Srebrenica: Serbia leader apology for war massacre

Serbia’s president has issued a ground-breaking apology for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, but stopped short of calling the slaughter an act of genocide.
A forensic expert puts a number next to the excavated skull of a Srebrenica victim. Picture: APA forensic expert puts a number next to the excavated skull of a Srebrenica victim. Picture: AP
A forensic expert puts a number next to the excavated skull of a Srebrenica victim. Picture: AP

Speaking in a television interview for Bosnian television to be broadcast next month, Tomislav Nikolic said sorry on his nation’s behalf for the murder of around 8,000 Bosnian boys and men in Europe’s worst single massacre since the end of the Second World War.

The victims were rounded up by Bosnian Serb forces under wartime commander Ratko Mladic, executed and bulldozed into pits over five days in July 1995. “I kneel and ask for 
forgiveness for Serbia for the crime committed in Srebrenica,” said Mr Nikolic. “I apologise for the crimes committed by any individual in the name of our state and our people.”

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His talk of kneeling evoked the memory of West German chancellor Willy Brandt, who dropped to his knees at a memorial in Warsaw to Polish Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust in what was seen at the time as a historic act of recognition of Germany’s wartime sins.

Serbia’s relations with its neighbours are under close scrutiny by the EU, which gave it a tentative green light on Monday to start accession talks this year.

Zeljko Komsic, the Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, told Bosnian state radio he was “positively surprised” by the Serb president’s apology and said it should help improve ties between the two countries.

Earlier this month Mr Kosmic had pulled out of a visit to Belgrade after accusing Mr Nikolic of “meddling in Bosnian affairs” and trying to orchestrate the break-up of the country.

But commenting on the television interviewer’s claim that all the evidence indicated Srebrenica was an act of genocide, Mr Nikolic said everything which happened during the bloody wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s had the “characteristics of genocide” and that “genocide needed to be proven”.

In response, Munira Subasic, president of the Mothers of Srebrenica association, said that she was “not convinced” of Mr Nikolic’s sincerity.

“We do not need someone to kneel and ask for forgiveness,” she said. “We want to hear the Serbian president and Serbia say the word genocide.”

Mr Nikolic’s refusal to acknowledge genocide will also do little to dilute his reputation as a hard-line nationalist. For many years he called for the creation of a “Greater Serbia” and once said he would refuse to have diplomatic relations with neighbouring Croatia because Croats were occupying Serb land.

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Last year Mr Nikolic sparked fury in Croatia when he described the Croatian town of Vukovar as a “Serb city” and said “Croats have nothing to go back to there for”.

The EU has accused the Serb leader of trying to “rewrite history” by refusing to recognise Srebrenica as an act of genocide.

Bosnian media reported yesterday that Mr Nikolic had also pledged to visit Srebrenica, but not on the 11 July anniversary.

Around 100,000 people were killed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, when Mladic’s forces, using the big guns of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, seized swathes of land and drove out non-Serbs. Fighting between Serb, Croat and Muslim forces tore the country apart.

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