The thousands of Muslims who were brutally murdered by Serb forces in what came to be known as the Srebrenica massacre will be remembered today on the 10th anniversary of an event that shook the world. Serb forces, supported by the Yugoslav government, shot dead more than 10,000 Bosnian Muslims between July 11 and 19 of 1995.
During a memorial ceremony, the bodies of some 600 victims, originally found in a mass grave, will be reburied. A large number of international figures including UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, EU Council Secretary-General and High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, Chief Justice Theodore Meron of the War Crimes Court in The Hague, and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed will attend.
Saleh Al-Asheikh, minister of Islamic affairs, endowments, propagation and guidance, will lead the Saudi delegation to the ceremony. Saudi Arabia has played a big role in the reconstruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina after the devastating war. It has carried out a number of health and educational projects and built several mosques and Islamic schools in various parts of the Balkan country.
Serb forces had targeted Srebrenica from the beginning of the Bosnian War on April 6, 1992. It was subjected to continuous bombardment and military siege by Serb forces, leading to the deaths of hundreds of children and elderly as a result of malnutrition and lack of medicines. Many died of wounds caused by shrapnel from Serb bombs which were dropped by day and night.
The number of people killed in Srebrenica alone between 1992 and 1993, before the massacre, was about 3,000 civilians. As a result of public pressure, this forced the international community to make Srebrenica a safe haven under the protection of UN peacekeepers. The other safe areas in Bosnia were: Zepa, Gorazde, Tuzla, Sarajevo and Bihac. The UN forces disarmed the people of Srebrenica who were defending the city against Serb forces. During that period Ukrainian forces were in charge of safeguarding Srebrenica, a city with a population of more than 90,000. The Ukrainians protected the population from Serb attacks. Later the United Nations replaced the Ukrainians with Dutch forces who did not do much to protect the people.
On July 10, 1995, the day before the massacre, Serb forces continued their mortar attacks and closed their noose around Srebrenica and other safe havens. In Srebrenica, mass panic took hold of the civilian population. Women and children gathered at the UN base of Potocari, together with about 1,700 men, while most of the fighting-age males, mostly unarmed and non-combatants, took to the hills in a desperate attempt to flee to Muslim-held territory to the west.
The residents of Srebrenica called for help but did not receive any response from the international community. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was entangled in a protocol that prevented it from carrying out airstrikes on Serb positions without UN permission. The then UN Secretary-General Boutros Ghali preferred holding negotiations with the Serbs rather than attacking them.
On July 11, Serb forces entered Srebrenica and some of its people requested refuge from Dutch forces who prevented the civilians from entering their bases. When youths tried to make use of Dutch guns to ensure safe passage for women and children before the arrival of Serb forces, the Dutch also prevented them.
This forced many people to take refuge in forests. On their way to Tuzla, 120 kilometers north of Sarajevo, thousands were shot dead by Serb forces who were wearing UN uniforms traveling in UN vehicles ambushed their unarmed prey. The Serbs tied the hands and legs of Bosnians before killing them and burying them in mass graves.
Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic was the leader of butchers in Srebrenica. He targeted well-known Muslim families in Bosnia, those with a cultural, educational, religious and social position in society. He took them to unknown places and killed them. They were later found in the mass graves. Mladic’s brutality had reached its zenith as he told his victims: “Nobody, not even God, can save you. Only I can save you.”
Srebrenica has the largest mass grave known in Europe since World War II. In addition to Serb forces, a number of foreign military organizations including volunteer troops from Russia, the Baltic Republics and Eastern Europe in addition to UN peacekeepers, were involved in the crime. There were accusations that Greek peacekeeping forces had been were involved in the massacre of Muslim men at Srebrenica. After a question from independent MP Andreas Andrianopoulos in Parliament, Justice Minister Anastassis Papaligouras acknowledged for the first time the possibility that Greek volunteer fighters who joined Serb forces in Bosnia took part in the massacre. Papaligouras said Greek prosecutors were investigating the claims. “This type of involvement by paramilitaries, if it actually happened,” said Koumoutsakos, “is condemned in the strongest terms by the Greek government and people.”
Athens prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos ordered a preliminary investigation, which has been assigned to first instance prosecutor Athina Theodoropoulou, in order to establish whether any Greeks were involved in the massacre.
According to a report carried by Dnevni Awaz, Bosnia’s largest selling daily, the Athens prosecutor later confirmed the participation of Greek forces in the massacre and that four of them had received gold medals from Radovan Karadzic.
Dutch soldiers, on the other hand, were given certificates. The Greeks were in constant touch with Gen. Mladic, who asked them to hoist the Serbian flag in Srebrenica when it fell to his forces.
The Bosnian war was an appalling tragedy as it claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Muslims including the 10,000 massacred in Srebrenica. It also left 150,000 people handicapped while 30,000 to 50,000 women were raped and nearly one million were displaced. The war destroyed 90 percent of the country’s infrastructure. The Serb forces had a strategy aimed at destroying all the Islamic cultural and historical monuments in the state, including mosques and libraries. Not even Muslim cemeteries were spared destruction.