BOSNIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL AND TRIUMPHALISM: ORIGINS, IMPACT AND PREVENTION IMPACT ORIGINS, DENIAL ANDTRIUMPHALISM: BOSNIAN GENOCIDE BOSNIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL AND TRIUMPHALISM: ORIGINS, IMPACT AND PREVENTION Illustration © cins Edited by Sead Turčalo – Hikmet Karčić BOSNIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL AND TRIUMPHALISM: ORIGINS, IMPACT AND PREVENTION PUBLISHER Faculty of Political Science University of Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina IN COOPERATION WITH Srebrenica Memorial Center Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks ON BEHALF OF THE PUBLISHER Sead Turčalo EDITORS Hikmet Karčić Sead Turčalo DTP & LAYOUT Mahir Sokolija COVER IMAGE Illustration produced by Cins (https://www.instagram.com/ cins3000/) for Adnan Delalić’s article Wings of Denial published by Mangal Media on December 2, 2019. (https://www.mangalmedia.net/english//wings-of-denial) DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions of Publishers or its Editors. Copyright © 2021 Printed in Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Genocide Denial and Triumphalism: Origins, Impact and Prevention Editors: Sead Turčalo – Hikmet Karčić Sarajevo, 2021. Table of Contents Preface ..............................................................................7 Opening Statement by Ambassador Samantha Power .....9 PETER MAASS: The Second War: Journalism and the Protection of the Memory of Genocide From the Forces of Denial ..........................................15 MARKO ATTILA HOARE: Left-Wing Denial of the Bosnian Genocide ................................20 SAMUEL TOTTEN: To Deny the Facts of the Horrors of Srebrenica Is Contemptible and Dangerous: Concrete Recommendations to Counter Such Denial ...27 NeNad dimitrijević: Life After Death: A View From Serbia ....................................................36 ediNa Bećirević: 25 Years After Srebrenica, Genocide Denial Is Pervasive. It Can No Longer Go Unchallenged .........................42 Hamza Karčić: The Four Stages of Bosnian Genocide Denial .........................................................47 DAVID J. SIMON: Has the World Learned From Its Failures at Srebrenica? ................................................52 HiKmet Karčić: Srebrenica Genocide Denial: From Dodik to TikTok ................................................60 JENNIFER TRAHAN: Examining the Benchmarks by Which to Evaluate the ICTY’s Legacy and Lessons for the Future .........................................64 MEHNAZ M. AFRIDI: Muslims, Genocide, and Healing? ....90 GABRIELA GHINDEA: A Shared Desire: Regional Efforts to Prevent Genocide .....................................100 jasmiN mujaNović: The Balkan Roots of the Far Right’s “Great Replacement” Theory ................105 HARIZ HALILOVICH: 25 Years After Srebrenica: “Local” Genocide in a Global Context .....................115 ANDRÁS RIEDLMAYER: Killing Memory: The Destruction of Srebrenica’s Cultural and Religious Heritage ..............................126 adNaN delalić: Wings of Denial ..................................152 eHlimaNa memišević: Serb Authorities Want Tourists to Stay in a Hotel That Was Once a Rape Camp ............................................................180 emir suljagić: Srebrenica: Culmination of a Four-Year Genocide ...........................................187 Preface THE YEAR 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the genocide against Bosniak in the UN ‘Safe Area’ of Sre- brenica by Bosnian Serb Army and police forces in July 1995. After a quarter of a century, denial of the Sre- brenica genocide not only persists but is bolder and more pervasive than ever before. In the last two years alone, the Bosnian Serb estab- lishment has founded a revisionist commission sup- posedly tasked with uncovering the “truth” about what happened in Srebrenica. Peter Handke, a lackey of Milošević and avowed genocide denier, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm. Serbian nationalists in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to instrumentalize denial and minimization of the Srebrenica genocide in pursuit of their regional political agendas. Additionally, the Bosnian genocide continues to be a source of inspiration for far-right extremists across the globe, as evidenced by the bru- tal terrorist attacks in Oslo, Norway and in Christch- urch, New Zealand. Bearing in mind these alarming circumstances, the Srebrenica Potočari Memorial Center, the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo and the 7 8 Preface Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks attempted to take a stand against genocide denial and historical revisionism by organizing a virtual conference titled Denial and Triumphalism: Origins, Impact and Prevention. This hybrid conference, interdisciplinary conference with a focus on memory, denial, prevention, and ac- countability, was held at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo on July 10, 2020. This publication consists of a selected number of papers presented at this conference with the aim to perpetuate this attempt at combating denial and tri- umphalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Editors Opening Statement by Ambassador Samantha Power* LET ME BEGIN by thanking Emir Suljagić – a survivor of Srebrenica at 20 years-old who lost his uncle, grandfather, and almost every one of his classmates in the massacre. Let me also thank the Srebrenica Memorial Center, the University of Sarajevo, and the Institute for Islamic Tra- dition of Bosniaks for organizing this essential event. I feel privileged to have been invited to participate. We are gathering this year to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the largest massacre in Europe since the Second World War. If not for the COVID pandemic, heads of state, ministers, and private citizens would have flown from all over the world to mark this grim milestone and to remember the dead. I was a reporter in Sarajevo when Bosnian Serb forces murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica. I covered the fall of the so-called * American journalist, human rights scholar, and government official who served on the National Security Council (2008–13) and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2013–17) in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. She later served as administrator of USAID (2021– ) under Pres. Joe Biden. 9 10 OPENING STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR SAMANTHA POWER “safe area” for the Washington Post. More than any sin- gle event in my life, the massacre hardened my deter- mination to one day be involved in helping bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice. In 2005, on the ten-year anniversary of the Sre- brenica massacre, I joined my friend the journalist David Rohde on a walk with survivors and the grown children of victims through the woods where men had been hunted like animals. Even a decade removed from the killings, we still encountered scraps of clothing, discarded shoes and IDs, and even scattered bone frag- ments. David also drove me to Nova Kasaba where the month after the Srebrenica genocide he had discov- ered a leg protruding from a mass grave site. He also took me to the football stadium in Bratunac where he had found feces, blood and bullet-marks. I returned once again to Srebrenica in 2010, this time as a U.S. government official, the personal em- issary for President Barack Obama who condemned “the horror of Srebrenica” as “a stain on our collec- tive conscience” and a “stark reminder of the need for the world to respond resolutely in the face of evil.” On that trip, I met a mother who had lost her husband and 5 children – that year, she was burying the 4th of her five sons. She told me, “My son I am burying today was only seventeen. He was just a young boy. I didn’t have time to love him enough. I didn’t give him enough hugs. He wouldn’t have known what he meant to me.” As we parted, I promised her that the US would never give up on bringing to justice those who had orchestrated the murder of her loved ones. A year later, I was awakened early in the morning by a call from a close colleague in the US government: “We got Mladić,” he said breathlessly. Backed by British and OPENING STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR SAMANTHA POWER 11 American intelligence agencies, officers from the Ser- bian Interior Ministry had found and arrested Mladić in his cousin’s farmhouse. The Serbian government had dedicated itself to finding Mladić – and finally, the world’s most notorious war criminal was going to the Hague, an institution he had openly mocked. While I served as US Ambassador to the UN, I par- ticipated in the 2015 commemoration of Srebrenica from New York. I had the ghastly experience of sitting in the Security Council Chamber after Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Putin instructed his UN ambassador to veto a commemorative resolution. The veto was cast for one reason – and one reason only – and that was because the text included a dark and well-established truth – the massacres committed in Srebrenica were no ordinary crimes; they constituted genocide. After Rus- sia issued its veto, I relayed to my fellow Ambassadors on the Council the experience I’d had as a twenty-four- year-old reporter in Sarajevo when a colleague had first told me about reports of mass executions. Not wanting to believe what I was hearing in July 1995, my reaction had simply been “No” – no, it couldn’t be. And yet ear- lier that day in 2015, when I had learned that Russia was planning to veto the 2015 Srebrenica resolution, I had a version of the same reaction: “No. No.” If the mothers of the boys executed in Srebrenica had been able to travel to the UN,