UN describes Srebrenica massacre as "genocide"

Despite intense opposition from Russia Bosnian Serbs and Serbia, officials in the UN have referred to the massacre as a "genocide".
World Bulletin / News Desk
In General Assembly debate July 1 over a resolution commemorating the 20th anniversary of the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, who were then dumped into an open pit in Europe's worst mass killing since World War II, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon unapologetically used the word genocide.
So did Serge Brammertz, the head of a UN tribunal prosecuting the perpetrators, and U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, who was in Bosnia as a freelance journalist at the time of the mass killings in July 1995.
"Those who deny the genocide in Srebrenica today only embarrass and humiliate themselves," said Power. She urged that "the resolve induced by the horror of Srebrenica be extended not only to commemorating the past, but to do far more to prevent genocide and mass atrocities in the present."
Abisada Dudic, said how she was brought tears to bystanders when she addressed the semantical issue after she explained how she fled her home near Srebrenica as a child with memories of "fear, bloodshed and fire."  Her family's hope is that the remains of loved ones will be found, including an uncle last seen running into the forest to escape the Srebrenica slaughter.
Said Dudic: "Calling what happened in Srebrenica by any name other than genocide, be it massacre, tragedy, catastrophe, whatever else, not only thwarts the possibility of reconciliation, it bolsters those denying the genocide and leading the secession efforts" by Bosnian Serbs.
"It trivializes the pain and suffering of genocide victims. It re-victimizes the survivors, and it minimizes the enormity of the crime," she said.
In a report by Radio Free Liberty Bosnia's UN Ambassador Mirsada Colakovic, who was the lead during the commemoration, called denial "the last stage of genocide."
It's "a kind of double-killing in which the victims are first murdered, then the memory of the horrible deeds themselves is being destroyed," she said.
The use of the word genocide comes with  intense opposition from Russia, Bosnian Serbs, and Serbia to refer to the massacre as genocide in a UN Security Council resolution marking the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica killings.
Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic called it "a big, horrific crime," but refuses to call it a genocide.