In this episode Ursula discusses the post conflict experience Srebrenica. She is a student journalist with us on a placement organised by the Oxford University Career Services. This article was edited using Lex.page.
🎧 listen to Ursual's backstory here - she discusses her motivation & research as well.
Piecing together the bodies of Srebrenica three decades on: the pursuit of closure, or the unearthing of old wounds?
“The pain doesn’t go away, it gets worse, stronger, the longer it lasts.” Fikret Bačić
A pelvic bone, a femur, a DNA match, a scrap of enduring clothing; miscellaneous pieces of an unidentifiable body. “This is what we have found of your son, this is your husband, brother, nephew, cousin, friend.”
For almost 30 years, the search for the broken and brutalised bodies of the Srebrenica genocide of 1995, and, more widely, the victims of the Bosnian war has been underway. Each year, more bodies are uncovered, more remnants of a modern-day massacre are laid out for family members to reclaim, and more remembrances of a heinous act of slaughter and ethnic cleansing come to the fore.
This is a massacre that weighs on Europe's conscience. Genocide in the EU’s backyard, a preventable blood-bath that was licensed by the underestimation of the savage Bosnian Serb leader Ratko Mladić and European reluctance to act with force. It's what Jean-Yves Haine calls ‘Europe’s original sin’. And the main aftereffect is profound shame.
No European nation feels this shame more than the Dutch. The guilt haunting the Netherlands stems from the powerlessness of the Dutch battalion that commanded the UN safety zone on the outskirts of Srebrenica. The battalion, outnumbered, firmly instructed not to fire back and denied air support. It was at the mercy of Mladić’s army and the refugees they aimed to protect. When the Serb army transported the refugees away from Srebrenica, the UN peacekeepers were caught in a difficult position. This danger cost the lives of 8,300 men and boys who were exterminated en masse.
"Only one party is to blame for the horrific genocide; the Bosnian Serb army. But let me be clear. The international community failed to offer adequate protection to the people of Srebrenica and as part of that community the Dutch government shares responsibility for the situation in which that failure occurred. And for this we offer our deepest apologies," The words of the Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren admitted the Dutch government shouldered some of the responsibility for the genocide. They acknowledged exposing their soldiers to extreme danger, which exposed Bosnian Muslims to slaughter. As a gesture of repentance, the Dutch government issued a substantial pledge: to recover and identify every single Bosnian corpse and to return its family.
"The events of 1995 caused deep human suffering still palpable to this day. We cannot relieve you of this suffering. But we can confront history directly," during a visit to Bosnia to commemorate the genocide.
Indeed, when news of the full and brutal scale of the Srebrenica massacre reached the international stage, one mass grave of men and boys who had been executed together was discovered. The Serbs exhumed all the bodies to conceal the magnitude of the crime and scattered them across 25 different locations. This posed an incomprehensible challenge for the Dutch, who had to gather the fragmented and dispersed remains and reconstruct them to return to grieving families. Nevertheless, the Netherlands remain determined and steadfast in their commitment to reassemble every body and return complete corpses to the families, ensuring their satisfaction with the number of remains to be buried in the Potocari memorial cemetery. Each year, on the anniversary of the genocide, the Dutch government publicly displays the actual count, which currently stands at approximately three-quarters.
And yet, the impossible impasse lies here. The humbling question must be posed: the noble efforts of the Dutch, and the shame that drives Europe to repent for its complacency? Is it simply an attempt to expunge a guilty conscience, or is this truly a way forward for the (predominantly female) survivors of the genocide? In sensitive scenarios, there is some truth in both answers. The human needs of the veteran community seem at odds.
The justice and closure that the survivors and mourners deserve justice and closure through reuniting bodies with families. The process is prolonged, painful, and often reopens old wounds, form into a nasty scar. The tattered and partial remains don't honor the victims. In the words of a massacre survivor Fazila Efendic “There are no words to describe the sorrow you feel when you are looking for (your loved ones) bone by bone,” Efendic said. “I visited every newfound mass grave; I’ve seen the inside of every one of them.”
Dredging up the bodies not only brings up buried pain, but is a constant reminder to Bosnian Muslims of their recent persecution. Their future, identity and significance as a shattered community is interrupted by the reminder of what was, and the unavenged murders. No equivalent retribution exists, and for the survivors, moving forward is the only option. This is not forgetting the horrors and suffering, but reducing the trauma and learning to live with the pain. Another survivor, Fikret Bačić, who lost his brother in the genocide, says: ‘The pain doesn’t go away, it gets worse, stronger, the longer it lasts.’
The prospect that recovering these bodies is both an obstacle and a necessary step towards closure is plausible, making the trauma more fraught, actual and insurmountable. Each step forward for the Bosnian survivors is accompanied by a step back.
The community continues to suffer, standing at the intersection between memory and recovery. The search for the bodies uncovers buried trauma, history provides little closure. The growing Islamophobic sentiment and rise of extremist parties across Europe weighs heavy on a people facing Serb denial. Victims of a genocide whose neighbors won't acknowledge them as such.
This preventable tragedy is evident in the walls of European history, yet its survivors are largely excluded from the recovery narrative. The post-conflict reverberations of Srebrenica continue to affect a vulnerable people, and highlight the multiple fault lines across Europe. The echo chamber remains, filled with echoes. The name Srebrenica must not lose its impact. That is the duty owed to its victims and survivors.
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