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Serbia
Cleared of Genocide But Guilty of Inaction |
Posted:
02.28.07
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The highest United Nations court this week cleared the Serbian
government of charges of genocide for the 1995 slaughter of 8,000
Bosnian Muslims.
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Reaction to the decision fell along religious lines: While Orthodox
Christian Serbians expressed relief, Muslim Bosnians voiced their
disagreement.
 The
charge stems from 1995 when Serbs entered a U.N. camp in the town
of Srebrenica and killed 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
The killing was a culmination of the 1992–1995 Bosnian War
that killed 100,000, mostly Bosnian Muslims at the hands of Bosnian
Serbs, according to Human Rights Watch.
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International
court ruling |
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The 60-year-old International Court of Justice located in The
Hague, Netherlands, said the Srebrenica atrocity did constitute
genocide, but it blamed the Serbian state for inaction, a less
serious charge.
 The
ICJ said that Serbia had the power to foresee and prevent the
killing because it "was making its considerable military
and financial support available" to the Bosnian Serbs at
the Srebrenica camp.
But the court could not find Serbia guilty because the government
did not know for certain that an ethnic massacre was to occur.
At the time, the Serbs in Srebrenica were allegedly under the
command of Radovan Karadzic and his military general, Ratko Mladic.
Both are charged with genocide, but have evaded capture for years.
If the court had ruled in Bosnia's favor, Bosnians could have
sought billions of dollars in compensation from Serbia.
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The Bosnian
War |
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In April 1992, against the wishes of Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Muslims
and Catholics split from Yugoslavia.
Just a year earlier, regions to the Northwest, Slovenia and Croatia,
declared independence from Yugoslavia.
 Yugoslavia
had been under Serb control, but in the newly formed nation, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Serbs were only a one-third minority.
Over a three-year period, backed by the Yugoslav army, the Bosnian
Serbs captured two-thirds of Bosnia and besieged its new capital,
Sarajevo.
Near the war's end in 1995, refugees from Srebrenica, mostly
Muslim, fled to a U.N. camp protected by Dutch troops. In July
of 1995, General Mladic's Serb soldiers overran the camp, extracted
the men and boys from their families, and killed them.
The end of the Bosnian War was marked by the 1995 Dayton peace
treaty, which divided Bosnia-Herzegovina into a Muslim-Croat federation
and a Serb republic, and created a three-member presidency consisting
of a Muslim, a Croat and a Serb.
The Muslim leader, Haris Silajdzic, said Bosnia-Herzegovina was
founded on genocide and hoped the U.N. court's decision would
dissolve the Bosnian Serb republic, but it didn't.
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Political
repercussions |
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"This is no verdict, no solution. This is a disaster for
our people," Fatija Suljic, who lost her husband and three
sons in the genocide, told Reuters.
"I am stunned. This is terrible -- I saw with my own eyes
who started this war and who kept up the aggression. It was the
Serbs," Hedija Krdzic, who lost her husband, father and grandfather
at Srebrenica, told Reuters.
Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, said, "For all of us, the
very difficult part of the verdict is that Serbia did not do all
it could to prevent genocide."
 Though
Tadic said it is "very important" for the parliament
of Serbia to adopt a resolution to condemn the massacre and "make
possible the opening of a new page in relations between Bosnia
and Serbia," the majority of its members deny the massacre
and a similar measure failed two years ago.
However, this time, Serbia faces additional political pressure
from the European Union. Serbia wishes to join the Union for economic
and cultural reasons, but membership talks have been frozen until
the country arrests former Serb general Mladic and brings him
before an international court.
--Compiled
by Adnaan Wasey for NewsHour Extra
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