Srebrenica:

For the relatives of the Srebrenica massacre victims, forgiving feels impossible, nearly 30 years on. But if Serbs in Bosnia and Belgrade stop denying and accept that the atrocity was an act of genocide, as states a draft UN resolution due to be put to the vote Thursday, that would enable finding peace, some survivors say.

“Those who led their people into this position (of genocide denial) must accept the truth, so that we can all find peace and move on with our lives”, Kada Hotic told AFP.

The 79-year-old co-director of an association of Srebrenica mothers for nearly three decades, saw her entire male family including her son, husband and two brothers killed in the 1995 massacre.

Along with a handful of other women, she has fought to discover the remains of the victims dumped into dozens of mass graves and to construct a memorial centre just outside the ill-fated town.

The remains of 6,751 victims have been buried there to date.

On July 11, 1995, a few months before Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war ended, Bosnian Serb forces captured the eastern town.

In the following days they killed more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in its vicinity.

The worst atrocity of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, that claimed nearly 100,000 lives, was deemed an act of genocide by two international courts.

A UN court sentenced Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic to life in prison for war crimes including the Srebrenica genocide.

But many Serbian political and religious leaders, as well as many ordinary Serbs, still refuse to call the massacre genocide.

They include Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic, who has been fighting for weeks against the resolution to declare July 11 the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica” starting next year.

For Hotic the most difficult battle has always been against the genocide denial and she voiced hope that the resolution would set a “seal on the truth”.

If the resolution is adopted it will be a satisfaction for Bosnian Muslims, she says, adding it should also be a source of satisfaction for Serbs.

“My child will never be alive again. I will never forgive the criminals.

“I have no right to, in the name of his life”, she said sitting amidst the memorial centre’s tall white tombstones.

But asking for forgiveness and the condemnation of war criminals “would be a remedy for us all”, Hotic maintains.

‘We are all losers’ 

Sadeta Suljic, 57, who lost her brother and father in the massacre, also hopes that the UN resolution will put an end to “lies and denial”.

“We’re not accusing the whole (Serb) people. We want the guilty to be punished,” said Suljic, who heads another association of victims’ relatives.

“I don’t understand that people. How can they deny it?

“They pass by, they see (the cemetery).

“If the resolution is passed, many of them will say ‘Look, we have to stop, we have to say that it (genocide) happened’,” she stressed.

Apart from the international importance of the resolution, which will establish a “day when people will reflect on the crime that was committed here”, Almasa Salihovic hopes it will “change people’s consciousness”.

The 37-year-old employee at the memorial centre, whose brother Abdulah was killed in the massacre at the age of 18, wants to believe the resolution can be a turning point.

She sees the Serbian leaders’ reaction as a final “attempt to prevent the civilised world from forcing them to accept that genocide was committed here”.

For Hotic, the resolution should send a message to future generations.

“A crime never pays. In the crime that was committed here, we are all losers”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a news conference with the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana, Albania, on Sept. 28, 2021. Leaders from the European Union and the Western Balkans are holding an annual summit in Albania’s capital to discuss the six countries’ path to membership in the bloc. fight.
| Photo Credit: AP

Leaders from the European Union and the Western Balkans will hold a summit in Albania’s capital on October 16 to discuss the path to membership in the bloc for the six countries of the region.

The main topics at the annual talks — called the Berlin Process — are integrating the Western Balkans into a single market and supporting their green and digital transformation. The nations in the region are Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

The senior EU officials attending the summit in Tirana are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President Charles Michel. They will be joined by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The six Western Balkan countries are at different stages of integration into the bloc. Serbia and Montenegro were the first Western Balkan countries to launch membership negotiations a few years ago, followed by Albania and Macedonia last year, while Bosnia and Kosovo have only begun the first step of the integration process.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has put integration of the Western Balkans into the EU at the top of the 27-nation bloc’s agenda. The EU is trying to reinvigorate the whole enlargement process, which has been stalled since 2013, when the last country to become a member was Croatia.

The EU had made it a requirement for Western Balkans to reform their economies and political institutions before joining the bloc.

Ms. Von der Leyen mentioned a new growth plan for the Western Balkan countries that she will make public at the summit: opening new trade routes in seven specific areas of the EU’s common market for the Balkan countries, which need to implement quick reforms that in turn will be accompanied by investment.

Ms. Von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference on October 15 after meeting with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, gave no further details.

A bitter dispute between Serbia and Kosovo, a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008, remains a great concern for the EU before the summit. A recent shootout between masked Serb gunmen and Kosovo police that left four people dead and sent tensions soaring in the region seems to have suspended the EU-facilitated dialogue to normalize their ties.

EU officials have called on the Balkan countries to overcome regional conflicts and stand together as Russia wages war in Ukraine.

The summit, which is being held for the first time in a non-EU member country, takes place at a pharaonic landmark, known as the Pyramid. It was built in 1988 as a posthumous museum for Albania’s communist-era strongman, Enver Hoxha.