Remembering Srebrenica

The United Nations' refusal to condemn North Korea for sinking a South Korean vessel is regrettable but not surprising. In 1995, the U.N. allowed a nightmare to transpire when the blue helmets under Dutch command negotiated with Serbian general Ratko Mladic and in the process allowed thousands of men, women, and children to perish from in and around the Bosnian city of Srebrenica.

Hasan Nuhanović was then a U.N. translator during the negotiations who was able to remain under the protection of U.N. forces in Potocari while his mother, father, and brother were forced to leave and were soon murdered.

As Nuhanović recalled in the Bosnian newsweekly Dani and which has thankfully been reprinted (in part) in the Washington Post,

Last month I identified my brother by his tennis shoes.

In the fall they got in touch with me about my mother. They had found her, or what was left of her, in a creek in the village of Jarovlje, about a mile from Vlasenica, my home town. The Serbs who live there threw garbage on her for 14 years. She wasn't alone. They killed another six in the same place. Burned them. I hope they were burned only after they died.

They identified my father four years ago, 11 years after his execution. They found a little more than half his bones. His skull was smashed from behind.

Not an easy read but still recommended lest we forget not only the horrors of the recent past but the inaction by those who could have prevented them from happening.

CIP Note:

Victorino Matus, deputy managing editor of The Weekly Standard, in Washington, DC, is neither a Muslim nor an affiliate of the Center for Islamic Pluralism. Nevertheless, considering that we have just passed the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims by Serb terrorists -- an atrocity we will never forget -- we were moved and grateful for Mr. Matus' comments. Mr. Matus has no personal or other connection with Bosnia-Hercegovina or Srebrenica, but his comments express the best possible repudiation to the vulgar slurs aimed at Bosnian Muslims, and at CIP among the defenders of Balkan Islam, by Serb apologists. In his brief comments, Mr. Matus illustrates that the whole world knows what happened at Srebrenica, and that no campaign of lies and libels, however repellent, can change the truth about Serbian aggression.

For the martyrs of Srebrenica, fatiha.

Related Topics: Balkan Muslims, Bosnian Muslims, European Muslims, Terrorism receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free center for islamic pluralism mailing list

Note: The content of external articles does not necessarily reflect the views of Center for Islamic Pluralism.