was still no news that they were alive. A few months later, the youngest son Sakib wrote a letter from the Šlivovica refugee camp in Serbia. Sakib’s wife, the youngest daughter-in-law, read a letter to the happy mother Hafka. When she finished reading, her mother’s heart stopped beating and she died. A few months later Sakib came back to life, he survived alone, five brothers were killed. He looked for a job in different companies, Elektroprivreda, Telekom, Posta, there was no place for Sakib, he was willing to accept a utility company, but there was no place anywhere. He left for Austria without his family and worked for a company that cut down forests in the Alps. There he was killed by a stone in an alpine meadow, ending his young life. Father Mehmed retired in Germany, returned to Dobrovci to live with his grandchildren for a short time, and finally died of grief for his sons, because that was our Srebrenica.

In July 1995, Mejra Ahmetović from the village of Poloznik lost her husband Mehmed and four sons Sadik, Meha, Mevlid and Smajil. Life in exile brought him to Gradacac in northern Bosnia. She spent her later years in Gradacac. In the summer of 2020, she fell ill. The Emergency Medical Services in Gradacac gave her a prescription for medicines to be bought in the city pharmacy. A few days later, she died in UKC Tuzla. On the day of the funeral, some state guardians of the city pharmacy came to the house of Mejra’s late mother and demanded the return of the medicines she had bought in the Gradacac pharmacy, under the pretext that if these medicines were not returned, it would harm the state, the same state that gave her four sons, because that was our Srebrenica.

I don’t remember exactly which year it was, but first of all, on the tenth anniversary of the genocide, a girl from the town of Sase in the city of Srebrenica called me and asked if she could postpone her graduation. The funeral was scheduled for July 11 at the Sarajevo Medical Faculty. If I remember correctly, the funeral of someone close to her was held on that day. Her graduation was not postponed, she is currently working as a doctor somewhere, and I would not be surprised if she found a job somewhere in the West, because that is our Srebrenica.

Almost every family of genocide victims has many examples that answer for us the meaning of Srebrenica, the questions and shame faced by our mothers, sisters, students and graduates. Can this resolution wake us up, can we still have empathy for the survivors, can we have the strength to look in the mirror and answer these difficult questions. Srebrenica is our moral problem, and if we fail the Srebrenica test, our future will be difficult.