The Srebrenica massacre was genocide...

Today, only Bosnian Serbs live in Srebrenica.
The city’s former Bosniak (Muslim) inhabitants return only every July 11, to commemorate the fall of their city in 1995.
The Bosnian Serbs had begun their offensive by first shelling the city for several days.
The day before Srebrenica fell, thousands of Bosniaks fled, many seeking refuge in the Dutch base at Potocari.
Srebrenica had been declared a UN safe area, and some six hundred Dutch troops were stationed near by at Potocari in order to protect the local population.
When the city fell, thousands of Bosniak sought safety in the surrounding hills.
Those Muslim men who could not were separated from the woman and children, and taken away in trucks.
Bound and blindfolded, they were executed and dumped into mass graves by the Bosnian Serb army.
General Ratko Mladic’s Drina Corps murdered over 8,000 Bosniaks.
Some 6,400 of those have been identified thanks to DNA analysis.
Fifteen years later, bodies are still unearthed in the hills surrounding the city.
Last Thursday, seven Bosnian Serbs were convicted by the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for their role in the killing of these 8,000 Muslim boys and men in 1995.
Vujadin Popovic, 53, and Ljubisa Beara, 70, were found guilty of genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mr. Popovic was a Lieutenant Colonel and an assistant to the head of security of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS).
The court found Mr. Popovic to have been part of what it called a joint criminal enterprise to murder.
Popović knew that the intent was not just to kill those who had fallen into the hands of the Bosnian Serb Forces, but to kill as many as possible with the aim of destroying the group. Popović’s ensuing robust participation in all aspects of the plan demonstrates that he not only knew of this intent to destroy, he also shared it, the court declared.
Mr. Beara was a colonel and chief of security in the VRS.
According to the court, he was the driving force behind the murder enterprise.
Furthermore, the judges declared, the scale and nature of the murder operation, with the staggering number of killings, the systematic and organized manner in which it was carried out, the targeting and relentless pursuit of the victims, and the plain intention to eliminate every Bosnian Muslim male who was captured or surrendered proves beyond reasonable doubt that this was genocide.
In the context of the war in the former Yugoslavia, and in the context of human history, these events are arresting in their scale and brutality.
Another Bosnian Serb officer, Drago Nikolic received a jail sentence of thirty-five years for aiding and abetting genocide.
The trial of the seven Bosnian Serbs lasted four years, and some 315 witnesses were heard.
The judges at the trial chamber established that there was a genocidal intent to destroy a group, or a part of a group, based upon their ethnic background. That is very important, Merdijana Sadovic, the director of the International Justice program in Sarajevo for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told RFE/RL.
Moreover, the verdict may have a considerable impact on the current trial of Radovan Karadzic. Also accused of genocide, he was the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs at the time of the Srebrenica massacre.
Because Popovic and Beara were subordinate to Karadzic, if their genocide conviction is confirmed by the appeals chamber, it would seem only logical that Karadzic would also be found guilty of genocide if all other evidence provided in this trial supports these convictions… In case the appeals chamber confirms this conviction, it will definitely make it easier for the prosecutors to prove genocidal intent and Radovan Karadzic's responsibility for genocide [at Srebrenica], Merdijana Sadovic added. Karadzic had issued a directive to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants.
Yet, the genocide conviction may be overturned by a UN appeals court, for there is a precedent.
Radislav Krstic, a deputy commander of the Drina Corps in Srebrenica, was convicted of genocide in 2001, but the verdict was overturned in 2004 due to insufficient evidence. Instead, Mr. Krstic was convicted of aiding and abetting genocide, and is now serving a thirty-five year prison sentence.
Equally significant for the case against General Ratko Mladic, also accused of genocide, last Thursday’s ruling establishes that MM. Popovic, Beara and Nikolic were all subordinates of General Mladic, commander of the Drina Corps.
The families of the victims were satisfied by the verdict.
Kada Hotic, of the Association of Mothers of Srebrenica, considered the verdict significant because it confirmed that the VRS did commit genocide in Srebrenica and systematically and intentionally execute men and boys, according to The Independent.
Yet, for some, nothing will ever console them for the loss incurred.
Whatever the sentence is, it's not enough, one woman who has lost a husband, two sons and a brother told The Guardian.
Guernica, Oradour, Katyn, Auschwitz are but a beginning in Europe's litany of 20th-century infamy. The list lengthened towards the century's end to include Srebrenica, a small hill town by the river Drina on Bosnia's eastern border with Serbia, wrote Ian Traynor in The Guardian.
In light of these despicable precedents, that Europe stood by and allowed the mass murder of civilians is unconscionable and disgraceful.
It was the worst massacre in Europe since the Nazi era, emphasized Ian Traynor.
Had the hideous twentieth century taught us nothing?
Perhaps the lessons of history have no lasting value if you do not have the courage to heed them…
We certainly had little in July 1995 as we insensitively watched thousands of civilians be executed without lifting a finger to help them.
Today, the ICTY at The Hague is trying to atone for the callousness and pusillanimity we so blatantly evinced that fateful July…
Yet, if we are serious in our endeavor to see that justice is done, then Ratko Mladic must be caught.
It is difficult to seriously entertain the thought that an individual can so easily evade capture for so long (he has been on the run for fifteen years), unless we have no genuine interest in arresting him.
Interestingly, Mr. Mladic’s wife, Bosiljka Mladic, was arrested last Tuesday on weapons charges. Are the Serbs finally making an earnest effort to seize him by putting pressure on his family? Their hopes to join the European Union depend on his capture…Ratko Mladic’s family had been urging the Serb government to declare the general officially dead…
In the meantime, we can only hope the European continent will never again be sullied by another Srebrenica, and that next time, if there should be a next time, we shall have the wisdom and courage to prevent acts of barbarity that defile all those who purport to be civilized.
We owe the relatives of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre at least that much…
(the photograph of an old woman mourning the victims of the Srebrenica massacre is by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)