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Srebrenica, a Permanent Blot on Human Conscience

Date: 11 July 2020 - 21:24

News ID: ۸۰۵۱۷

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

An English adage goes: "Time will heal all the wounds”, then it adds: "But the deep wounds will leave their mark forever.”
Yesterday on July 11, the world commemorated the 25th anniversary of the chilling genocide of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in a so-called ‘save zone’ in Srebrenica by Serbs, right under the eyes of Dutch troops serving as UN international peacekeeping forces.
Human conscience will never forget such a heinous crime that ought not to be repeated, but which, unfortunately, is being repeated over and over again in various parts of the world – the most recent being the frequent bouts of genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias.
Where is international conscience? What has the World Body and human rights organizations done to prevent similar incidents – say in Occupied Palestine where the illegal Zionist entity is allowed to indulge in some of the worst crimes against humanity without the least accountability?
It should be recalled that tens of thousands of Bosnians had lost their life in a span of three years (April 1992 to December 1995) when Serb militias, with the tacit support of the US and West European powers, started the Bosnian War as part of the genocide of Europe’s native Muslims.
The almost 4-year long war saw the coldblooded massacre of Bosnian Muslims, especially in Srebrenica and Markale, while the western world and the UN turned a blind eye.
The Srebrenica massacre has been recorded as one of the most heartless tragedies of the modern world. More than 8 thousand, mostly unarmed men and boys, were slaughtered by forces led by that notorious killer, Ratko Mladić – found guilty a generation later in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide of Muslims in what used to be Yugoslavia.
What was, however, more unfortunate was the criminal inaction of the Dutch troops serving in Srebrenica as UN international peacekeepers. On the horrific 11th of July 25 years ago, the Dutch forces stood passive as the Serbs slaughtered 2,000 Bosnian Muslims and then chased the 15,000-odd survivors fleeing into the surrounding mountains to massacre over 6,000 more.
Such massacres of Bosnian Muslims might have continued if not for the then commendable action of a group of Muslim countries, including the Islamic Republic, to provide relief as well as arms to the persecuted European Muslims to fight back.
In other words, if it was not for the Islamic unity which the Muslim countries had showed, the Balkans would have become a second Palestine for the Ummah.
In a rare show of Islamic solidarity, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, got together to provide support for Bosnian Muslims.
The result was that several plane-loads of arms and ammunitions, including anti-tank guided missiles were supplied, in addition to providing humanitarian and medical supplies for Bosnian Muslims. Military training, intelligence and financial support was also given to them.
The Bosnian example could have been repeated again and again by the Muslim countries, especially in the case of Myanmar where more than a million Rohingya Muslims have been butchered and millions of others forced to leave their homes.
Alas, where Muslim conscience failed to discern the facts, the West, especially the US, understood that if this unity continued then there would be no more place left for their evil plots.
That’s the reason, the divide and rule policy of sowing discord among Muslim countries, has become a core policy of the US.
The Rohingya exodus could have been prevented if the reactionary Arab regimes, instead of pleasing their masters in the West, could at least have provided only a small portion of their petro-dollars to the suppressed Muslims in Myanmar – or in the case of Palestine, to their oppressed Arab brothers instead of trying to legalize relations with the illegal Zionist entity.