Leaders paid tribute via teleconference to the dead of the Srebrenica massacre 25 years ago.

Denial of Srebrenica genocide castigated on 25th anniversary

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Virtually joined by world leaders, the survivors of Bosnia’s 1995 Srebrenica massacre on Saturday remembered the victims of Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II and warned of the perpetrators’ persistent refusal to fully acknowledge their responsibility.

Speaking at a commemoration ceremony for the thousands of massacre victims, held in the memorial center and cemetery just outside Srebrenica, a top Bosnian official warned that the extent of the 1995 slaughter is still being systematically denied despite irrefutable evidence of what happened.

“I am calling on our friends from around the world to show, not just with words but also with actions, that they will not accept the denial of genocide and celebration of its perpetrators,” said Sefik Dzaferovic, the Bosnian Muslim member of the country’s tripartite presidency.

In July 1995, at least 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys were separated by Serb troops from their wives, mothers and sisters, chased through woods around Srebrenica and killed by those forces in what is considered the worst massacre on European soil since the Third Reich.

The killing spree was the most brutal episode of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, which began after the breakup of Yugoslavia. More than 100,000 people, an overwhelming majority of them Bosnian Muslim civilians, were killed in the war between Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims before a peace deal was brokered in 1995.

After murdering their victims in Srebrenica a quarter of a century ago, Bosnian Serb soldiers dumped their bodies in numerous mass graves scattered around the eastern town in an attempt to hide the evidence of the crime.

Thanks to an international forensic effort, body parts are still being found in death pits, put together and identified through DNA analysis. Close to 7,000 of those killed have already been found and identified.

What took place in Srebrenica was a mark of shame for the international community because the town had been declared a U.N. “safe haven” for civilians in 1993. But two years later, the outnumbered, outgunned U.N. peacekeepers could only watch as the Bosnian Serb troops separated the town’s men and boys for execution, busing the women and girls to Bosnian government-held territory.

Bosnian Serb political leaders have consistently prevented the country from adopting a law that would ban genocide denial, with the Serb member of Bosnia’s presidency, Milorad Dodik, even publicly describing the Srebrenica slaughter as a “fabricated myth.”