A lean-in for truth in Serbia over a massacre
On the 30th anniversary of a genocide of Muslims in Europe, it is Muslims in Serbia pushing pro-democracy Serbs to admit the ethno-nationalism roots of their current government.
People light candles during a July 11 vigil in Belgrade, Serbia, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.
AP
One of the more unusual, and perhaps important, protests in Europe this year was a silent march July 11 of about 1,000 people in Novi Pazar. The city, located in the largely Christian country of Serbia, is predominantly Muslim.
The march took place on the 30th anniversary of the worst massacre in Europe since World War II – the killing of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb soldiers.
Yet the protest was more than a commemoration of those killed in the village of Srebrenica in neighboring Bosnia. And it was more than a call for Christian Serbs to remember how a past regime supported the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in 1995.
Rather, the march – which included women in hijab waving the Serb flag – marked the expansion of Serb identity beyond the ethno-nationalism forced on the country under the 12-year authoritarian rule of President Aleksandar Vučić.
Muslims in Serbia have now joined student-led protests that began eight months ago and have rocked the government of Mr. Vučić – who worked for the dictator who ruled during the 1995 massacre. Their protest July 11 also remembered those “killed by this regime in Serbia.”
The student protests, which occur almost daily in many cities, are aimed at bringing down a government seen as responsible for the corruption behind the collapse in November of a new concrete canopy at a railway station. The incident killed 16 people.
It is Muslim Serbs who are now trying to persuade people that acknowledging the ethno-nationalist roots of the genocide is necessary to rid Serbia of its current repressive leaders, who both deny the genocide and use violence to suppress dissent. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring July 11 as a day of remembrance of the Srebrenica genocide.
“Serbia cannot get rid of Vučić without asking how it all started,” Aida Ćorović, a human rights activist, told Danas news. Serbia’s students have been struggling to include the massacre in their protest strategy.
“A government that buries the truth about the past cannot be trusted to deliver genuine justice, transparency and democratic rule,” wrote Fred Abrahams, who covered the south Balkans for Human Rights Watch, in Euractiv.
The march in Novi Pazar was an opening for Serbs, especially pro-democracy students, to not bury the truth.