Srebrenica Quotes

In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday. She is not beautiful, mocked, cursed or disowned by all. But don’t be mistaken, she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind; for there is a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule, and art is the exception. Everybody speaks the rule; cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody speaks the exception. It isn’t spoken, it is written; Flaubert, Dostoyevsky. It is composed; Gershwin, Mozart. It is painted; Cézanne, Vermeer. It is filmed; Antonioni, Vigo. Or it is lived, then it is the art of living; Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for cultural Europe is to organise the death of the art of living, which still flourishes.

I watch a bird as it brings food to its chicks. How it looks after them, how it protects them. And then I say to myself, “You’re a better mother than me” ’ Hatidza Mehmedovic, mother of two sons murdered at Srebrenica

The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility. There are times when we must take this poison - just as a person with cancer accepts chemotherapy to live. We can not succumb to despair. Force is and I suspect always will be part of the human condition. There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral. We in the industrialized world bear responsibility for the world’s genocides because we had the power to intervene and did not. We stood by and watched the slaughter in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda where a million people died. The blood for the victims of Srebrenica- a designated UN safe area in Bosnia- is on our hands. The generation before mine watched, with much the same passivity, the genocides of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the Ukraine. These slaughters were, as in, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Chronical of a Death Foretold, often announced in advance

All you had to do was take a visit to Dachau or Auschwitz or Srebrenica to see what kind of monsters humans could be. Humanity had always been brutally selfish; one slip, trip and fall away from lynch-mob violence, from downright evil. It wouldn’t take much of a breakdown in society to push them all across that line.

Srebrenica was officially ‘protected’ not just by UN mandate but by a 400-strong peacekeeping contingent of armed Dutch soldiers. But when Mladić’s men arrived the Dutch battalion laid down its arms and offered no resistance whatsoever as Serbian troops combed the Muslim community, systematically separating men and boys from the rest. The next day, after Mladić had given his ‘word of honor as an officer’ that the men would not be harmed, his soldiers marched the Muslim males, including boys as young as thirteen, out into the fields around Srebrenica. In the course of the next four days nearly all of them—7,400—were killed. The Dutch soldiers returned safely home to Holland.

May the innocent people who died on the bloody soil of Bosnia and Herzegovina be forever remembered. May the voices of Sarajevo be heard throughout the world. May the mothers of Srebrenica (where 8,372 Bosniak men and boys were killed in cold blood) know that justice and truth is on their side. The forces of good and evil will always exist. The conflict between them shows the contradictions that live in human nature. We must ensure that love conquers hate.

I stand by the mothers of Srebrenica I know that Chetniks are a violent herd I think that the entire world should know that Serbs tried to ensure the truth was blurred

I stand by the mothers of Srebrenica I know that Chetniks are a violent herd I think that the entire world should know that Serbs tried to ensure the truth was blurred

I stand by the mothers of Srebrenica I know that Chetniks are a violent herd I think that the entire world should know that Serbs tried to ensure the truth was blurred

I’m sick of the oppression, constant trauma, and despair I’m sick of seeing innocent people have to live in fear Being heroic needs to become common, not something rare Otherwise war, genocide, and hate will always be near

Nura Alispahić, the mother of Azmir, had her entire family killed Her husband (Alija) and her two sons (Admir and Azmir) are all gone In addition to her brother, 12 of her nephews, and five brother-in-laws Everyone was wiped out from the face of the Earth, their destiny was drawn In addition to all of the hell that she went through Nura’s daughter died after the Bosnian War because of intense grief Why do Serbs get to do whatever they want to Bosniaks? But then receive prison sentences that are very brief?

Serbs murdered Safet Fejzić, Azmir Alispahić, Sidik Salkić As well as Smajil Ibrahimović, Dino Salihović, and Juso Delić These killers called themselves the Scorpions to display power They thought they were gods, that they ruled society’s tower

There is a video online that shows the brutality of this crime How a Serbian Orthodox priest blessed them to show support These Serbs were so confident that Chetniks would win the war They thought that they would never see the inside of a court The cameraman of the Scorpions massacre video was disappointed Because the camera’s battery was almost out Can you imagine the level of evil that lived inside them? This is why good people have to fight against such scum

Serbs murdered Safet Fejzić, Azmir Alispahić, Sidik Salkić As well as Smajil Ibrahimović, Dino Salihović, and Juso Delić These killers called themselves the Scorpions to display power They thought they were gods, that they ruled society’s tower There is a video online that shows the brutality of this crime How a Serbian Orthodox priest blessed them to show support These Serbs were so confident that Chetniks would win the war They thought that they would never see the inside of a court The cameraman of the Scorpions massacre video was disappointed Because the camera’s battery was almost out Can you imagine the level of evil that lived inside them? This is why good people have to fight against such scum

The organization of Human Rights Watch spoke the truth About how the Serbian Radical Party launched a campaign Intended to undermine the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide and crime By spinning stories which degraded Bosniaks, Chetniks are such slime

Serb leaders refuse to admit that genocide Is what happened to Bosniaks in Srebrenica Tomislav Nikolić, Dodik, Šešelj, Dačić, and Vulin are an evil crew That call the genocide in Srebrenica untrue

Serb leaders refuse to admit that genocide Is what happened to Bosniaks in Srebrenica Tomislav Nikolić, Dodik, Šešelj, Dačić, and Vulin are an evil crew That call the genocide in Srebrenica untrue

More than eight thousand Bosniak men and boys Were slaughtered mercilessly by Serbs in Srebrenica Who wanted Bosnia and Herzegovina’s land Who murdered in cold blood, it was all planned Mass graves were found on every single corner Because torture is how Chetniks spend their time They wanted to display their dominance over us And commit acts against humanity, their favorite crime

The United Nations lied directly to our face They said that Srebrenica was a safe zone But clearly they did not protect us at all Judging by the number of bodies and bone

Graffiti showed the text of a Dutchbat UN soldier Who said that Bosnian women had no teeth He thought they smelled like shit and had mustaches, too It seemed that evil took over and shared its view

A member of the Red Berets spoke openly About how starving Bosniaks in Srebrenica Was like a cat and mouse game to play It was how nationalism continued to slay Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Karremans and General Ratko Mladić Were seen drinking a toast together to celebrate All of the innocent lives that were destroyed All of the Bosniak heads that were on a plate

Mladen Grujičić became the Mayor of Srebrenica He is an ethnic Serb that spreads vicious poison He said that genocide never happened there Why is there no justice for Bosniaks? This is unfair!

Miloš Milovanović, a former commander of the Serbian Guard Who represents the Serbian Democratic Party in Srebrenica Stated that the entire Srebrenica massacre was a lie He called it propaganda, as if Bosniak people didn’t die

People were lit on fire, little girls were raped Pregnant women had their stomachs stabbed This is how Chetnik minds were shaped This is how they ensured our mouths were taped

I told him that the framework he had proposed in his tour of Europe was fine, with an important exception: I could support neither his proposal to give the Serbs a wider corridor of land at Posavina nor the suggestion that we abandon Gorazde. Both of these ideas had been part of an attempt to create “more viable borders” for the Federation by trading Muslim enclaves for Serb concessions elsewhere. The Pentagon insisted it would not defend enclaves and slivers of land if called upon later to implement a peace agreement. Nonetheless, I told Tony that the United States could not be party to such a proposal. “This would create another forty thousand or more refugees,” I said, “and we cannot be a party to that, especially after Srebrenica.” Tony asked if it was not true that Izetbegovic had once told me he knew that all three eastern enclaves were not viable and would have to be given up. Izetbegovic had, in fact, made such a statement to me in Sarajevo in January, but that was long before the loss and horrors of Srebrenica and Zepa. “A trade is no longer possible,” I said. “After Srebrenica, we cannot propose such a thing.

Strafcel met inleveren van Willemsorde. July 11, 1995.

Srebrenica was officially ‘protected’ not just by UN mandate but by a 400–strong peacekeeping contingent of armed Dutch soldiers. But when Mladić’s men arrived the Dutch battalion laid down its arms and offered no resistance whatsoever as Serbian troops combed the Muslim community, systematically separating men and boys from the rest. The next day, after Mladić had given his ‘word of honor as an officer’ that the men would not be harmed, his soldiers marched the Muslim males, including boys as young as thirteen, out into the fields around Srebrenica. In the course of the next four days nearly all of them—7,400—were killed. The Dutch soldiers returned safely home to Holland.

Green salad for white Dutch young boys, Joris Voorhoeve.

After Sarajevo, after Srebrenica, we know what “Never again!” means. "Never again’’ simply means "Never again’’ will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940’s. That is all it means.

This man’s name was Reda Seyam, and his videos from Bosnia were some of the earliest examples of jihadist propaganda that has since ballooned into today’s use of violence as a recruiting tool. Many jihadists of my generation would later describe Bosnia and especially the massacre at Srebrenica as their “wake-up call.

Although Mrs Albright stopped calling for further air strikes she still lamely insisted that the UN Sec General should consider cost of backing down in the face of Bosnian Serbs.

....as for the Clinton administration, it pursued a high moralistic policy for which it was totally unwilling to accept responsibility. It insisted particularly in the UN, on tougher action against the Serbs, but refused to support it with American ground troops.

While the US stumped for the Bosnians, Russians defended the interests of Milošević (as distinct from the Bosnian Serb leader) and Germans supported Croats. .....Srebrenica itself was indefensible as Izetbegović admitted to a senior UN official 22 Sep 1994. ....Silajdžić indicated that if the Serbs traded Sarajevo for the enclaves he would be prepared to go to Srebrenica and explain to the people that they had to leave. ....The envoy said Izetbegović was ready to discuss a trade-off of the eastern enclaves for Sarajevo on the condition that Milošević was prepared to recognize BiH. Although the Bosnian government and Western gov all privately admitted that ultimately Srebrenica and Žepa would go to the Serbs, no government was prepared to be seen publicly making territorial deals with the Serbs. After all, would not such a move be perceived as a rewarding of the ethnic cleansing and aggression? Dilemma was especially acute for countries where public opinion was strongly anti-Serbian - post pointedly the US, Germany and NL. .... Clinton administration in particular did not want to be publicly associated with any diplomatic proposal that ceded the enclaves to the Serbs.

Having publicly made a clear distinction between aggressors - the Serbs and victims - the Bosnians - from the moment they took office, they had stuck to this line ever since. Their credibility would be in doubt and their reputations damaged if they were not to give public approval to a territorial swap involving eastern enclaves.

With the 4 month cessation of hostilities in place, many Western governments, in an excess of relief, turned away from BiH. Sense of urgency faded. So it was until march 1995 that the Contact Group launched a serious initiative with Milošević, involving sanctions-lifting and recognition. Negotiations with Milošević were at first conducted principally by British, French, and German diplomats...Clinton admin remained as divided as ever and not yet ready as a whole to associate itself with the talks.

Frasure was one of the most experienced diplomats in the State dept. In June 1991, President Bush awarded him Presidential Medal for Exceptional Service for his role in precipitating the downfall of Mengitsu regime in Ethiopia and organizing lifting of more than 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Frasure was ambassador to Estonia when he was asked to return to Washington and join Holbrooke"s Yugoslavia team in July 1994. Almost from the beginning, the sharp-minded Frasure found it difficult to hide his exasperation with the indecision in his own government. Coming out of US inter-agency meeting on BIH he once commented: "Boy that was like a little league locker-room rally"......Frasure knew when to be tough with the Serbs. .....Back in Washington, his delicate diplomacy was supported by his direct superior, flamboyant Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.

Back in Washington Frasureˇs delicate diplomacy was supported by his direct superior flamboyant Assistant Secretary of State R.H. To Vice-President Al Gore, Secretary of State Christopher, Ambassador Albright and Leon Fuerth, Gores representative on the National Security Council, any lifting of sanctions against the Serbs would be anathema. They still believed that Serbs had to be punished not wooed. ......Frasure gave this account of talks with Milošević: ...look at him like this....he is a Mafia boss who has gotten tired of doing drugs in South Bronx and so he is planning on moving to Palm Beach and getting into junk bonds. ....... Milošević was not prepared to see the Bosnian Serbs getting defeated militarily, he was very keen on preventing Karadžić from becoming "King of all Serbs"........The moment in which the parties would substitute politics with force was approaching fast.

Ambassador Albright reportedly threatened to resign over what she called "softly-softly" pact with Milošević.

UNPROFOR intelligence officers long estimated that the Serbs would need large infantry force to overcome 3000 or 4000 armed defenders of Srebrenica. What they failed to detect was just such a large scale troop build-up during June. .....There had also been no sightings of an artillery build-up - another sure sign of offensive intent. .....Under attack, in July, Karremans was remarkably restrained in his official reports and played a significant role in mistakenly minimizing the sense of danger. The final contributing factor in the misreading of the situation was that many officers and politicians simply could not believe that the Serbs would dare take and area under UN protection.

Albright and Biegman told Janvier that while the status quo was untenable and a more effective and robust UNPROFOR required, she could not accept a withdrawal from safe areas, nor could she accept abandoning weapons collection points. The mandate she said should be strengthened not reduced. As past experience indicated, only a resolute UN would get its way.

Opposing redeployment US and Dutch ambassadors were making more robust action impossible.

Smith proposed not to use air power, but to employ an ad hoc group to open Mount Igman road into Sarajevo. This was the last attempt (in Split) he made to come out on top in the face-off with the Bosnian Serbs. Again, Janvier rejected his proposal....."We are a peacekeeping mission. We do not have the option of going to war. We are not authorized to do so. It is not our mandate

Mladić harboured a particular resentment towards the Dutch, whose successive governments had consistently called for a tougher action against the Serbs since the beginning of the war. Virtually all the captured men, guilty or not, were executed, an act that con stituted the most serious single war crime in Europe since WWII. Executing prisoners violates Geneva Convention but it is also classified as „crime against humanity“. What is more, there seems little doubt that Serbs intention was genocidal one.

When Karremans made this comment on 23 July 1995, he clearly did not yet realize what horrific fate had befallen men of Srebrenica. He was not alone in underestimating savagery of the Bosnian Serbs. Few people had expected them to attempt a full-scale annihilation of the men of Srebrenica. ....

The most fundamental dillemma of all, which the international community to its detriment never resolved was a moral one. How could one combine moral imperative to alleviate suffering with the moral imperative not to let agression pay? Was it right to have opposed ethnic cleansing and instituted safe areas in eastern Bosnia, if one was unwilling to put one`s life at risk to protect people in those areas?....

Muslims in general were aware of the fate that awaited them. Their desparate attempt, en masse to break through Bosnian Serb lines from the night of 11-12 July onwards reflected this. Very few politicians and soldiers ever questioned this premise of impartiality. Few accepted that one could force such an obstreperous party into allowing convoys through and still remain impartial. General Janvier in particular has unjustly been much maligned. He is often blamed for loosing Srebrenica because he did not authorize massive air strikes.

in 1994 Oman was approached by the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, to discuss a special need. Karadzic, currently on trial for war crimes including the Srebrenica genocide, wanted to acquire something that would fundamentally alter the conduct of the Balkans conflict: a weapon of mass destruction.64 Karadzic believed that Oman could use his connections in the Russian military to deliver a so-called ‘vakuum’ or elipton bomb. The device, roughly suitcase size with a kiloton payload powered by nuclear material – either red mercury or osmium – was known to be immensely powerful.

Christopher committed the disastrous error of taking the Europeans at their word and letting them try to sort out an international crisis on their own. Clinton compounded the mistake by persuading himself that the rivalries and hatreds of the region were simply too ancient, too deep-seated, to do much about. And so the siege of Sarajevo continued. And so the massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica happened. And so UN peacekeepers were held hostage and European diplomats were humiliated and American foreign policy was paralyzed and hundreds of thousands of people were killed or put into concentration camps or sent into exile by a minor Serbian potentate and his rat-faced lieutenants.

Serbs don’t forget, as the graffito goes, the atrocities that the Croatian ustashas committed against them in World War II. That was repeated in school over and over by history teachers when I was a pupil in Croatia. Many Croats don’t forget the slaughters that the Serb nationalist chetniks committed on the Croatian rural population, although that lesson was passed over in silence in our history lessons. My brother-in-law—who died of stomach cancer, and who had spent the recent war two hundred yards away from the Serb border toward Vukovar, from where his street was shelled almost daily—told me that when he was a child, during World War II, he ran into a ditch full of Croatian peasants massacred by chetniks. He never forgot, and wasn’t even allowed to talk about it because he would be jailed for spreading nationalist propaganda. He told me this in the park after my father’s funeral, at a moment when we were both talking about life, death, and souls. Which is better, to forget or to remember? Of course, to remember, but not to abuse the memories as Serbian leaders have done to spur their armies into aggression against Croats and Muslims. Croats will remember Vukovar. Muslims will remember Srebrenica. And what is the lesson? Not to trust thy neighbor? But that’s perhaps where the trouble began and will resume.

Equally vicious was the practice of “whitecapping,” which, since the horrors of Bosnia and Srebrenica, we now recognize as ethnic cleansing: In several Georgia and Mississippi counties, where plantations did not dominate the economy, local whites maimed, murdered, and terrorized African Americans and, as the persecuted fled, seized all the land until one could “ride for miles and not see a black face.