'Remembering Srebrenica' at Westminister Abbey
July 6, 2015
Some two thousand guests were set to convene on London's Westminster Abbey on Monday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, which saw more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslims, mostly men and boys, killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War.
The mass killings at Srebrenica have become known as the worst massacre on European soil since World War II. Units of the Army of Republika Srpska led by Ratko Mladic, who is currently on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, carried out mass killings against ethnic Muslims after the fall of Srebrenica and the takeover of the UN base that had previously been declared a safe zone for refugees.
The service at Westminster Abbey was just one of 100 commemoration events being organized across Britain this week, according to the BBC.
UK to introduce UN draft resolution on genocide
Great Britain has been leading the charge recently to have the events at Srebrenica recognized as genocide, with a UN Security Council draft resolution to have the massacre officially named as such expected to be put on the table this week.
Serbia's pro-Russian president Tomislav Nikolic sent a letter to Vladimir Putin on Saturday "pleading" with him to veto the UK resolution. Russia and Western nations have been locking horns over whether to label the killings a genocide.
Serbian officials argue that the resolution should include all victims of the Bosnian war, including Christian Orthodox Serbs and Croat Catholics alongside the Bosnian Muslims.
Milorad Dodik, the president oft he Serb-run part of Bosnia and Herzegowina, went even further on Sunday by calling the Srebrenica genocide "a lie," denouncing the British resolution at a commemoration for Serbs killed in the villages near Srebrenica.
"Everything is a recurrent lie. We are told 'You should not deny.' How not to deny a lie? You are the ones who are not telling the truth. Where are the 8,300 men? Why do you lie?" Dodik said in his speech.
Vucic ready to pay his respects
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic, on the other hand, made headlines last week when the former hardline nationalist said he was ready to go to Srebrenica to pay his respects to the dead at an anniversary commemoration on the site this week. He did not, however, refer to the incident as a genocide - or even as a massacre.
It has taken decades to identify all the victims of the massacre, with 136 identified in just the last year set to be buried on Saturday, July 11, twenty years to the day to the start of the massacre.
They will be buried at a memorial, outside Srebrenica alongside many of the 6,471 other victims who have found in mass graves, identified, and reburied.
es/jil (AFP, AP)