Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Srebrenica and All Wars
Description:
According to UN Security Council Resolution 824 of May 6, 1993, Srebrenica was declared a demilitarized zone under the protection of the UN among other settlements of BiH. However, this was not done, and in the area around Srebrenica remained a contingent of the army of BiH - the Bosnian army - under the command of Nasser Oric, as well as volunteer formations. On May 30, 1995, the UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali accused the authorities of BiH of non-compliance with the requirements of the resolution, after which attacks by Srebrenica on Serb-controlled territories increased. The list of Serbs killed in this territory in 1992-1995, containing the names of 3200 people, was not subsequently accepted for consideration by the Hague Tribunal.
On July 11, 1995, RS army units under the command of General Ratko Mladic took Srebrenica and, according to the Hague Tribunal, killed about 8,000 and drove away about 30,000 Bosniaks. The Dutch battalion UNPROFOR failed to defend Srebrenica from Serb attack.
On January 22, 1996, U.S. Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuk confirmed the existence of mass graves containing more than 2,000 Bosniaks. According to some reports, there was no prearranged plan for the Srebrenica massacre. At the same time, in 1996, Dutch Defense Minister Joris Vorkhov repeatedly said that the formations of the army of BiH repeatedly invaded the demilitarized zone. To date, the remains of about 5,000 victims have been found, of which 1,620 have been identified. On 16 April 2002, the Dutch government resigned due to the results of the Dutch commission on the events in Srebrenica. In October 2005, the RS government sent a list of 19,500 people involved in those events to the Hague Tribunal.
The events in Srebrenica became one of the main components of the trials at the Hague Tribunal, which calls them genocide, which is not a generally accepted point of view. According to the first of the convicts, Drazhen Erdemović, about 1,200 men and children were killed in Srebrenica. For the first time, the RS leadership recognized the responsibility of Serbian forces for the events in Srebrenica in June 2004.
At the same time, the International Association for Strategic Studies, of which former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was a member, called the 8,000 figure “misinformation.” About 3,000 people believed to be victims of Srebrenica participated in the 1996 Bosnian elections. The association also claims that the number is deliberately overstated to cover up crimes against Serb civilians near Srebrenica before 1995.
The UN observer in BiH, Philip Corvin, provides evidence that in Srebrenica there was not a large-scale ethnic cleansing, but a series of attacks and counterattacks by the belligerents over three years. According to him, the number of Bosniaks killed is no more than the number of Serbs killed, which, according to Serbian sources, is about 2,800.
In late May 2005, a documentary was released in which Serbian special forces killed six Srebrenica residents on 16 and 17 July 1995. But according to Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic, they happened 150km from Srebrenica.
Today, when trying to create a unified law on holidays, representatives of the Bosnian-Muslim Federation constantly propose to celebrate this day as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Srebrenica and all wars, but the Serbian side categorically opposes this. In the FBiG itself, this day is a public holiday.