# Srebrenica Genocide In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić overran **Srebrenica**, a town in eastern Bosnia that the United Nations had declared a "safe area" and that lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers were guarding. Over the following days they separated the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys from the women and children, killed **more than 8,000** of them, and buried the bodies in mass graves. Then they dug the graves up and moved the remains to hide what had happened. It was the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War. Two international courts have ruled it [[Genocide]]. It is on this map because the denial outlived the killing. Serbia's leaders, including [[Aleksandar Vučić]] and [[Ana Brnabić]], accept that it was a terrible crime and reject the word genocide. Meanwhile the imagery of the war that produced it circulates in the global far right as an inspiration. ## What happened | Date | Event | |---|---| | **16 Apr 1993** | UN Security Council Resolution 819 declares Srebrenica a safe area | | **6 Jul 1995** | Bosnian Serb forces attack the enclave | | **11 Jul 1995** | Mladić enters Srebrenica. Thousands of residents flee to the Dutch base at Potočari | | **12–13 Jul 1995** | Men and boys are separated from women and children, and the Dutch hand over those sheltering in the compound. Mass executions begin | | **mid-to-late Jul 1995** | The killing continues at sites around the enclave for more than a week | The victims' list kept by the Srebrenica memorial, cited by the UN in 2025, holds **8,372 names**. About 7,000 victims have been identified by DNA from remains, many scattered across several graves, and about 1,000 are still missing. Newly identified victims are still buried each 11 July at the Potočari memorial. ## The rulings - **ICTY, 2004.** In the case of Radislav Krstić, a Bosnian Serb general, the Appeals Chamber upheld the finding that **genocide** was committed at Srebrenica. Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić were later convicted of it and are serving life sentences (see [[Bosnian War]]). - **International Court of Justice, 26 February 2007.** In *Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro*, the court found that genocide was committed at Srebrenica. It found that Serbia did not itself commit it (13 votes to 2) and was not complicit (11 to 4). It also found that Serbia **violated its obligation to prevent** the genocide (12 to 3) and **to punish** it, by failing to hand Mladić over to the tribunal (14 to 1). It was the first time a state was found to have breached the [[Genocide Convention]]. - **Dutch courts.** The Netherlands' Supreme Court held the Dutch state partly liable. In 2013 it was found responsible for three deaths. In 2019 the court set its liability at 10% for about 350 men who could have stayed inside the Dutch compound. - **UN General Assembly, 23 May 2024.** A resolution designated **11 July** as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. It passed **84 to 19, with 68 abstentions**. Germany and Rwanda were among its sponsors. Serbia, Russia and China voted against. ## The denial | When | Who | What | |---|---|---| | **20 Jul 1995** | [[Aleksandar Vučić]], then a Radical Party MP | Days after the killings, he told Serbia's parliament: "kill one Serb and we will kill a hundred Muslims." He later said it was taken out of context and that he had been quoting his party leader, Vojislav Šešelj. When he went to the 20th-anniversary ceremony in 2015, as prime minister, he was driven out by a crowd throwing stones, under banners quoting the line | | **31 Mar 2010** | Serbia's parliament | Condemns "the crime" at Srebrenica and apologises, without using the word genocide | | **14 Nov 2018** | [[Ana Brnabić]], then prime minister | "No, I do not think that the terrible massacre at Srebrenica was genocide." The president of the UN tribunals' residual mechanism rebuked her in Belgrade six days later | | **Jul 2021** | Milorad Dodik, Bosnian Serb leader | "There was no genocide." After the international High Representative made genocide denial a crime in Bosnia, Republika Srpska passed a law refusing to apply it and boycotted state institutions | | **May 2024** | Vučić | Calls the UN resolution "highly politicized," says it will "open a Pandora's box," and says it brands Serbia a "genocidal nation." Dodik renews his threat that Republika Srpska will secede | | **Jul 2025** | Serbian state | No Serbian state official attends the 30th anniversary. Vučić posts condolences calling it a "terrible crime" | > [!important] ⭐ The finding: "a terrible crime, but not genocide" is the official position > Serbia's leaders do not deny that the killings happened. That would be impossible against the graves, the DNA identifications and the court record. They deny the **legal category**, because genocide is the finding that carries moral and historical weight, and it is the one two international courts made. The structure is the same as other forms of denial covered here, from [[Holocaust Denial]] onward: the facts are conceded, and their meaning is contested. It is also why the student movement that won Serbia's 2026 election inherits a question the old government spent thirty years avoiding. ## The far-right afterlife The gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019 drew directly on the Bosnian war (see [[Christchurch Mosque Shootings]] and [[Brenton Tarrant]]): - On his way to the first mosque he played a Bosnian Serb wartime propaganda song praising Karadžić. Outlets give its title differently. - The song's video is the origin of the **"Remove Kebab"** meme, a white-supremacist euphemism for driving Muslims out of Europe. The phrase was written on one of his rifles. - His weapons were also inscribed with the names of Serbian medieval and anti-Ottoman figures, including Miloš Obilić, the legendary assassin of the Ottoman sultan at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. For this corner of the far right, Srebrenica is not a crime to deny but a precedent to admire. It links the Balkan wars to the [[Great Replacement Theory]] and to violent [[Islamophobia]]. ## See Also - [[Bosnian War]] · [[Yugoslav Wars]] · [[Genocide]] · [[Genocide Convention]] · [[Ethnic Cleansing]] · [[Holocaust Denial]] · [[Aleksandar Vučić]] · [[Ana Brnabić]] · [[Slobodan Milošević]] · [[Serbia]] · [[Christchurch Mosque Shootings]] · [[Great Replacement Theory]] · [[UN General Assembly]]