Why We Can't Bury the Past Refugees Warn the World to Remember Bosnian Massacres As Fresh Tensions Threaten to Explode Refugees Warn the World to Remember Bosnian Massacres As Fresh Tensions Threaten to Explode Reportage

The Herald › August 31, 2009

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Summary

One phrase seems to reverberate around the Bosnian town which was the backdrop to those bewildering scenes of horror 14 years ago: "Please don't forget Srebrenica." It is whispered by broken, hollowcheeked old men and grieving mothers who now make up much of the town's Muslim population. It is plastered across the gaudy postcards sold near the memorial centre commemorating those who never returned after the massacres of 1995. It is scrawled in spray paint on empty buildings that now house only memories.

The Bosnian war raged from 1992 to 1995 as Yugoslavia crumbled. Under the communist rule of Tito, the Bosnian Muslims (known as Bosniaks) had co-existed in relative harmony with the predominantly Orthodox Christian Serbs and the mainly Catholic Croats. But as the region became increasingly unstable, ethnic tensions bubbled to the fore and war broke out between the three factions .

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Why We Can't Bury the Past Refugees Warn the World to Remember Bosnian Massacres As Fresh Tensions Threaten to Explode Refugees Warn the World to Remember Bosnian Massacres As Fresh Tensions Threaten to Explode Reportage

After Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, all the signs were that Bosnia and Herzegovina would follow suit. Panicked, the Bosnian Serb minority held a referendum to express its support for remaining in union with Slobodan Milosevic's rump state, which was now reduced to Serbia and Montenegro. When the Bosniak-led government declared independence in April 1992, the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their own state, Republika Srpska, under the presidency of Radovan Karadzic. A bloody and brutal war was the inevitable outcome.

The conflict entered its gruesome endgame at Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, in July 1995, when more than 8000 Muslims were killed after the town fell o Serb forces Nato responded with three-week bombing campaign in August. Three months later the Dayton peace agreement ended...

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