Fifteen years ago, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladić executed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys and forced another 25,000 women, children and elderly people to leave their homes. The massacre was found to constitute genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2004, a finding reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice in 2007.
Since last year, the European Union has joined the countries that recognise 11 July as the Day of Commemoration of the Srebrenica Genocide. This token of remembrance is denied within Bosnia and Herzegovina, as representatives of the Serb Republic in the Bosnian parliament are still blocking initiatives to recognise a national day of remembrance.
Statement by Alison Smith, Legal Counsel of No Peace Without Justice:
“No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) and the Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty (NRPTT) honour the victims of the Srebrenica massacre and their surviving loved-ones, many of whom were themselves subjected to horrific crimes committed by forces under the command of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic. The fact that General Mladic, indicted in 1996 by the ICTY for genocide and crimes against humanity, still remains at large today is a profound moral failure for Serbia and for the international community; most importantly, it is an affront to the memory of those who died and to the suffering of those who survived.
“NPWJ and NRPTT call on the Government of Serbia to redouble its efforts to secure the arrest and transfer of General Mladic to the ICTY to face trial, along with former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is currently standing trial before the tribunal following his arrest last year. The European Union should take all possible measures to ensure Serbia’s cooperation in this regard and keep Serbia’s EU-accession process conditional upon the arrest and transfer of Ratko Mladic for trial in The Hague. The UN Security Council should restate that the ICTY will remain in operation until General Mladic has been arrested and his trial concluded. If the ICTY closes its doors without having tried General Mladic, it would be a victory of violence over justice, calling into question the very core objective of the Tribunal.
“As 775 newly-identified victims of the massacre will be buried and several thousand mourners will arrive in Srebrenica after a 110 km ‘Peace Walk’ from the town of Nezuk, NPWJ and NRPTT stand with the victims’ central message that those responsible for the crimes committed at Srebrenica must be brought to justice, so that sustainable peace and reconciliation can be possible among the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the former Yugoslavia more broadly.”
For further information, contact Alison Smith on asmith@npwj.org or +32-486-986 235 or Nicola Giovannini on ngiovannini@npwj.org or +32-2-548-3913.
