Srebrenica: Denying Genocide Our World

We didn't believe that we would be killed because there are so many

people and I couldn't believe they could kill all of us.

Srebenica, the setting for Europe's worst atrocity

since the Second World War.

GUNSHOTS.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers massacred thousands of unarmed

Muslim men and boys here.

A small number of survivors have since returned.

I had nightmares and I didn't ever get rid of it.

I return here and living here maybe is a therapy for me.

But the genocide verdicts of the International Court

are being questioned by the politicians

and the town's new mayor.

Even here, in the very place where ethnic cleansing happened.

The genocide didn't happen. That's official.

Nedzad Avdic now finds his incredible story of survival -

his community's very identity - a matter of dispute.

Almost 20 years I was silent.

Later, I realised that we have the struggle for the truth

like for our lives.

Nedzad Avdic returned to Srebenica ten years ago.

He and his wife, Elvisa, are bringing up their three

daughters here in Srpska, Repubblica Srpska, the Serb-run

entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina, that was formally recognised

after the war but which some Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks,

believe entrenched ethnic cleansing.

Nedzad is one of it's believed only six men and boys who survived

being rounded up, taken to mass execution sites and shot

in July 1995.

8000 didn't.

I had a need deeply inside me to come here, to show them that

I survived.

Maybe it is the best answer that all those who deny the genocide.

It is all arranged.

It is a revenge.

Nadzad's decision to live in Srebenica is cathartic

and political, aimed at those who wanted Muslims erased from here.

He says it's increasingly difficult.

Life here is not easy.

Today we fight for justice.

It isn't finished.

Without justice, there is no reconciliation.

I worry because of this curse, rhetoric.

Everywhere you have propaganda.

Because of that, my wife, she just wants to leave Srebenica.

There are different realities here in Repubblica Srpska.

Many Bosnian Serbs see men deemed war criminals as heroes.

When the political second-in-command from the war days was released

from prison, he was fated.

One person's nationalism is another's rightful pride

in their country.

With international eyes focused elsewhere, Bosniaks fear

the tide is turning.

In a recent referendum, Bosnian Serbs voted overwhelmingly

for their annual National Day, which the country's courts

had ruled illegal.

Bosnian Serb politicians from President Dodig down don't

accept International Court verdicts concerning Srebenica.

22 years ago, Srebenica was a place of fear.

With Bosnians Serbs, Croats and Muslims killing each

other across the region, the UN had declared the town a safe

haven back in 1993 and thousands of Bosniak civilians flocked there.

In amongst them were a young Elvisa and, separately 17-year-old Nedzad.

Besieged by the Bosnian Serbs, they were abandoned by the UN

in July 1995.

Agreeing to transport the refugees to safety,

Bosnian Serb forces captured the town.

Elvisa and her mother, with the other women and children,

were bussed out.

The Bosnian Serb plan to kill Muslim men and boys was under way.

As you watch those pictures, do you remember the feeling?

Yes, everything.

It's painful to remember that.

But it's part of life, past.

Our past.

Ahead of the killings, the leader of the Bosnian Serb

forces, General Ratko Miladic, made great play of promising

civilians safe passage.

He's now facing genocide charges at his trial in the Hague.

The killing of Srebenica's Bosnian Muslims has been judged genocide

by the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

The UN definition is the intent to destroy a group of people based

on nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion.

It was systematic killing.

Organised killing.

And it was organised from a higher level to achieve all that.

You need so many resources.

So many trucks, so many buses, etc.

The scars of war are still evident in Srebenica today.

This was a predominantly Muslim town.

Many who survived those times chose not to come back to a place

the international community had agreed would part

of the Bosnian-Serb entity, Repubblica Srpska.

There's a feeling of emptiness, of once thriving industries

that never recovered.

Economically depressed, life here is hard.

Many eke out a living in a way that has changed little over centuries.

Last year, the town elected a new mayor,

who's promised economic development.

It's the first time a Serb has filled the role since the war.

His views on the Srebenica massacre have caused alarm amongst

Bosniaks who've returned.

For me, it's not a problem to have a mayor who is a Serb.

It's not a problem.

We are looking for that Serb who promotes tolerance.

He's a guy who denies our past and denies the genocide.

The Balkans have always been a powder keg.

Now the agreements that brought about the end of the war are looking

ever more fragile.

There's increasing talk of Repubblica Srpska breaking away

from the rest of Bosnia, which would leave the entity's

Bosnian Muslims living in a potentially hostile country.

Repubblica Srpska's President Dodig unveiled a university dormitory

in honour of the former president, Radovan Karadic just a few days

before the Hague War Crimes Court found Karadic guilty of genocide.

The new mayor of Srebenica is from the same political party

as Mr Dodig.

Do you believe Radovan Karadic is a hero?

Do you accept the judgment of the International Court that

genocide happened in Srebenica?

Nedzad took us on the journey he did back in 1995.

Then, as a prisoner, crammed into a truck with dozens

of others, their hands tied behind their backs.

There is the place where mass execution took place.

It was night and they were shooting and firing outside.

I could see the lines - rows and rows of dead bodies.

I knew it was the end really at that moment.

They ordered us to lay down.

I just thought, my mother would never know where I ended up,

how I finished.

Then they started to fire and I was dying.

I just could hear moans.

Moans of other people who were wounded.

It was so painful, I was just praying to die.

Then I noticed someone was moving in front of me.

I saw and asked him, "Are you aware?"

He said, yes...

That's enough.

I can show you something else.

Before the security could come.

We'd asked a lot of Nedzad.

The horror playing out in his head as he described escaping

with the other survivors while soldiers went to collect more

prisoners to kill.

I was crawling.

I was crawling over dead bodies.

Broken hats, etc.

It was...

Nedzad was badly wounded and in terrible pain.

The other man encouraged the teenager to keep crawling.

And stay broke, and they climbed through the forest, the full-scale

and planning behind massacre became apparent.

They were collecting the dead bodies and they put them on the trucks,

or tractors, I don't remember now.

And the tractors were going somewhere.

I don't remember where.

Probably to mass graves.

After the war, the international effort to find and identify

the missing thousands began.

Amongst the dead, Nedzad's father and uncle.

I know my uncle - that his remains were found in four mass graves.

They wanted to hide it and excavated them and re-buried them again.

Because of that, they have broken their bodies.

I wondered whether people living around the dam site now would know

what happened there.

Many of them probably don't talk or tell anything about it.

Why not?

They have fear for their lives.

If they talked about what happened here.

Yeah, of course.

Fear of their lives from whom?

From those who committed the crime and who supported the crime,

and who approved the crime.

Do some of them still live round here, do you think?

Yes, of course.

Each gravestone in the vast Potocari memorial to the genocide victims

bears the same year of death - 1995.

The recovery of remains has been painstakingly slow.

Every year on the July anniversary, more men are buried here.

Sometimes a bone fragment is all that's been identified.

The International Court in the Hague has judged six senior Serb figures

guilty of genocide in Srebenica.

The former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic is awaiting judgment.

This woman testified against him and others.

In a row of four graves at Potocari lie her husband,

her eldest son, her father-in-law and her brother-in-law.

A few miles from Srebenica, as the primary school day begins,

education has become politicised.

Here in Nova Kasaba, these Muslim children are now

being educated separately from their Serb peers.

Their parents pulled them out of mainstream school and set

up their own in an Islamic centre.

They claim they were fought to do so because, in subjects

from geography, to history, to literature, even

to what their language is called, their children's Bosniak heritage

was being excluded.

Do you believe that this is a deliberate decision

by the politicians - the officials - running the education system

in Repubblica Srpska to make you feel unwelcome?

Nedzad's daughters are still too young for these issues to apply.

But with Bosniak politicians ramping up the rhetoric

against their rivals' education policies, he and Elvisa worry

what their children will be taught in future if they stay in Repubblica

Srpska.

Srebenica's Municipal Assembly now has more Serb councillors than

Bosniaks.

The Mayor's party is ruling in coalition with Serbs and Muslims.

In the opposition, a Serb, who's been in politics

since the war days.

He's the local president of Radovan Karadic's former party

and also the town's secondary school director.

Bosniaks have said to us, if people would recognise and call

it a genocide, then reconciliation could happen.

Because that's not happening, it's impossible.

Do you think it was a genocide and what do you think

about that viewpoint?

WHISTLE BLOWS.

Blaming international meddling for the possible break-up

of Bosnia-Herzegovina is tried and tested political discourse here.

President Dodig regularly threatens a referendum on secession.

His mayor in Srebenica isn't averse either.

Would you like to see Repubblica Srpska cede from

Bosnia-Herzegovina?

Before the war, Serbs made up just over half the population

of this area.

Now Repubblica Srpska is 80% Serb.

After the war, efforts were made to encourage Bosniaks

back to Srebenica.

This family lives in a block specially built for returnees

with international finance.

But Nedzad and Elvisa told me they already know Muslims who've

recently packed up and left again because of the political situation.

Elvisa would like to follow them.

Nadzad's surviving family never understood his need to go back

and live in Srebenica.

I remember the words of my mother as well.

You want to go to Srebenica?

HE LAUGHS.

You can go wherever you want but don't go there.

Please.

If you leave, who will be the winner?

In that case, I think...

In that case, the genocide would fade off.

Those who committed such horror, they would win.

Nedzad believes the scale of the crimes cannot be compared.

But Serbs also lost their lives in the war and there are memorials

to the 3000 Serb soldiers and civilians killed across this

area over three years.

Most people we spoke to - whether Serb or Bosniak -

were keen to try to forget the past and look to the future.

But, for 22 years, Nedzad has lived with a burden.

The memory of the 8000 souls who didn't have his luck.

The burden of being a survivor of genocide.

If we had a normal country, I can say that hatred,

that nationalistic conversation, can take us to the war

and the killing.

Very often, I ask myself where we are going now

because I fear very bad things in Europe.

Nedzad's man concern is closer to home.

Those who had their hands bloody, if they come one day and ask

for forgiveness, I think it wouldn't be a problem for us...

To extend our hands.

Do you think they ever will?

True reconciliation looks perhaps almost as far off as ever,

particularly with genocide being denied in the very place

where it's judged to have happened.

In the end, only the living can have a say on whether a country

built on bloodshed will truly wash away the emnities of war.

Hello.