SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Five years after more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, a wall of Serbian denial still surrounds this town.
Bosnian Serbs, who have controlled Srebrenica since July 1995, insist that the mass murder of Muslims never happened--even though overwhelming evidence shows that it did.
U.S. peacekeepers patrolling the town may be called on to stop more violence Tuesday when about 5,000 people, mostly widows and mothers of the victims, plan to hold a memorial service marking the anniversary of the massacres.
They want to visit Potocari, the nearby site where Dutch peacekeepers charged with guarding the town surrendered to the Bosnian Serb army in 1995. In the days that followed, the Serbian soldiers loaded Muslims onto buses and drove the men and boys to their deaths.
Calling the planned ceremony "manipulation of the dead," Bosnian Serb veterans in this eastern Bosnian town have warned Muslims to stay away and avoid "undesirable consequences."
"The veterans association in Srebrenica does not see any reason for organizing such a gathering as it is known that on July 11, 1995, nobody was hurt in Potocari, let alone killed," the group said in a June 26 statement.
The refusal of most Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats--and even foreign governments--to accept their share of the blame for Bosnia's horrors has prompted a movement to create a truth and reconciliation commission similar to the panel that exposed apartheid-era crimes in South Africa.
Jakob Finci, head of a new Bosnian organization pressing for an independent commission to hear testimony from victims and the accused, argues that ongoing U.N. war crimes trials in The Hague will not leave Bosnia-Herzegovina with a shared history of what happened.
"We have these days at least three different histories in our country, and we are teaching our children three different histories," Finci, a leader of the nation's small Jewish community, said in the capital, Sarajevo. "And as long as you are teaching your child that your neighbor is your enemy, it's hard to believe there will be anything else but a new war in 20 or 30 years' time."
Nearly 100 activists and experts from Bosnia and other areas of the former Yugoslav federation, such as Serbia and Croatia, gathered Feb. 4 in Sarajevo to discuss the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission. They agreed unanimously that such a government-backed panel is essential to healing the region's deep wounds.
