The massacre of civilians is a war crime, a crime against humanity and often an act of genocide. This is done by persons who have nothing human, therefore they must be punished and persecuted not only for the rest of their lives, but also after death. There is no justification for the massacres of civilians, whether in Rwanda, Ukraine or Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most massive killing of civilians during the Second World War was the massacre of the Ukrainian population in the town of Koryukovka, in the Chernihiv region. Then in 1943, in retaliation for the partisan attack on a Hungarian military detachment that helped the Nazis in the occupation of Ukraine, almost 7,000 civilians were killed. The German people have abandoned their dark past since the days of Nazism. The current President of Germany, Walter Steinmeier, has already visited Koryukovka twice to honor the memory of the fallen Ukrainians. Is it any wonder that no one from the Hungarian side ever came to ask for forgiveness for the crimes of 80 years ago. Perhaps this just once again convinces all of us of the dangerous policy that Viktor Orban and his political entourage have been pursuing for many years.
See also: From Z to Z: a look at the war in Ukraine from Montenegro
On July 11, 1995, exactly 28 years ago, units of the Army of the Republika Srpska under the command of General Ratko Mladic broke into the besieged enclave of Srebrenica, which had been declared a "safe zone" under the protection of the United Nations two years earlier. The city was home to tens of thousands of refugees from nearby villages who sought refuge there. Ratko Mladic's troops rounded up the population, separated the women and the youngest children, and then systematically killed all men over 15 years of age. They massacred over 8,000 unarmed people just because they were Bosnians. The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." This is exactly what happened in Srebrenica, according to the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the events in and around Srebrenica in 2004. The two most responsible for the Srebrenica massacre were former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic and his military leader Ratko Mladic. Both were caught and brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where they were found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
In a joint statement last year by EU High Representative/European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell and European Commissioner Oliver Vargea on the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, “we commemorate the anniversary of the memory of all the victims and all those still missing in the time of the Srebrenica genocide. We mourn together with their loved ones and friends who survived this genocide. At the same time, we cannot take peace for granted. Russia's unjustified and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine has returned a brutal war to our continent. The massacres and war crimes we saw in Ukraine are reminiscent of similar acts we saw in the Western Balkans in the 1990s.”
In 2003, the authorities of the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina officially acknowledged responsibility for the massacres of the civilian Bosnian population. In 2010, the Serbian parliament also condemned the massacre, but refused to recognize it as genocide.
In January 2007, the International Court of Justice qualified the actions in Srebrenica as "crimes of genocide". On the other hand, in January 2009, the European Parliament declared 11 July the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Srebrenica Genocide. From 2001 to 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia sentenced a number of Bosnian Serb commanders to various prison terms for the Srebrenica massacre. Republika Srpska forces commander Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment on November 22, 2017. A certain number of defendants were convicted by Serbian courts. In 2015, the Russian Federation blocked the recognition of the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide in the UN Security Council. And as a continuation of the official policy of Moscow, it is not surprising that Russian soldiers perpetrated a terrible massacre of the civilian Ukrainian population in the city of Bucha near Kiev in 2022. Maybe ten times fewer civilians died there than in Srebrenica, but almost at the same time, perhaps ten times more people died in Mariupol than in the unfortunate Bosnian town, due to the barbaric Russian bombardments and the inhuman deprivation of Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers residents of the city the possibility of obtaining water, food and heating.
The massacre of eight thousand Bosnians in Srebrenica and its environs is a monstrous crime in the moral, human and political sense. There is evidence that Russian detachments of volunteers and Cossacks were operating near Srebrenica, helping the army of Ratko Mladic. Vladimir Putin has accused the Ukrainians many times that they plan to prepare a second Srebrenica in the Donbass, but in fact he himself committed the massacres and massacres in Bucha and Mariupol. The Kremlin seemed to be planning to turn Ukraine into a huge Srebrenica, but this was prevented by the Ukrainian Armed Forces with strong international support. Everyone who does not recognize the genocide in Srebrenica and is now pushing their peoples to worsen relations and incite new wars in the Western Balkans, Ukraine and the entire European continent. International community, and also their own peoples must firmly restrain such politicians from fatal and wrong steps. The sowing of death and killing of civilians casts a dark stain for centuries on the entire nation that did this and did not renounce the criminals from its ranks.