Bratunac and Srebrenica now lie within the boundary of a Bosnian Serb statelet, Republika Srpska, created by the Dayton peace agreement, which ended the war in November 1995. The Republika Srpska runs the local police and flies Serb flags across the region. Its leaders do not just deny the genocide, they glorify the killers.
“The complete silence that came after the war has evolved into literally celebrating genocide,” said Hariz Halilovich, a Srebrenica-born author, anthropologist and professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. “And it’s not some kind of isolated hate speech that happens here and there. It has gradually become completely mainstream.” The Guardian.
As a teenager at the time, I remember finding it almost unbelievable that such a thing had just happened in the middle of Europe. Bosnia is right opposite Italy. Not in the 1940s but in the 90s! I still find it mind-boggling. The veneer of civilisation is very thin.