UN approves resolution to commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica genocide annually over

24/5/2024 6:16

        The United Nations approved a resolution Thursday establishing an annual day to commemorate the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs, a move vehemently opposed by Serbs who fear it will brand them all as "genocidal" supporters of the mass killing.
        
        The vote in the 193-member General Assembly was 84-19 with 68 nations abstaining, a reflection of concerns among many countries about the impact of the vote on reconciliation efforts in deeply divided Bosnia.
        
        Supporters had hoped for 100 "yes" votes. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, who voted against the resolution, told the assembly the combined abstentions and "no" votes - 87 - was more than the 84 votes in favor. It is also noteworthy that 22 countries skipped the meeting and didn't vote, some reportedly because of the dispute over the commemoration.
        
        The resolution designates July 11 as the "International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica," to be observed annually starting in two months.
        
        The resolution, sponsored by Germany and Rwanda, doesn’t mention Serbs as the culprit, but that didn’t stop the intense lobbying campaign for a "no" vote by Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik and the populist president of neighboring Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, who had a Serbian flag draped over his shoulders as he sat in the assembly chamber during the vote.
        
        On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serbs overran a U.N.-protected safe area in Srebrenica. They separated at least 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters and slaughtered them. Those who tried to escape were chased through the woods and over the mountains around the town.
        
        The Srebrenica killings were a bloody climax of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which came after the breakup of then-Yugoslavia unleashed nationalist passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.
        
        Both Serbia and Bosnian Serbs <a href="https://apnews.com/article/bosnia-serbs-srebrenica-genocide-denial-56d4c3b1e7dca96a5be28b66a9fcdc6a" xmlns="http://iptc.org/std/NITF/2006-10-18/">have denied</a> that genocide happened in Srebrenica although this has been established by two U.N. courts.
        
        Before the vote, Vucic urged U.N. members to vote "no," calling the resolution "highly politicized." He warned that it will open "Pandora's Box," and said it was not about reconciliation. He said it will only "open old wounds" and create "complete political havoc" not only in the region but in the General Assembly chamber.
        
        Vucic also strongly attacked Germany for trying to give "moral lessons" to the international community and to Serbia, noting that Serbs were among the "very rare" anti-Nazis in southeast Europe during World War II and more than a million Serbs were killed.
        
        Dodik, who is president of Republika Srpska, the Serb part of Bosnia which comprises about half its territory, said Wednesday on the social media platform X that the U.N. resolution was being forced on the country by supporters of Muslim Bosniaks and that it will split up the country. He suggested his government would secede from Bosnia if the resolution were to pass.
        
        Dodik has made several such threats in the past to have the Serb-controlled territories secede from Bosnia and join with neighboring Serbia. He and some other Bosnian Serb officials are under U.S. and British sanctions partly for jeopardizing a U.S. peace plan that ended the Bosnian war.
        
        The determination in 2007 by the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s highest tribunal, that the acts committed in Srebrenica constituted genocide, is included in the draft resolution. It was Europe’s first genocide since <a href="https://apnews.com/article/bosnia-muslims-jews-observe-holocaust-remembrance-day-bcf9f1039d722ddfbf9b4d6af6622f5b" xmlns="http://iptc.org/std/NITF/2006-10-18/">the Nazi Holocaust</a> in World War II, which killed an estimated 6 million Jews and people from other minorities.
        
        Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Antje Leendertse introduced the resolution, saying her country wants to build a multilateral system to prevent a repetition of Nazi Germany's crimes and to honor the memory of the victims and support the survivors. The resolution "is not directed against anybody, not against Serbia," she said, adding that if anything it is directed at the perpetrators of genocide.
        
        She noted that there is an official U.N. commemoration of the 1994 Rwanda genocide on April 7 every year - the day the Hutu-led government began the killing of members of the Tutsi minority and their supporters. The draft resolution is aimed at "closing the gap" by creating a separate U.N. day to commemorate the victims of Srebrenica, she said.
        
        Menachem Rosensaft, the son of Holocaust survivors who is an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that designating July 11 as the official day of remembrance for the Srebrenica genocide "is a moral and legal imperative."
        
        The slain Muslim Bosniaks deserve to have their deaths and the manner of their deaths commemorated and Srebrenica was supposed to be a safe area but was abandoned by Dutch U.N. peacekeepers, leaving the Bosniaks who sought shelter there "to be murdered on the U.N.’s watch," Rosensaft said.
        
        Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, called the timing of the vote "unfortunate, given allegations that Israel is pursuing <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-rafah-un-world-court-2f739ad4f64ff3a8186a423ad8f350e8" xmlns="http://iptc.org/std/NITF/2006-10-18/">genocide in Gaza</a>."
        
        "The vote will be an opportunity for more political theater," he told AP. "I expect Russia and China will make a great point of asking why the U.S. and European governments are concentrating on a massacre in the 1990s rather than killings in Gaza today."