The three Principals of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism), President Carmel Agius, Prosecutor Serge Brammertz and Registrar Abubacarr Tambadou, today joined in marking the twenty-fifth commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide.
President Agius and Prosecutor Brammertz took part by video message in the official commemoration ceremony held at the Potočari memorial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with a number of other high-level international and national dignitaries.
In his remarks, Prosecutor Brammertz stated that to “truly honour the memory of those lost twenty-five years ago, and to recognize the victims and survivors with us today, it is our responsibility to keep fighting for justice and truth and to call what happened in Srebrenica by its name, genocide.” He related the growing fears for future generations expressed to him by the victims and survivors and remarked that the rampant genocide denial and glorification of convicted war criminals “must be stopped”. “For too long the international community has hoped that this problem will simply go away. It will not”, he said. Prosecutor Brammertz called on the international community to “speak out with one voice when [the Srebrenica genocide] is denied”to avoid “failing the victims of Srebrenica again, like we did twenty-five years ago.”
The ICTY and the Mechanism have convicted 15 individuals for genocide and other crimes committed in Srebrenica in July 1995, including senior Bosnian Serb political and military leaders. During the genocide, up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed or are still missing and up to 30,000 women and children were forcibly transferred from the Srebrenica enclave.
