Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our friends from Bosnia to the Chamber today. I had the pleasure of meeting them just before this debate. It was so instructive to listen to the personal testimony of somebody like Alen Osmanovio, who described his two-week march from Srebrenica to relative safety in Tuzla and the horrors those on the march endured. He was 17 at the time and his younger brother was just 11. It is absolutely telling. I remember being shocked by what was on our television screens at the time and struggling to comprehend how the world could watch and let these horrors happen.

This July marks the 22nd anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The date 11 July is designated as a memorial day. I welcome that we are marking it with statements in the Seanad. I recognise the work of Senator Feighan, in particular, in this regard. I hope this will happen every year. I call on the Government to create a national Srebrenica memorial day.

The appalling massacres have been recognised as genocide by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. It is very welcome that the Seanad is today remembering the more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnians, or Bosniaks, who were brutally executed by paramilitaries and units of the Bosnian Serb Army under the command of General Ratko Mladi. Most of this happened in the full glare of television news reports and observers from the UN and EU. In addition to the killings, thousands of women, children and elderly people were forcibly deported, and a large number of women were raped. We must remember them also. It was a failure on the part of the EU and other institutions that a large Muslim population, long established in Europe, was targeted in such a way.

This year also marks the closing of the doors of the ICTY. It was established by the UN to prosecute those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. At the tribunal, a total of 38 former members of the Bosnian-Serb police force and army have been sentenced to a total of more than 400 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity in Srebrenica. The acts of genocide in Srebrenica and other crimes have been laid out in the trial of General Mladi at the tribunal. A verdict is expected in November. This all underlines the importance of truth recovery to the process of national reconciliation. We should recognise that from the history of our own country. Many more perpetrators of mass killings of Bosniaks in the area have not been prosecuted, however. These mass killings include those of people desperately fleeing Srebrenica to safety in Tuzla, a town that was under the control of the Bosnian army in July 1995.

The UN has called the Srebrenica genocide "the greatest atrocity on European soil since the Second World War". After the Holocaust and genocide carried out by the Nazis, Europe said, "Never again", yet, just 22 years ago, this act of genocide occurred on European soil and we failed the people of Srebrenica. When we say "Never again" now, we must mean it. While we remember this appalling act of genocide, we must also commit to continuing to challenge and condemn any attempts to minimise or deny the genocide that took place at Srebrenica. We must also confront the fact that this genocide took place in the UN-designated safe area and that Dutch soldiers acting as UN peacekeepers failed to stop the capture of the town and the resulting genocide, underscoring the failure of the international community in preventing the massacre. A civil court judgment in the Netherlands in 2014 found that the Dutch state was partially liable for the murder of 300 Bosniaks in Srebrenica who were expelled from a Dutch UN base and turned over to Bosnian Serb troops. Just last month, a higher appeals court in The Hague upheld this judgment. I understand, however, that relatives of the victims are very unhappy with this ruling as it does not go far enough.

Today, we remember the victims and survivors of the Srebrenica genocide and we must use this day to learn the lessons of history in order to tackle hatred, racism and intolerance wherever it occurs.