BBC News: Srebrenica massacre to be marked by events across United Kingdom

In the aftermath of the massacre a number of different states and organisations have been criticised for their inactivity in preventing the genocide. Titled “Bosnia: 20 years after Srebrenica” the panel will examine the events of that time both in historical terms and in the context of the country’s journey toward the future.

The students, all born in the year of the massacre, were a culturally representative mix united by intelligence, enthusiasm, idealism and concern; and all were clearly shocked.

The draft resolution has kicked up a storm in the Balkans where Bosnian Serb leaders have refused to recognize the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995 as a genocide.

The victims were in what was supposed to have been a UN-protected “safe area”, but the Dutch soldiers guarding it were powerless to stop the Serb forces led by Gen Ratko Mladic, who is now on trial in The Hague for genocide.

As with the Queen’s visit to the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany last month, it was a vivid reminder of the importance of remembering the victims of genocide.

Western nations and Russian Federation are divided over whether the UN Security Council should call the Srebrenica massacre, which took place towards the end of the Bosnian war, an act of genocide.

Muslim forces were continuously committing crimes against Serbs on the territory of the towns of Srebrenica and Bratunac (eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH)) and nobody has been held accountable for them, Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska (RS), a constituent BiH entity, has said.

Russia, which has close cultural and religious ties to Serbia, circulated a rival draft resolution which doesn’t mention either Srebrenica or genocide but no vote has been scheduled on it.

Diplomats said Russian Federation had told council members on Tuesday that it planned to use its veto, and the last-minute talks were called to try to save the measure.

Mladic’s troops brushed aside the lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers and loaded thousands of Muslim men and boys onto trucks before executing them in a nearby forest and burying them in mass graves. “What happened in Srebrenica was the worst single crime in Europe since the Second World War”.

A memorial service marking the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica is to be held in Westminster Abbey on Monday.