RIGHTS-BALKANS: Bosnian Serbs Finally Admit Srebrenica Massacre

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 22 2004 (IPS) - The Serb government of the Republic of Srpska has admitted for the first time that almost 8,000 Muslims were killed in cold blood nine years ago in the worst atrocity in Europe after World War II.

The Serb government of the Republic of Srpska has admitted for the first time that almost 8,000 Muslims were killed in cold blood nine years ago in the worst atrocity in Europe after World War II.

The Republic of Srpska is the Serb entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the new republics carved out of former Yugoslavia.

"In the period from July 10-19, 1995, several thousand Muslim men and boys were executed in a way that represents heavy breaches of international humanitarian law," says a 42-page official report. "The executors, among other things, took to activities to cover up the crime by relocating the bodies."

The commission names the sites of 32 mass graves near Srebrenica, the Bosnian town that was a Muslim enclave in the area, with 75 percent of its population Muslim. Of the 32 sites, 11 contained bodies relocated after the massacre.

The town had been placed under UN protection two years earlier.

For the first time the persons responsible for the massacres under the so-called Operation "Krivaja" have been named by the Serb government. The three stages of the operation described in the report and based on war time documents, included overrunning Srebrenica, separating men from women, and executing the men considered able to fight.

The operation was to be the final stage of eliminating Muslims from eastern Bosnia in the war that raged between local Muslims and Serbs since 1992.

The war ended with the internationally sponsored Dayton Peace Accords that made Bosnia-Herzegovina a single country with two entities – the Republic of Srpska (RS) and the Muslim-Croat Federation. The war took more than 200,000 lives. Most of the victims were Muslims of Slav origin.

In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army overran Srebrenica as a force of about 600 lightly armed Dutch UN peacekeepers stood by helplessly.

Men and boys above the age of 15 were separated from women and children, and executed over several days. Women and children were bussed to Muslim controlled areas. None of the survivors returned to live in Srebrenica.

Srebrenica, that was home to some 22,000 Muslims was one of three UN protected areas in eastern Bosnia. Like Zepa and Gorazde, it was a Muslim enclave surrounded by the Bosnian Serb army, in an area otherwise ethnically cleansed of some 300,000 Muslims back in 1992.

Following the Dayton accords the official RS line was to deny war crimes against non- Serbs, including the Srebrenica massacre. RS officials maintained that stand despite the discoveries of mass graves and identification of some 1,700 victims.

The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) set up by the UN at The Hague has already sentenced two Bosnian Serb officers for their hand in the massacre.

General Radisav Krstic was sentenced to 35 years in prison, while Colonel Dragan Obrenovic received a 17-year sentence. The word "genocide" was used for the first time in that sentence in the 10-year history of the ICTY.

Wartime Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic are the most wanted men by the ICTY. Both went underground in 1996. Most Bosnian Serbs regard them as national heroes.

Karadzic is said to be hiding in the mountainous border area between the RS and Serbia and Montenegro. Mladic is believed to be moving from place to place in Serbia proper and the eastern parts of the RS.

"Accepting and facing the fact that some members of the Serb people committed crimes in Srebrenica in July 1995 could help investigate other crimes in Bosnia and punish those responsible," the report on Srebrenica said.

That would help bring people in Bosnia-Herzegovina closer together and start a badly needed process of reconciliation, head of the international mission in Bosnia Paddy Ashdown said last week.

The country had areas with a mixed population before war, but the tendency since 1992 is for ethnic groups to live where their group prevails. Bosnia saw unprecedented internal displacement of Serbs, Muslims and Croats. All the efforts of the international peacekeepers and observers have not brought the three groups closer.

"There can hardly be any closure and real reconciliation if people live next to each other but turn their heads away from what was done," Belgrade human rights activist Natasa Kandic told IPS.

"In 50 years people will forget who was sentenced to how many years, but history has to have a record of what was really going on. This (report on Srebrenica) may be just a little step in the right direction," she added.

In the meantime, faced with strict international sanctions over its non-cooperation with the ICTY (handing over of war crimes indictees), the RS has taken further steps.

Head of the RS parliament Dragan Kalinic has appealed to Radovan Karadzic to surrender to the ICTY, in the first such move. "We’ll face the strictest international punishment if Karadzic does not willingly go to The Hague," Kalinic told Bosnian media. "Such a clear message came both from the United States and the European Union."