“That, people, is genocide,” Ratko Mladić, commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), told the Assembly of the Serbian People in Bosnia and Herzegovina as early as 12 May 1992, after hearing Karadžić’s plan to establish an ethnically pure Serb state in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Yet three years later, over nine days in July 1995, together with Radovan Karadžić, President of Republika Srpska, and other senior military and police officials of Republika Srpska, he ordered and carried out the killing of nearly 8,000 captured Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica. Two international courts, as well as the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, determined that this crime constituted genocide — the gravest crime under international law — for which Mladić and many others were sentenced to life imprisonment and lengthy prison terms.

The book by Dr. Dragan Popović, Losing Humanity – Srebrenica – a Historical Fact, the first comprehensive scholarly historiographical study of this tragic event, its causes and consequences, was promoted last week at the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU) in Podgorica, in an event organized by the NGO Human Rights Action (HRA).

The book was published by the organization Pro Peace from Belgrade and the Association for Modern History – Udruga za modernu povijest UMHIS from Sarajevo. For its contribution to the culture of remembrance and the promotion of peace, the work recently received the prestigious “Jelena Šantić” Award in Belgrade.

The book can be downloaded at the following link: https://srebrenicahistorybook.com/free-download-the-book. The full discussion from the book promotion can be viewed here.

The discussion with the author was moderated by HRA Executive Director Tea Gorjanc Prelević.

In her introductory remarks, Gorjanc Prelević emphasized that the promotion was being organized ahead of the International Day of Remembrance of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, and recalled that HRA had been among 111 Montenegrin non-governmental organizations, along with more than 500 citizens, who had called on Montenegro to co-sponsor the United Nations General Assembly Resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica.

“Although we did not succeed in persuading our authorities to do so, we sent a message to the families of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide that there are many of us here who refuse to accept any relativization of that horrific crime,” Gorjanc Prelević said.

At the beginning of the book presentation, Popović explained that the primary idea was to systematize, in one place, the historically established facts about the genocide in Srebrenica, because this had not been done before.

The book’s motto, placed at its opening, is a quotation by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić about the crimes committed by Karađorđe’s insurgents against Muslims in Sjenica in 1809: “It is true that all this is a disgrace for the Serbs, but it was disgraceful to do it, and once it has been done, it should not be hidden in history.” Popović explained that Vuk had initially tried to conceal the crimes from the German historian Leopold Ranke, who was writing a book about the First Serbian Uprising, but that his conscience ultimately prevailed and he provided Ranke with the documents he had collected on the matter.

The book is based on hundreds of sources — judgments of international and domestic courts, documents from the archives of the Hague Tribunal, testimonies, reports, memoirs and historiographical works.

“There is no crime in recent history that has been documented as thoroughly as the crime in Srebrenica,” Popović said, noting that thousands of documents, intercepted conversations, military records, satellite images and testimonies had been verified and confirmed before the Hague Tribunal. “For every excavator, every truck, we have travel orders, fuel consumption records, drivers and license plates. There is no better-documented crime than the Srebrenica crime.”

Speaking about genocide denial, Popović assessed that relativization is far more present today than open denial. As he said, nationalist narratives create their own version of history, in which the genocide is relativized and presented as an allegedly inevitable consequence of previous events. Popović believes that such narratives are not easy to suppress.

“People are focused on how to feed their families; they do not want to deal with genocides and wars, so slogans of relativization are relatively easily accepted,” he explained.

Regarding the typical attempt to justify the crime in Srebrenica by pointing to attacks carried out by members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the protected zone against the Army of Republika Srpska, Popović said there was no evidence of more than two such attacks, in which Serb civilians were indeed killed, but that the ratio of victims was incomparable.

A special part of the discussion was devoted to the development of events in July 1995. Popović pointed out that Ratko Mladić’s decision of 10 July to seize the entire enclave represented a turning point. As he explained, only from 12 July onward do the sources indicate organized preparations for mass executions — the security chief of the Bratunac Brigade was tasked with designating execution sites, the logistics of the operation were set in motion, and Mladić, for the first time in negotiations, mentioned “triage,” meaning the separation of men from women and children. Popović recalled that the men’s personal documents were then confiscated and burned, which, he said, clearly indicated what their fate would be.

Speaking about the role of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Gorjanc Prelević emphasized that carrying out the genocide required enormous logistical support and recalled the conclusions of the International Court of Justice regarding the role of Serbia and Montenegro, that is, the FRY, which did nothing to prevent and punish the genocide.

Responding to that issue, Popović said that the Army of Republika Srpska was financed and logistically supported from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — through salaries, weapons, fuel and other material assistance — but that he had found no evidence that the decision to commit genocide was made in Belgrade. He emphasized that the available evidence indicates that the decision on mass executions was made by the military leadership of Republika Srpska.

At the end of the discussion, the responsibility of Montenegro was also addressed. It was noted that Montenegrin representatives at the time participated in the work of the Supreme Defence Council of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is why the question of what they knew, as well as their political responsibility, remains important for confronting the past.

Popović emphasized that an operation of killing on such a large scale could not have been concealed. As he said, information about the mass executions quickly began to spread among people on the ground, in foreign media and among international officials. “It is not easy to conceal the killing of more than 8,000 men,” he said. He recalled that Naša Borba had already reported on 14 July that ethnic cleansing was underway, while NIN published an article on 20 July asking where 8,000 people from Srebrenica had disappeared.

Speaking about the consequences of the genocide, Popović stressed that the genocide in Srebrenica does not encompass only the systematic killing of nearly 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. He also pointed to its other dimensions, including crimes committed against women, their forced expulsion, and the long-term traumatization of the victims’ families through the years-long process of multiple exhumations and identification of mortal remains. He recalled that, because bodies had been moved to secondary and tertiary mass graves, families often buried only one or several recovered bones of their loved ones, only to be confronted again with the need to reopen graves whenever new remains were found, experiencing further trauma. Families are still searching for around 700 missing persons.

The promotion was attended by officials from the legislative, executive and judicial branches, including representatives of the Government, Parliament and Office of the President of Montenegro, the Vice-President of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU), the Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms of Montenegro, representatives of judicial institutions, the diplomatic corps, international organizations, the media, civil society organizations and interested citizens.

The promotion was organized within the project “Together for Lasting Peace through Education, Dialogue, and Memorialization”, implemented by Human Rights Action. The project is carried out with the support of the regional initiative “EU Support to Confidence Building in the Western Balkans,” funded by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The content of this press release and the views expressed during the event belong to the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or UNDP, nor can they be considered their official positions.