The Survivors of Srebrenica Deserve more than Mladic’s Conviction
Kaya Purchase / July 12 / Genocide
On Tuesday 6th June, Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. He was initially sentenced in 2017 on twenty charges, including genocide and war crimes, but appealed against them. Now his appeal has been permanently dismissed. Many news reports have framed this sentence as a victory, a long-overdue serving of justice for the survivors of Mladic’s barbarity. The reality, however, is slightly more complex. Many survivors do not feel that such a sentence, though deserved, is enough to bring closure or relief. A prison sentence does not turn back the clock and cannot save those who suffered and died at the hands of this man. It does not amend the years of grief and trauma that survivors have had to endure. Further than this, there are some specific contextual issues that mean that this single imprisonment is not enough to even begin to heal the wounds that have torn the lives of so many people apart.
In April 1992, the Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia. The kingdom of Yugoslavia was originally intended to be an experiment in uniting different nationalities of the Balkans. The Balkans had a history of inter-regional conflict, but the kingdom of Yugoslavia was supposed to be a solution to this, a place of peaceful co-existence between different cultures and religions. Despite this, the Serbians ruled the central state, resulting in what, for many, felt like an uneven distribution of power between nationalities. This left many non-Serbians feeling neglected or slighted. The kingdom fractured and different regions wanted their own independence. The Serbian government’s response to this was brutal retaliation. Bosnian-Serb leader, Karadzic, threatened the Muslim leaders who wanted independence. He said that they were leading the Muslim people into possible annihilation. With aid from the Yugoslav People’s Army, his forces began a systematic cycle of ethnic cleansing along the regions that bordered Serbia, claiming the places he seized as the Bosnian-Serb Republic. This was a period of mass killings, church burnings and concentration camps. Those who managed to escape such direct violence were displaced from homes their families had lived in for centuries. Following this was the siege of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia- Herzegovina. The luxurious city which had once exemplified ethnic mixture and co-existence was relentlessly shelled from above and endured a siege that lasted 1,425 days. It was Ratko Mladic, then General of the Serb forces who ordered this siege, the longest military siege of a capital city in modern history. An estimated 500,000 missiles were fired on the city, resulting in more than 11,500 fatalities.
The trail of devastation that ripped Bosnia-Herzegovina apart culminated, after three years of misery, in the Srebrenica genocide of 1995. Srebrenica had been declared a UN safe area, so many refugees gathered there hoping for safety. Such safety was short-lived. Ratko Mladic commanded Serbian paramilitaries to overrun the area and separate all the Muslim men and boys from their families. 7,000 men and boys were killed and dumped in mass graves. The women left behind remained displaced and destitute. Many of them spent years living in ‘internal refugee’ camps in Sarajevo. Denied housing, food, medical help or justice and grieving for their lost sons and husbands many of them committed suicide.
It appears obvious that such large-scale murder would be considered genocide, but in actuality it took a long time for the massacre at Srebrenica to be officially classed as such. Outside powers were reluctant to use such terminology, because once it was universally accepted they would have a responsibility to intervene. Instead, world leaders hid behind reductive stereotypes to deflect from the severity of the crisis. The Balkans had long been seen as an area of unrelenting violence, the devastation of their modern conflicts undermined as simply an extension of their historical feuds played out over centuries. Winston Churchill mocked the Balkans for what he viewed as insatiable bloodlust. Such prejudice was used by world leaders as an excuse not to get involved.
What happened in Srebrenica is now finally accepted as genocide. However, the UN court ruled in June of this year that the massacres which preceded that in Srebrenica should not be classed as such, with three out of five judges voting against the use of such classification. This has been an issue of controversy, with many seeing the decision as a trivialisation of what happened across the rest of Bosnia- Herzegovina. Journalist and MP, Emir Suljagic has said that to see even just two judges approving the word genocide is an important step forward. This optimism hints at the long, exhausting fight that the victims of the Bosnian massacres have had to maintain in order to have what happened to them and their loved ones taken seriously.
Emir is himself a survivor of Srebrenica. He was spared death because of his role as a UN interpreter, but lost family members, including his Granddad. In an Al Jazeera report, he was asked for his response to the news of Mladic’s conviction. His pained face and openly spread hands clearly indicated that this verdict had come too late for it to be anything to be celebrated. Any satisfaction gained was a bitter one that only took the surface off a legacy of pain that superseded the immediate violence of the massacres.
‘If you know anything about the amount of physical evidence and testimony [against Mladic] that this tribunal has been built upon then you cannot be surprised,’ he said, clapping his hands together in finality. It was clear that Emir did not see this verdict as a blessing so much as a straight-forward implementation of law. To him it was pure logic. When presented in this way, it seems infuriating that it has taken this long for Mladic to be punished for his actions. Mladic spent ten years on the run and then the trial itself took a further seven years to reach a verdict. The drawn out nature of such a trial may for some take away from the victory.
For others who played a culpable role in the Bosnian massacres, many believe that their sentences have been too short. It has been reported that a lot of those who committed war crimes in the Yugoslav wars have served two-thirds of their sentences and been released. In a BBC Newsnight special, a lady who survived Omarska shared her painful experiences. Omarska was an old iron ore plant that was used as a concentration camp by the Bosnian-Serbs. In the space of a few months 700 inmates died. It has since been revealed that a specific type of sexual abuse was used to break women inmates psychologically. Whilst the Hague tribunal tried several of the Omarska guards, the lady said that she has since passed the very men who abused her in the street of her home town. She believes they have already served their sentences and are now continuing with their lives as before. It is easy to see why there is a lack of faith in the criminal justice system to support survivors in the way they need.
In addition to this, there still remains a strong far-right following of Mladic and other infamous Serbian war criminals. Emir described to Al Jazeera the celebration of Mladic that took place just 5km away from the location where many of the victims of Srebrenica were buried. This took place the night before the verdict was announced.
‘It’s done local,’ he said. ‘There is an entire political class that is heavily invested in ensuring that Mladic’s legacy lives and there’s a very simple fact behind it. About 20,000 – 25,000 people were actually involved in Srebrenica’s genocide operation alone. 200,000 people at any one time during the Bosnian war have been under the command of Mladic. These are people who are invested in him being a hero because they actually have to look themselves in the mirror every day and go on living knowing that they’ve followed a mass murderer [...] We’re not about to enter a dialogue with these people. The narrative that we are telling is based on facts, it’s based on forensic evidence, DNA technology, what they’re saying is based on myth and outright lies. We cannot really haggle about the facts. The facts of this matter have been established.’
Writer and lecturer on genocide and fascism, Arnesa Buljusmic-Kustura shares this sentiment. She has commented how, ‘this isn’t the end really, as it will just further fuel the Serb ethno-nationalists.’ Following the sentence of Karadzic, Arnesa wrote an article describing her response. Radovan Karadzic was found guilty on 10 counts of crimes against humanity, including genocide, terror, persecution, and forcible removal. He was given a forty year sentence. When still a child Arnesa had to flee the conflict in Bosnia, after which she lived as a refugee. She expressed how, to her, forty years felt miniscule in comparison to the lifetime of pain and grief that Bosnian survivors have been sentenced to.
‘The mothers of Srebrenica have been sentenced to lives without their children,’ she wrote. ‘The children of Sarajevo have been sentenced to lives without their parents. All throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnians have been sentenced to a lifetime of mourning.’
Whilst it is true that Mladic received a life sentence, meaning that he will die in prison Armena’s point still applies. What manner of retribution can possibly be enough to punish one whose crimes are of such colossal scale? Is punishing one man enough to heal the wounds of the Bosnian people when there still remain thousands of criminals walking free who have contributed to the violence they endured? Will people ever be able to piece their lives back together, knowing they could pass their relative’s murderer in the street or encounter a rally in honour of the general who ordered that murder to take place? I fear there is no answer to these questions, there are only small steps that can continue to be made, a long fight raged to ensure that the events in Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Visegrad, Brcko, Gorazde, Doboj, Zvornik and all across Bosnia-Herzegovina are never forgotten.
After World War II the world said never again. Never again would genocide or ethnic cleansing occur like it did during the Holocaust and yet the world stood by and allowed more atrocities to take place. Srebrenica stands as a reminder of how much damage can be caused by apathy and indifference. Canadian academic, William Schabas wrote that ‘ethnic cleansing is a warning sign of genocide to come.’ This warning sign was not heeded by outside powers and the cycle of violence was allowed to run its course, climaxing in the horror of Srebrenica.
In the words of Zlata Filipović, writer of Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime Sarajevo , 'War is no joke, it seems. It destroys, kills, burns, separates [and] brings unhappiness.” An obvious statement, perhaps, but sometimes it takes the simplified perspective of a child to strip away adult desensitisation to violence and truly impress the extent to which human cruelty can exterminate identities, destroy futures, swallow innocence.
All across Sarajevo there still remain scars from the explosions of shells. Local artists have sought out these concrete fissures that lie like wounds across the city, visible evidence of the carnage, and filled them with red resin. They are called the Roses of Sarajevo. The emotional and psychological wounds of this city are much harder to identify and heal. The people of Sarajevo have to continue to function, passing over these roses everyday, reminded of the horrific legacy that forms their existence. These people and their deeper scars need to be addressed with equal care and much more dedication than the Roses of Sarajevo.
I hope that Mladic’s verdict does bring closure to survivors, but beyond that the UN court needs to do everything in its power to ensure an accurate record of the Yugoslav war is made, using the correct terminology and giving the right consideration to the man-made, avoidable horrors that took place. I hope that it puts measures in place to prevent and end far-right movements across Bosnia-Herzegovina and to protect survivors from further trauma and turmoil. They have been through enough already.