On 11 July, Serb forces, under General Ratko Mladic and the political cover of Radovan Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic, completed the massacre of 8,000 male Muslim civilians in a Serb-dominated area. By all accounts, this atrocity reminds us of the German occupation massacres at Distomo and Kalavrita.
Srebrenica became a symbol of shame, not only for the scale of the massacre, but also for the fact that it took place in a town under the absolute protection of the United Nations. The 100 Dutch cyanocrats who were monitoring the area proved inadequate in quantity and quality, and the help promised by the UN came after the massacre was over. Thus, the Serb forces were left undisturbed to carry out and complete their "God-given" ethnic cleansing work.
According to a report by a Dutch institute, 12 Greeks also took part in the massacres. They belonged to the Greek Volunteer Guard and were either members of the neo-Nazi organization "Golden Dawn" or mercenaries. Indeed, Ratko Mladic asked them to raise the Greek flag in the stunned Srebrenica, while Radovan Karadzic decorated them. The Greek volunteers in Bosnia believed, like the majority of our compatriots, that they were fighting for a holy cause, defending Europe and Christianity from the horrors of Islamism.
The issue was forgotten over the years, until it was brought back to the fore in 2005 by independent MP Andreas Andrianopoulos with a question in Parliament. The responsible Minister of Justice, Anastasis Papaligouras, ordered an investigation, which is ongoing.
The fall of Srebrenica marked the countdown to the Bosnian conflict.
The humiliation of the UN forces forced the international community to take harsh measures and bomb Serbian areas. The Dayton Treaty followed, which brought calm, but did not resolve the Bosnian issue. Multicultural Bosnia was divided into Croatian-Muslim and Serb-Bosnian sectors and even today it needs economic injections from the international community to maintain its viability.
The mastermind of the massacre, General Ratko Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic, were arrested after years of fugitive justice and are on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, while their mentor Slobodan Milosevic is no longer alive. Only two low-ranking Serb officers have been given suspended sentences for this ongoing crime against humanity.
Source.gr
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
