Every year from now on the UN will commemorate the genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by the Bosnian Serbs in 1995. The resolution, adopted by the United Nations, was fiercely opposed by Serbia.
The United Nations on Thursday approved a resolution establishing an annual day to commemorate the genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs in 1995, a move vehemently opposed by Serbs who fear it would qualify them all supporters of the “genocide” of the massacre.
The vote in the General Assembly, which has 193 members, was adopted by 84 votes to 19, with 68 abstentionsreflecting many countries’ concerns about the vote’s impact on reconciliation efforts in deeply divided Bosnia.
The resolution designates July 11 as the “International Day of Reflection and Remembrance of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide”, which will be observed annually.
The resolution, sponsored by Germany and Rwanda, does not mention the Serbs as guilty, but that has not stopped the intense lobbying campaign for “no” led by the president of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik , and the populist president of neighboring Serbia, Alexandre Vucic.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serbs invaded a UN-protected safe zone in Srebrenica. They separated at least 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters and massacred them. Those who tried to escape were chased through the woods and mountains around the city.
The Srebrenica killings were the bloody climax of the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, which took place after the breakup of then-Yugoslavia unleashed nationalist passions and territorial ambitions that pitted Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations, Croats and Bosniaks Muslims.
Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs have denied that a genocide took place in Srebrenica, although it was established by two UN tribunals.
Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia that comprises about half its territory, said on the social media platform Muslims and that she was going divide the country. He suggested that his government would secede from Bosnia if the resolution passed.
President Dodik has made several such threats in the past for Serb-controlled territories to secede from Bosnia and join neighboring Serbia. He and other Bosnian Serb officials are the subject of American and British sanctionsin part for having jeopardized the American peace plan that ended the war in Bosnia.
The final draft resolution adds a statement reiterating “the General Assembly’s unwavering commitment to maintaining stability and fostering unity in diversity in Bosnia and Herzegovina“.
The 2007 ruling by the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest court, that the acts committed in Srebrenica constituted genocide is included in the draft resolution. It was the first genocide in Europe since the Nazi Holocaust during World War IIwhich killed around 6 million Jews and people from other minorities.
Richard Gowan, director of the UN’s International Crisis Group, called the timing of the vote “unfortunate, given allegations that Israel is continuing genocide in Gaza.”
“The vote will be an opportunity to do more political theater”, he told AP. “I expect Russia and China will make a point of questioning why the US and European governments are focusing on a massacre in the 1990s rather than killings in Gaza today.”