Bosnia yesterday commemorated the 20th anniversary of the slayings of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica, as debate continues to rage over its description as genocide.
The remains of 136 newly identified dead were to be laid to rest alongside more than 6,000 others buried at a memorial center just outside the eastern Bosnian town.
Thousands of Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces after they captured Srebrenica in July 1995, near the end of Bosnia’s ethnic war, in what has been called the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
Photo: EPA
About 50,000 people, with dignitaries from Bosnia and abroad, were expected to be present at a ceremony marking two decades since the massacre, while a day of mourning was to be observed.
International officials due to attend include EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and former US president Bill Clinton — in office during the massacre — whose administration brokered the Dayton Agreement that ended Bosnia’s war just a few months after the Srebrenica slaughter.
Clinton also attended the 10th anniversary of the mass killing.
Serbia, which backed Bosnian Serbs during and after the war that claimed about 100,000 lives beginning in 1992, was to be represented by Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.
Serbian and Bosnian Serb politicians have long denied the scale of the killing in Srebrenica, although two international tribunals have described the bloodshed as genocidal.
In 2005, then-Serbian president Boris Tadic attended ceremonies marking the event’s 10th anniversary, becoming the first leader from his country to visit the site.
In 2010, the Serbian National Assembly condemned the massacre; three years later, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic made a personal apology.
However, all of Serbia’s leaders, including Vucic, have persistently refused to refer to the massacre as part of a genocide.
The qualification remains a matter of even broader dispute.
Last week, Western powers clashed with Russia when Moscow — reportedly after lobbying by Serbia and Bosnian Serbs — vetoed a draft UN resolution submitted by the UK that called for the UN Security Council to recognize the Srebrenica mass killing as genocidal.
Along with Nikolic, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik welcomed the Russian veto, thanking Moscow for “preventing the adoption of a resolution that would have complicated the situation and deepened divisions within Bosnia.”
Two decades on, Bosnia is still frozen in the ethnic divisions that fueled its civil war, and lags behind its Balkan neighbors in its bid to join the EU.
Since the war, the country consists of two semi-autonomous entities — the Muslim-Croat Federation and the ethnic Serbs’ Republika Srpska.
Srebrenica has remained in the Serb-run half.
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