Dizzy

  • What Happened
    • Survivor Stories
    • History & Analysis
    • External Resources
    • Our Impact: Stories behind the Statistics
  • Our Work
    • About Us
      • The Charity
      • Staff
      • Regional & Country Boards
      • Academic Advisory Board
      • President and Patrons
      • APPG on Srebrenica
      • Contact Us
    • Memorial Events
      • Resources and Registration for Event Organisers
      • Past Memorial Events
        • National
        • Local
    • Education
    • Lessons from Srebrenica
    • Supporting Community Action
    • Latest News
    • Videos
    • Frequently Asked Questions – FAQ
  • What You Can Do
    • Resources for Event Organisers
    • Educate
    • We Are One Tournament
    • Build Better Communities
    • Share your Stories
    • Visit Srebrenica
      • Our Visits Programme
      • Bearing Witness
    • Donate
      • Support our work Scotland
      • International Srebrenica Memorial Learning Centre
    • Jobs
  • Our Impact
    • Messages of Support
    • Download Annual Report
    • People Taking Action
    • In The Media
    • Inspiration – Music, Poems and Prayers
    • Memorial Day Reflections
Home Primary Lessons from Srebrenica Stephen Williams MP

Stephen Williams MP

Stephen Williams MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, reflects on his visit to Srebrenica.

Peering out of the plane window as we descended into Sarajevo I could see the large detached houses with low pitched roofs that are a feature of the Bosnian countryside. Images flashed back into my mind of houses like these on fire.

My vivid memory was from twenty two years ago, when the full horror of the Bosnian civil war was beamed into our living rooms every night for three years. Sarajevo was under siege. The ghastly phrase “ethnic cleansing” became part of the language of war zone reporting. Such scenes were taking place in modern Europe, a half century after the continent had last been convulsed in a war where civilians were the main casualties. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 it seemed that at last west and east Europe were past the age of dictators and would enjoy peace, democracy and prosperity. But as Yugoslavia unravelled into its ethnic components, I was angry that the promise of a new Europe was slipping away as the EU, NATO and the UN seemed impotent in the face of well armed aggression, in particular from the Serbs who had seized most of the Yuogoslav federal army’s hardware.

Now I was visiting Bosnia for the first time, not as an angry young politician, but as a government minister, leading a delegation of young community leaders most of whom were infants in the 1990s with no contemporary memory of the civil war. Our visit was organised by the charity, Remembering Srebrenica. The massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 when 8,372 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by the Bosnian Serb army is recognised as an act of genocide, along with other post 1945 killing fields in Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur. The government is funding the charity to enable over 700 young British community leaders to visit Bosnia to reflect on how advanced countries can so easily slip into barbarism and also to make a pledge to enhance community relations in our very diverse 21st century Britain.

Our three day visit started with a talk from the Director of the International Commission for Missing Persons. The ICMP was set up to deal with one of the grisly consequences of ethnic cleansing, a countryside pocketed with mass graves of unidentified bodies. As we soon learned, the bodies still being discovered are actually partial remains. The victims from those burned out villages, mainly men shot in the back of the head, were initially buried in mass graves. But soon after, in a desperate attempt to conceal the extent of their war crimes, the Serb soldiers dug up the pits with excavators , breaking up the bodies in the process and then scattering the remains over several sites many miles apart.

The full horror of this was revealed the next day (last Thursday) when we travelled to the ICMP’s mortuary and lab in Tuzla. In a chilled room, on shelves that resembled an archive or filing store, were bags of different sizes. Each bag contained unique remains, separated from each other by DNA testing. But these were not cadavers, rather they were skulls, femurs or just pieces of a rib cage.

In the lab we saw how the ICMP extracts DNA from the bones and then tries to make a match with the database of blood samples taken from Bosnians who are missing a family member. So far, over 6,000 matches have been made. Forensic science thus gives some closure to grieving relatives and also adds to the evidence of war crimes.

The Tuzla part of the trip was horrific, but the war was still to me something that I had studied in the media, books and now with what later generations would see as grisly archaeology. History would come alive when we travelled to Srebrenica, on the border with Serbia. Outwardly, it’s an unremarkable small town. But its name will surely be infamous in European history for many years. There we met survivors of the massacre that took place in July 1995.

First we met the Mayor, Camil Durakovic. Now in his mid thirties, he was just 16 when Serb forces surrounded his mainly Muslim town. He was the youngest member of the “death march” of men who fled into the mountains and forests to escape to the safe haven of Tuzla. Srebrenica itself should have been safe, as there were Dutch UN peacekeepers nearby. But in one of the most shameless episodes in the history of that organisation, they cooperated with the Serb forced evacuation of the town. Camil told me that only one of his school class mates survived.

We then visited the memorial at Potocari, a mile or so up the road, opposite the battery factory that had been the base of the Dutch soldiers, where many civilians had fled, hoping for protection. The field has 8,372 white marble columns, in the traditional Islamic design of gravestones. There is also a frieze, with each of the names of the victims. Our guide was Hasan Hasanovic. His story was particularly upsetting, as he had lost both his father and his twin brother, Husein. He introduced us to one of the most remarkable group of people I have met in my life, the Srebrenica Mothers. Most are widows as well as grieving mothers. We sat and listened in stunned silence as they told their stories. One woman had lost fifty five relatives. Almost twenty years on the anger was still burning and the grief palpable. They still seek justice and recognition from the rest of the world. The encounter will probably be the longest lasting memory of the delegation.

The next morning we met the spiritual and political leaders of the Bosnian Muslims. The Grand Mufti of Sarajevo told us that the Serbs were really victims too, as they have to live with the knowledge of the war crimes that many of them had committed or condoned. I spoke with the President, Bakir Izetbegovic (son of the leader who was a familiar presence on TV twenty years ago) about British government support for Bosnian membership of the EU and NATO. I believe that this is the political hope for the future. Slovenia and Croatia are already members of the EU. Two years ago I was in Macedonia, helping with their EU accession preparations. Serbia is also likely to be a member soon. Then the European family of nations can live up to the promise of the removal of the Iron Curtain. While this Easter we watch events in Ukraine, another cocktail of languages, religions and painful memories, let’s hope diplomacy triumphs.

Finally, what have we learned? On the wall of the photograph display in Sarajevo about Srebrenica is the quote attributed to my Bristol MP predecessor Edmund Burke, “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” We can certainly reflect on that while looking at Ukraine or, on a more ghastly scale, Syria. But soon I will meet up with my new young friends from the delegation, to discuss what we can do to make our own towns and cities more cohesive and happy places to live.

 

First published here on 14 April 2014, republished with the kind permission of Stephen Williams MP. If you would like to read more of Stephen’s parliamentary blog posts you can visit his website.

Nov 17, 2014Remembering Srebrenica
MAKE A DONATION
Remembering Srebrenica remains committed to honouring the victims and survivors of the genocide.

SUPPORT US
SUPPORT US & PLEDGE
Make a difference, support our charity and all those affected by the tragic Genocide of Srebrenica. Pledge for our cause now.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
Remembering Srebrenica newsletter allows you to keep up to date with latest news, events and how you can support us.

SIGN UP
November 17, 2014 Bearing Witness, Lessons from Srebrenica
Cllr Noordad AzizAngus Robertson
  You Might Also Like  
 
The Courage to Defend: Jovan Divjak
 
The Courage to Risk Your Life for Neighbours: Fadila Kapic-Mehmedbašić
 
Breaking the Silence – video
 Search 

Remembering SrebrenicaFollow

Remembering Srebrenica
Remembering Srebrenica Retweeted
RemSrebNIRem Srebrenica NI 🇧🇦@RemSrebNI·
17h

We are delighted to play our part in this week of remembrance for holocaust and genocide. Many thanks @ANDborough for organising the week. Still time to register to hear from survivors and remember the victims:

618Twitter
SrebrenicaUKRemembering Srebrenica@SrebrenicaUK·
17h

I will light a candle and put it in my window at 8pm on 27 January for #HolocaustMemorialDay. #LightTheDarkness with me. https://t.co/i6NbC41jPO

711Twitter
SrebrenicaUKRemembering Srebrenica@SrebrenicaUK·
23 Jan

All six episodes of the “Untold Killing” podcast which provides in depth analysis of the genocide in Srebrenica are available now. https://t.co/ueJmqZyJEs

Honour the victims by listening to the survivors.

#BosnianGenocide

1639Twitter
SrebrenicaUKRemembering Srebrenica@SrebrenicaUK·
22 Jan

This Friday's #RSUKBookClub recommendation is "The Bosnia List" where a young survivor confronts the people who betrayed his family during the Bosnian Genocide. A heartbreaking read that is all the more important for it.

1227Twitter
Remembering Srebrenica Retweeted
conflictreportrConflict Reportage Archive@conflictreportr·
22 Jan

Interview with @robtmcneil sharing insights into his artwork and conversations in educational settings with @DocMediaCentre & @ksadique1 @EastSrebrenica part of the ‘Conflict, Memory & Education’ #10Day programme @conflictreportr

514Twitter
Load More...
 The charity 
A Project of Ummah Help. Registered charity no. 1142686. Registered company no. 7369796. Click here to find out more.
 Latest news 
Hatidža Mehmedović – A mother’s legacy
November 26, 2020

Hatidža Mehmedović was born in the area surrounding Srebrenica in 1952. Before the genocide, she lived her entire life in Srebrenica, where she had married her childhood friend, Abdullah, and had two sons, Azmir and Almir. Hatidža and Abdullah built their home in Srebrenica and lived a simple life as a family before the war […]

“Untold Killing”: first serialised podcast about the genocide in Bosnia launched
October 22, 2020

London, United Kingdom — This past July marked 25 years since the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, often referred to as the worst atrocity on Europe’s soil since the Holocaust. The story of Srebrenica, a small town in Bosnia, remains a dark stain on Europe’s history and yet the full details remain unknown to many.  […]

The Importance of Speaking out- Reflections on Hate Crime Awareness Week
October 18, 2020

This past week marked Hate Crime Awareness Week, in which organisations throughout the United Kingdom came together to speak about hate crime and offer ways of how to help the public get assistance should they be victims of it. Hate crime incidents are on the rise in the United Kingdom and have been for several […]

 Remembering Srebrenica 

What happened
Survivor Stories
Memorial Day
Vistiting Srebrenica

 Site Links 

Homepage
Get Involved
Resources
News
Messages of support
About us
Get in contact
Sitemap

GET IN CONTACT

If you want to get involved with Remembering Srebrenica, or find out how you can help then please get in contact

SEND US AN EMAIL


2019 © Remembering Srebrenica. Privacy Policy
Website developed by Spyre Media