Legacy Matters

A Shameful Legacy

Not all Legacies are Great.  Many are shameful as we are reminded on the 10th anniversary of Srebrenica where 8000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered because their Dutch peacekeepers wouldn't fight to save them.   

The killings began on July 11, 1995 when Bosnian Serb soldiers overran the town, which was at the time in a United Nations "safe" zone.
Outgunned UN troops watched as the men were separated from the women. The men and boys were led off and slaughtered, and their bodies dumped in mass graves throughout eastern Bosnia.  The Srebrenica victims were among about 250,000 people killed in the 1992-95 war among Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has indicted the alleged masterminds of the massacre - Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, General Ratko Mladic ? for genocide and crimes against humanity at Srebrenica and elsewhere. Both are still at large.

Switzerland's Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the ICTY, did not attend the commemoration ceremony "out of respect for the victims". Her spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said that Del Ponte could not look the victims straight in the face while those responsible were still on the run."As long as they are not arrested, justice will not be done," she commented.

Mark Brown, the special envoy of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, read out a personal message

We cannot evade our own share of responsibility. As I wrote in my report in 1999 we made serious errors of judgement rooted in a philosophy of impartiality and non-violence, which however admirable was unsuited to the conflict in Bosnia. That is why, as I also wrote, the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our, the UN, history forever.

One refugee, now in Chicago, is the artist Samir Biscevic, who continues to bear witness to the suffering through his art.

"Slowly, little by little, I wanted my artwork to be dedicated to Bosnian victims," he said. "Talking about truth, that is healing. That's what makes our pain less."

On Monday, nearly 1,000 spectators gathered in Daley Plaza to mark the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre--
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"I wanted to show people how does it look when you have 1,000 people on the ground," Biscevic said. "Then you can imagine 10,000. I tried to paint the last minutes on the ground. I'd like the people here to feel something as those people who died."

But to Biscevic, the most important statement was illustrated by the blindfolds on bystanders in Daley Plaza, showing how the international community turned a blind eye to the atrocities.

UPDATE 1.  Christopher Hitchens on the lessons of Srebrenica

Above all, what I remember is the sense of shame. A French general named Philippe Morillon had promised the terrified refugees that they would be safe. A Dutch commander had been mandated to make good on this promise. The United Nations, the European Union, the "peacekeepers" of all nations had assured the terrified civilians of Bosnia-Herzegovina that the international community was stronger than Milosevic's depraved regime and the death squads that it had spawned. And those who were so foolish as to trust this pledge were then hideously put to death. On video. In plain sight. Scanned from NATO and American satellites circulating indifferently in outer space. What must it be like to die like that, gutted like a sheep in full view of the vaunted "international community," while your family is bullied and humbled in front of you and while your captors and killers taunt you in their stolen or borrowed United Nations blue helmets? Because yes, all that really happened, too, and meanwhile the nurturing and protective Dutch officers were photographed clinking glasses of champagne with Gen. Ratko Mladic. Shame isn't really the word for it.