Srebrenica: Denying Genocide Our World

may find distressing.

HAUNTING MUSIC THROUGHOUT.

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.

Srebrenica,

the setting for Europe's worst

atrocity since World War Two.

Gunfire.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serbs

soldiers are sick of thousands of

unarmed Muslim men and boys here. --

massacred. A small number of

survivors have since returned.

I had

nightmares. And I didn't... Ever get

rid off. Returning here and is

living here maybe it is therapy for

me.

But the genocide verdicts of the

International Court are being

questioned by local politicians and

the town's new mayor, even here in

the very place where ethnic

cleansing happened.

Inflation

-- the genocide didn't happen, that

his officials.

This man now finds

his incredible story of survival of

his community's re- identity, a

matter of dispute.

Almost 20 years I

was violent. Later, I realised that

we have to struggle for the truth,

for our lives.

He returned to Srebrenica ten years

ago. He and his wife are bringing up

their three daughters here. It is

the Serb run entity within

Bosnia-Herzegovina that was formally

recognised after the war but with

some Bosnian Muslims or Bosnia Acts

believed entrenched Muslim cleansing

-- ethnic cleansing. He is one of

only six men and boys who survived

being rounded up, taken to mass

execution sites, and shot in July

1995, 8000 did not.

I had something

inside me to come here, to show them

that I survived. Maybe it is the

best answer to all of those who

denied the genocide and it is a

revenge.

His decision to live here

is cathartic and political. Aimed at

those who wanted Muslims are raised

from here. He says it is

increasingly difficult.

Life here is

not easy. Today we fight for

justice. It isn't finished. Without

justice, there is no reconciliation.

It is an illusion. I am worried

because of this course and

everywhere you have propaganda and

because of that my wife just wants

to leave Srebrenica.

There are

different realities here, many

Bosnian Serbs see men deemed Walker

and also as he arose 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 the country and with

international eyes focused

elsewhere, Bosnians fear the tide is

turning. In a recent referendum,

Bosnian Serbs voted overwhelmingly

for the annual National Day, which

the country's court had ruled

illegal, and Bosnian Serb

politicians from the President down

don't accept international court

verdicts concerning Srebrenica.

22 years ago, Srebrenica was a place

of fear. With Bosnian Serbs, Croats

and Muslims killing each other

across the region, the UN had

declared the town of safe haven back

in 1993 and thousands of Bosnian

civilians flocked there. In among

them young men. The siege by the

Bosnian Serbs, abandoned by the UN

in July 19 99. Agreeing to transport

the refugees to safety, Bosnian Serb

forces captured the town. The woman

and her mother with the other women

and children and were bussed out,

the Bosnian Serb planned to kill the

Muslim men and boys was under way.

Have you watched those pictures, to

your room but the feeling?

Yes.

Everything. It is... Painful to

remember this. But it is part of

life. Passed. Our past.

The head of the killings, the leader

of the Bosnian Serb forces general

Ratko Mladic had a great play of

promising civilians safe passage. He

is now facing genocide charges at

his trial in The Hague.

The killing of Srebrenica's 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 raced on

nationality, race, ethnicity or

religion.

It was systematic killing,

organised killing, and it was

organised by, from a higher level,

to achieve all of that you need so

many resources, so many trucks, so

many buses, so many et cetera.

The scars of war are still evident

in Srebrenica today. This was

probably Muslim town but many who

survived those times chose not to

come back to a place international

community had agreed would be part

of the Bosnian Serb entity. There is

a feeling of emptiness, of once

thriving industries that never

recovered. Economically depressed,

life here is hard, any geek out a

living in a way that has changed

little over centuries. Last year,

the town collected a new mayor who

has promised economic development.

It is the first time as Serb has

filled the role since the war. His

views on the Srebrenica massacre

have caused alarm among Srebrenica

who have returned.

For me it isn't a

problem to have a mayor who is a

Serb, it is no problem, we are

looking for more tolerance. He is a

guy who denies all past, denies the

genocide.

The Balkans have always been a

powderkeg and is now the agreements

that brought about the end of the

war are looking ever more fragile.

There is increasing talk of them

breaking away from the rest of

Bosnia which would leave the

entities Bosnian Muslims living in a

potentially hostile country. The

republic's resident unveiled a

university dormitory in honour of

the former president just a few days

before The Hague war crimes in a

reform found him guilty of genocide.

The mayor of the city is from the

same party as him. Do you believe he

is a hero?

Do you accept the judgement of the

International Court that genocide

happened in Srebrenica?

He took a journey he did back in

1995 then as a prisoner, crammed

into a truck with dozens of others,

their hands tied behind their backs.

That is the place where the mass

execution took place. It was night

and they were shooting and firing

outside. You could see the lines,

rows and rows of dead waddies. I

knew it was the end, really, in that

moment. They asked us to lay down

and it is thought of my mother, she

would never know where I ended up.

How I finished. Then they started

firing and I was dying. I could just

hear moans. Moans of other people

who were wounded. It was so painful.

I just prayed not to die. And then I

noticed someone was moving in front

of me. That cost him are you alive?

He said yes, I am alive. That's

enough. I can show you something

else. Maybe security could come.

We

get asked a lot of him, the horror

playing out in his head as he

described escaping with the other

survive. While the soldiers went to

collect more prisoners to kill.

I

was crawling, crawling over the dead

bodies. The Broken Head is, it

was...

He was badly wounded and in terrible

pain. The other man encouraged the

teenager to keep crawling. As day

broke and they climbed through the

forest, the full-scale and planning

behind the massacre became apparent.

They were collecting the dead bodies

and they would put that on the

trucks, the trucks, don't you

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. Among the

dead, his father and uncle.

I know

from my uncle that his remains were

found in four mass graves. They

wanted to hide it and excavated them

and rebury them again. Because they

were dead they broke their bodies.

I

wondered whether people living

around the site now would know what

happened there.

Many of them

probably, the talk, they don't want

anything about it. Why not? They

have fear of their lives.

If they

talked about what happened here?

Yep, of course.

Fear of their lives

from true?

From those who committed

the crime and who, who supported the

crime and who approved the crime.

Do

some of them still live around here?

Yes, of course.

Each gravestone in the vast oral to

the genocide victims has the same

year of death, 1995. It has been

painstakingly slow. Every year on

the July anniversary, more people

are buried. Sometimes a bone

fragment is all that is identified.

The international court in The Hague

has said six are guilty. One is

awaiting judgement. Silia testified

against him and others. In a grave,

many of her family lie at rest.

A few miles from Srebrenica, as the

primary school day begins, it has

become politicised. These children

are being educated separately from

their peers. Their parents set up up

their own Islamic school. They

claimed they were forced to do so

because in subjects from history to

geography to literature, even what

the language is called, their

heritage was being excluded.

Do you believe that this is a

deliberate decision by the

politicians, the people, the

officials running the education

system, to make you feel unwelcome?

This man's daughters are still too

young for these issues to apply. But

with politicians ramping up the

rhetoric against their rivals, he

worries what they will be caught in

future if they stay in the Republic.

Srebrenica's municipal assembly now

has more Serb councillors than

Muslim. In the opposition, a Serb

who has been in politics since the

war days. He is the local president,

and also the town's secretary

councillor. If people would

recognise and called it a genocide,

reconciliation could happen. Because

that is not happening, it is

impossible. Do you think it was a

genocide? And what do you think

about that viewpoint?

Blaming international meddling for

the possible breakup of

Bosnia-Herzegovina is tried and

tested political discourse here. The

president regularly threatens a

referendum on secession. Would you

like to see the republic move away?

Before the war Serbs made up just

half the population. Now, the

republic is 80% Serb. After the war,

efforts were made. They live in a

block for people with special needs.

She would like to leave.

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?

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 3,000 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.

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.