So I was in line
getting a cup of Joe at Starbucks early this morning, feeling somewhat self-conscious
in my military uniform, when I glanced at the cover photo of the New York Times. At first I thought I was seeing huge seed
pods lined up, but on closer inspection it was a woman in a headscarf grieving in
a row of green-colored coffins. On this
day, July 12, eighteen years ago, perpetrators of a horrific crime begin to
separate males aged 12 to 77 from the throng of fear-stricken victims, ostensibly for the purpose of interrogation. The genocide in
Srebrenica was the worst case of mass murder in
Europe since the Holocaust. Bosnian Serb
troops under the command of Ratko Mladić transported over 7,000 Muslim men
and boys from a designated UN Safe Area to various killing sites throughout
eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina while UN peacekeeping forces stood by. Actually, the Bosnian Serbs took over a
compound at Potočari, just outside Srebrenica, where a Dutch battalion was
struggling to provide shelter and protection for thousands of Bosniak
refugees.
I begin
teaching a summer course on genocide and political oppression next week. I like to start the first day of class with a
dramatic opener that gets the students’ attention and also shows the relevancy
of the topic. I decided to use this
article as the starting point. After
all, I’m having the students read a selection from a Bosnian Muslim’s memoir at
the end of the term, so I’d be giving them a heads-up. The NYT article focuses on Radovan Karadžić,
the civilian leader of the Bosnian Serbs, who orchestrated the killing with
General Mladić. The UN tribunal in The Hague
have recently reinstated genocide charges against Karadžić. Both men had been in hiding for
years until the Serbs, under pressure, delivered them up to the authorities. The world, especially the
families of the victims, await justice.
1995 was the not Middle Ages. It
was not 1944. We still live in a world
of uncertainty, one in which humans have the potential to commit the worst
crime known to our species and have the world community do nothing about
it. The words Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and
911 have become infamous symbols of
evil in the modern world, but let us not forget Srebrenica.
