Vigil of the women from Srebrenica and Bosnia and the Society for Threatened Peoples

on the Vigil of the women from Srebrenica and Bosnia and the Society for Threatened Peoples at The Hague on Monday, 26th February 2007 in front of the ICJ, International Court of Justice, Peace Palace, at the pronouncement of judgment of the case Bosnia-Herzegovina vs. Serbia-Montenegro

Serbia’s genocide in Bosnia 1992- 1995

The denial of genocide has a tradition in Europe of the 20th century. European governments and parties, courts, institutions and media and European intellectuals have often tabooed, covered up or ignored the mass extermination of Nazism and Stalinism. Never again, they said after the holocaust to which the Jews of Europe were sacrificed. Nevertheless Europe kept silent when Yugoslav troops and Serb militia carried out the genocide in Bosnia, which under the new term of the so-called "ethnic cleansing” entered the international genocide discussion. All these crimes were engineered from Belgrade with the aid of the Serb Ministry of the Interior, the secret service, the armaments companies and paramilitary organizations. In the meantime Serb criminals have been charged or sentenced. To the present day the two wanted main war criminals, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain in hiding thanks to the support of the Serb authorities and Serb military.

Unforgotten are those many personalities from all over the world who have raised their voices for the persecuted Bosnians and supported them with publicity, in politics and in humanitarian terms. Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, said bitterly: ”Europe has learned nothing from the holocaust, Bosnia is a posthumous victory for Hitler”. In similar vein has been the protest of Alain Finkielkraut, Bernhard-Henry Lévy, André Glucksman, Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Susan Sonntag, Ignaz Bubis and the Presidents of the American Jewish Congress Kahn and Siegmann, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, Freimut Duve, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Roy Gutman and many others.

Simon Wiesenthal found himself with the war crimes in Bosnia reminded of "parts of the holocaust”. Wiesenthal himself organized a conference on Bosnia in New York. He was, together with Rita Süssmuth, patron of the large international congress in Bonn in September 1995 on the genocide in Bosnia, which was organized with 150 experts from four continents of the Society for Threatened Peoples, together with the Institute for the Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law(Sarajevo) and the Malayan Human Rights Group for Bosnia.

Briefly sketched below are the criminal methods of this unique genocide in Europe since the Second World War. We honour all the victims, 90% of whom were Bosniaks (Muslims), but likewise unforgotten are the victims of the Croat, Serb, Jewish and Roma nationalities of Bosnia:

1. Setting up of over one hundred concentration and internment camps and the imprisonment of more than 200,000 civilians.

2. Murder of about 30,000 prisoners in camps like Omarska, Manjaca, Keratem, Trnopolje, Luka Brcko, Susica and Foca

3. Rape of about 30,000 women and the setting up of rape camps.

4. Systematic arrest and murder of members of the academic and political elites.

5. Flight and expulsion of about 2.5 million Bosnians and their dispersal over four continents.

6. Encirclement, starvation and shelling of 500,000 Bosnians, of so-called UN safe zones for four years (Sarajevo, Gorazde, Srebrenica, Zepa and Bihac).

7. Killing of over 11,000 inhabitants of the city of Sarajevo, among them 1,500 children.

8. Massacres and mass executions in many municipalities and towns, in north, west and east Bosnia (Posavina, the areas around Prijedor and Podrinje).

9. Murder of 8,350 boys and men in Srebrenica

10. Disposal of the murdered in over 500 mass graves in all occupied areas without any indication of the identity of the victims.

11. Planned destruction of hundreds of villages and estates.

12. Total destruction of the material Islamic and to a large extent also of the Catholic cultures, such as some 1,300 mosques and approximately 500 Catholic churches.

13. Search for about 15,000 still missed and the identification and exhumation of the remains.

Responsible for this text: Tilman Zülch, author of various publications on the Bosnian war, among them being the first ever book on the genocide ("Ethnic cleansing – Genocide for Greater Serbia” Luchterhand, January 1993, Sarajevo 1995). Zülch is an honorary member of the Association of Bosnian women held in concentration camps, holder of the Silver Lily of the Bosnian Governmental Committee, holder of the "Srebrenica Award Against Genocide” bestowed by the three associations of mothers of Srebrenica and of the "Sloboda” (Freedom) Prize of the Anti-War Centre in Sarajevo.