Remembering Srebrenica

WASHINGTON—Vahidin Zagorica, 35, will never forget when his neighbor knocked on his door.

It was July 1992, and a 10-year-old Zagorica and his family got the alert at 5 a.m. that the Serbs would arrive at any minute: “That was my last moment of normalcy.”

Zagorica grabbed his backpack and fled to the nearby forest with his parents and sister. He made it 2 kilometers into the woods before he heard the first gunshots.

Serbian forces invaded Zagorica’s home in Srebrenica, a small Bosnian town east of the capital, prepared to cleanse the area of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). What followed was a three-year war infamous for the worst European genocidal event since the Holocaust. In July 1995, the world watched as Serb forces slaughtered more than 8,000 Bosniaks, many of them young boys, in Srebrenica.

Zagorica reflected on his childhood on Capitol Hill at a July 12 memorial event hosted by the Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina. To this day, Bosnia remains in shambles and advocates claim the United States can do more to bring justice to genocide perpetrators and offer resolution for victims.

Tens of thousands of Bosnians gathered in Srebrenica last week to remember the atrocities that occurred there. Over three years, more than 200,000 people died and constant fighting displaced 2 million from their homes. Twenty-two years later, officials continue to identify victims’ remains from the massacre.

On July 11, Bosnians buried the newly found remains of 71 Bosniaks, adding to the thousands of graves where victims have already been laid to rest.

During the massacre, Serbs hurriedly dumped bodies into large pits, and later dug them up and scattered the human remains throughout various hidden sites in Srebrenica. That left families without resolution, deprived of the chance to bury their loved ones.

Despite two United Nations courts labeling the Srebrenica killings as genocide, many Serbs, who still occupy large parts of Bosnia, persistently deny the extent of the massacre. Even the current mayor of Srebrenica, Mladen Grujicic, a Serb, disputes the genocide label and the list of victims.

“Many people say that it did happen, but that’s just a political agenda backed by the Russians,” Zagorica said. “Nobody is holding them accountable. None of the countries that believe in justice or peace are giving them any pressure.”

Zagorica, his sister, and parents all survived Srebrenica. They spent four years as refugees before immigrating to the United States in 1999. Zagorica now works for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington, D.C.

The massacre in Bosnia isn’t the most recent to be recognized as genocide. In March 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry made a historic declaration that Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists were committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.

Survivors of Srebrenica like Zagorica aren’t asking for money or military action, but simply want the world to recognize what happened in Bosnia. To this day, many Bosniaks are deterred from returning to their former homes because of stigma and cultural hostility stoked by Serbian propaganda.

“What’s most frustrating to me is the inaction, the inaction of the world back then and even now,” Zagorica said. “Many things have happened to me but it’s in the past. Thank God I survived. I will never forget, but I will forgive. At times I am angry, but I’m more angry at the political dissolution.”