I want to preface this blog post by saying that the topic of Srebrenica is one of the most controversial in Bosnia and Herzegovina because of the emotional and human toll it has taken. In many ways, it is the epitome of the senseless violence that occurred during the conflict here. My own personal response to emotional issues like this is to attempt to try to occupy my mind by thinking and analyzing rather than accepting whatever emotional response is waiting for me to let my defenses down. When I do try to acknowledge and identify my emotions, it is usually such a cluster of mixed feelings that no one emotion is able to break through. I am sure that this will come through in this post, so I encourage anyone reading this to read about the events at Srebrenica from different sources to get the fullest story possible and to have an emotional experience of their own.
July 6 has been our most solemn day thus far. We left for Srebrenica, the UN safe zone turned massacre zone, just after 9 and arrived at noon.We were initially brought into the still standing factory building which was used as a base by the Dutch UN troops. We sat in on a discussion between artists about the ethics of making art (poetry, novels, music, sculpture, paintings, film, etc.) about the conflict and Srebrenica. While some of it was pretentious, pedantic, absurd, absurdly abstract or just hard to follow, I think that the main issue of debate, whether anyone has the right to produce art inspired by the suffering of others, is an interesting topic.
After about 40 minutes of trying to follow the conversation, we moved into the exhibit part of the factory and were given a brief tour. Unfortunately, we were rushed for time, but our tour guide, who survived Srebrenica but lost his father and a brother, gave us a detailed account of the events that transpired. I admire him for keeping his composure and for his willingness to share the story with outsiders. The part of the story that got to most people in the group was his description of how little the Dutch UN troops did to protect the refugees in their care. We were able to explore the exhibition after the tour. I was able to watch about 5 minutes of the documentary that they were showing, then I walked around and looked at some of the maps, photos and victim's personal effects. The anger and frustration I was experiencing from hearing about the failure of the UN gave way to soul wrenching from the stories describing the last time survivors saw their family members before they were killed. It is impossible to read those stories and not picture your own family members in the place of theirs.
Our hosts fed us lunch then we visited the memorial graveyard for the Srebrenica victims. While I took about 80 pictures of the graveyard, I have only posted two here in respect of the victims and their families. All of the loose dirt, wood and open graves that you see are there in preparation for the anniversary, 11 July 1995, of Srebrenica. Every year, more graves are prepared to accept the remains of bodies that have been discovered and identified since the last anniversary. They will continue this process until they are unable to find and identify any more remains, or all of the graves have been filled. The most recent date of birth I found was in 1982, so the boy was only 13 when he was killed.
Walking around the memorial for forty minutes by myself gave me a chance to attempt to process everything. For a while I was feeling confused, frustrated and angry because of what happened, but also of the difficulty in getting a straightforward, objective, story about what happened at Srebrenica. It reminded me of a workshop I attended last winter discussing some trade policy. The leader of the workshop asked us a question to break the ice: "What was the color of the shirt worn by the featured speaker last night?" Out of the thirty or so participants, there were about 10 different colors suggested. Of course a couple people got it right, but most of us were way off. The point of the exercise, if I recall it correctly, was that we often distort objective facts based on our perspective. We all agreed that the speaker indeed spoke and that he indeed had a shirt on, but we couldn't agree on the color.
The same phenomenon seems to have happened with Srebrenica. Most people agree that over 8000 people were killed as a result of the siege and downfall of the UN Safe Zone of Srebrenica (there are some deniers of the massacre, who may just not be able to process it or may be the victims of rampant misinformation and propoganda). But you will hear different stories and explanations from different individuals. For instance, the exhibition in the factory said that some individuals were engaged in "food raids" because of the food shortage within the refugee camp. In a couple of the documentaries I have watched about Srebrenica, the food shortage and "food raids" are attributed to the Bosniak commando, Naser Oric, who is believed to have lead raids of Serbian villages surrounding Srebrenica and committing the same atrocities that Mladic and other Serbian soldiers have been accused (and sometimes convicted) of.
The documentaries also point to Oric as the leader of a black market in Srebrenica, which involved the seizure of large amounts of food aid so that it did not reach the refugees. In one documentary, Serbs are quoted as saying that the men and boys that were hunted down and killed in the forests around Srebrenica were targeted as potential enemy soldiers. Although Naser Oric left the camp before the Serbian attack, some of his men were potentially amongst the refugees fleeing to Tuzla and elsewhere. While I doubt the Serbian response to Srebrenica, there is absolutely no defense and no justification for the execution of over 8,000 civilians.
As I processed these frustrations, I started to feel feel more empathy for confusion and helplessness of the whole thing. On one hand, I can not blame some of the participants in the "food raids" for refusing to accept that they were at the mercy of the UN and the Serbian General Mladic. Had I been in their situation, I likely would have chosen to raid the villages to bring back food to my family rather than fight by fellow refugees in the camp over the meager available food aid. But on the other hand, burning, looting and executing Serb civilians is unacceptable. Neither is using the spoils of the food raids to profit off of a black market that exploits your fellow refugees.
Towards the end of my walk, I began to sense a small understanding for the residual anger and need for justice among the victims towards the perpetrators. For that matter, the need for justice for Srebrenica in humanity. What it boils down to is that the UN failed to protect thousands of refugees and 8372 civilians were slaughtered. I think that there is a near universal need to grieve and atone for their deaths, which could have been prevented. There is also a need to comprehend what happened at Srebrenica (and Rwanda, Nazi Germany, etc., for that matter), but more importantly and perhaps most frightening of all, why it happened and why so many stood by and let it happen. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is important to establish international law and human rights and to prosecute and determine the punishment and guilt of genocidal perpetrators. More difficult and more crucial is that the international community learn to recognize the patterns of behavior that lead up to ethnic cleansing or genocide and commit to preventing it, with force, if necessary.
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I'm sure that if you've read this far that you're probably having some sort of emotional reaction and maybe considering pointing out flaws in my logic or emotions. Maybe you're wondering whether or not I am an optimist. Well, if you haven't figured it out, here goes. Below is my favorite picture from our visit because you can see almost the entire memorial, the graves being prepared for next week, and the concrete monument with the victims' names. But you can also see the blue sky, the green trees and the water fountain as beautiful and hopeful signs that we can and will move on from this tragedy and that life is as vibrant as ever.
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