11 July – When the world remembers Srebrenica
Kirklees Council, together with students from Batley Girls’ High School and Westborough High School, held an event to commemorate Europe’s biggest mass killing since the Holocaust.
The event held in Dewsbury was part of a national commemoration of the 1995 massacre, the first for the region which is home to Bosnians who managed to escape the genocide.
Pupils from the two schools shared their thoughts on the events almost 20 years ago and presented the first public showing in Kirklees of a memorial film commissioned by the Memorial Centre at Potocari on the genocide and its lasting legacy in modern Bosnia. Attendees were invited to make a pledge of their own to take action to help combat intolerance and hatred in our society.
The Srebrenica massacre took place between July 11 and 16 in 1995 when more than 8000 Bosnian men and boys were killed by Serb forces.
Bosnian Serb wartime military commander, General Ratko Mladic, and political leader Radovan Karadzic have been on trial since June 2012 on charges including the genocide of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Mladic, who is known as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, began his defence in May at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He denies 11 charges of genocide and crimes against humanity dating back to the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Some of the charges relate to infamous events at Srebrenica and Sarajevo where thousands were murdered.
In 2009 the European Parliament declared July 11 to be the official Memorial Day to commemorate the atrocity.
The Dewsbury event was organised in association with the UK charity Remembering Srebrenica which is the official organiser of the UK events commemorating the genocide.
