All language subtitles for srebrenica_genocide_no_room_for_denial

Let me start with the deniers, the
revisionists.

The denial or distortion of history is
an

intentional assault on truth.

Understanding the past is crucial to how
people understand themselves, their

society, and how to achieve their common
goals.

In July 1995, forces of the army of
Republika Srpska, the VRS, invaded

the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia
and Herzegovina.

In a few horrific days, more than 8 ,000
Bosnian Muslim boys and men were taken

to places of detention, abused,
tortured, and then executed.

As their bodies fell into mass graves,
the machinery of denial of those crimes

was set into motion.

The International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia, commonly referred

to as the ICTY, investigated,
prosecuted, and passed judgment on those

crimes.

The first events that we look at Eastern
Bosnia and Srebrenica really start

in May of 1992 when Karadzic and

his Bosnian Serb government proclaims
that

they want to be separate from the other
ethnic groups.

We see the ethnic cleansing beginning
with the beginning of the war. By

1992, there's a struggle over eastern
Bosnia, a military struggle.

And we see Mladic's what's called
Directive 4, which is an order to

defeat the Bosnian Muslim forces of
Naser Oric.

And in the same order, he says, and
remove the civilian population.

When it comes to the events before the
fall of Srebrenica, due to the fighting

between the Muslims and the Bosnian
Serbs, many people had fled

to Srebrenica, to the area of
Srebrenica.

And due to the...

The UN decided in 1993 to declare the
area a safe

area.

That's where we are in early 1995, and
with Directive 7, Karadzic and Mladic,

write down that they want to make life
unbearable for the Muslims in Srebrenica

so that they cannot survive there, which
was a way of saying, just keep the

pressure on them, eventually make it so
they'll have to leave.

They were using a strategy of war
crimes, as I would put it, committing

atrocities deliberately, murdering,
raping, forcibly evicting people, simply

be able to get that control of the
territory.

Following the directive, the enclave of
Srebrenica was attacked on 6 July

1995.

The Serb forces...

entered the enclave, which resulted in
the Bosnian Muslim population

fleeing from Srebrenica town to
Potocari, where they were

seeking refuge at the UN compound.

While they were fleeing there, they were
also shelled by the Serb forces, and

eventually there were between 25 ,000 to
30 ,000 people

in the Potocari compound.

If I say it was a normal situation, it
wasn't a normal situation.

Suddenly I see thousands of people
running through the street and saying

Srebrenica is falling.

We lived on the 9th floor upstairs and
I, in such fear, thinking that at

that moment Srebrenica was falling, I
enter that group of people and I run.

I didn't have time to go... I had time,
but I didn't know I had time to go and

see my parents and brothers, but I enter
that mass of people.

Believe me, that narrow street, that
thousands of people go, that some rush

across others, there are even cows and
horses.

One situation where it is impossible to
describe it in words, that I said to

myself, well, man, well, this, this...

On the

11th

of July, the town of Srebrenica did fall
to Bosnian Serb forces.

Thousands of civilians rushed to nearby
Potocari in terror.

The people in Potocari were exposed to
horrific

conditions because there was hardly any
food and water. The people got more and

more afraid of what would happen next.

Those people were taken away the whole
night.

They were with the Serbian soldiers.

In my opinion, some of them were dressed
in the uniform of the UNPROFOR and

with the lights.

They came to the mass of people, where
they saw the men, they simply took them,

took them away and never came back.

That night, it was...

One big chaos.

And every family, when those men were
taken away, they heard screams.

His family, children, women, whoever
they already had.

And from the direction of those houses
where those men were taken away, I

wouldn't know exactly what was going on
there, but only some screams were

heard.

It was like watching some horror movies.

But it was so scary.

From that atmosphere, from those
screams, from that

scream, I was freezing to death.

No one could sleep, no one knew what to
do.

While the Muslim population was seeking
refuge in Porto Cari, there were three

meetings that took place at the famous
Hotel Fontana.

During meetings with the local Muslim
community, General Mladic delivered a

chilling ultimatum.

After the last meeting at the Hotel
Fontana, buses

arrived to take the people out of
Potocari.

What happened was that the VRS separated
the men from the women.

The women and children and elderly left
in the buses and the men were taken away

to Bratunac first, where they had to
stay in buses overnight.

When the men were being taken to the
buses, for one, they were not allowed

to go back and pick their belongings.

So they were being put in the buses.

without their belongings, without the
items that they were forced to leave out

there.

So they were taken to all the buses, one
by one, like they are prisoners of

war.

One by one, one following each other,
with no space in between, and soldiers

everywhere. And in between the buses,
there are soldiers to ensure that one

not cross.

So they were all taken in.

was one of the saddest moments that I
ever had in that area, in that you could

see men, real men, crying, asking us,
you Umprofor,

why are you letting these people take
us?

Why are you letting them go with us?

Why do you want us to be killed by these
people?

And we could ask them, you know,

What do you think they are going to do
to you? And they say, really, these

people are going to kill us.

Why did they, in the first place,
separate us from our families?

Why are they taking us in buses? Do you
know where these buses are going to?

And it's true. We really did not know.

Thousands of men were actually arrested
or held in schools and

other locations, in Bratunats.

taken to Zvonik, where they were also
detained in several locations, before

being transported to execution sites on
the 13th of July.

Can you describe to the judges how the
people from Bratnac acted

toward the victims from Srebrenica?

At the same

time a column of men tried to flee

the enclave to Muslim -held territory.

My father, my brother, my father -in
-law and other male children.

We started as if nothing had happened.
We came to some unknown

terrain, to some forest, and they
noticed us and started shooting at us

artillery. Someone told us, as if
nothing had happened, to go back.

It was 11 o 'clock in the evening.

It was already dark.

Thousands of people were gathering, men
and children, a small number of women,

horses, cows, cattle.

It was a total chaos.

We probably expected a double
intervention, but I didn't understand

going on at that moment.

There was a shooting.

They started shooting from all sides.

My father -in -law said it was better to
stay in the middle of the column.

When they started shooting, they ran
away, but I could not find them anymore.

And that is the last moment I have never
seen my father, my twin brother or my

father -in -law.

forces did prevent them from getting
there by also calling them to come down

and surrender, saying nothing would
happen to them.

Eventually, when men did surrender, they
were taken to execution sites and also

other detention sites.

On 13 July 1995, the planned killing
operations began.

Thousands of unarmed Bosnian Muslim boys
and men were executed in the nearby

Bratunac and Zvornik areas, in the
Tseska Valley, on the banks of the Yadar

River, in Nova Kasaba, the Kravica
Warehouse, Ora Ovets, Branevo

Farm, and other locations.

Tell us what the telegram said.

Where was the telegram sent from, just
to be very clear?

or someone else who was in the Zvornicka

Brigade.

I also took and read that telegram.

At that time, we were stuck, that is,
simply stuck.

Buses would go to the detention sites
and then the men were blindfolded, were

taken to sometimes fields where...

They had to line up, and sometimes when
they would arrive at these execution

sites, there were already excavators who
would then dig the graves for

the executed men.

Brano told us to stand in line.

We stood in line.

In front of us, we were ordered to turn
to the ground.

When those people turned to the ground,
we shot at those people. We were ordered

to shoot at people.

As soon as the truck started, Rafale
started shooting at us from the ground.

So this one fell on me behind my back,
and I fell on my back, and so I remained

lying.

They were shooting while I was giving
life signs, individually

later, when they all fell.

When everything was quiet, then they
moved away, but I couldn't look

how I fell, because they could see me.

I was not killed.

I kept quiet until the other truck came
again.

Then, I had to take a step back and go
to the

row we were in.

I turned my head and looked at how they
were moving and how they were moving in

four rows.

As soon as the truck started, they
started shooting at them, and that's how

killed them, and that's how it went on.

Maybe I'll live for a second.

And when it really came to me, I jumped
off with the rest, I think there were

four men, my feet hurt from the stones.

When I came a little closer, to the
right side of the truck,

I saw a kind of killed people.

One kind, then another, then the third.

I couldn't see the end, but I could see
them floating in the dark.

I thought my mother would never know
where I was.

When it was dark, when they came with
the light...

Then I stayed in the shade, maybe 10 -15
meters away from the

lights. I was pulled out from under the
dead, and then

I crawled on my knees to the end of the
dead. I needed maybe 10 meters to the

end.

When we got to the place, someone told
us to get down.

And as we went, not to lie down, but to
fall forward.

So we were turned to the side.

The traveling began.

There were only a few survivors, but
luckily we had the chance to hear from

survivors about the events.

very touching descriptions of how they
felt, the helplessness, and that

sometimes men would be so thirsty that
all that they could think of was just to

have a bit of water before being
executed.

How many people do you estimate, Mr.
Adamovich, were executed at

the Branjevo farm on the 16th of July?

Your unit,

the members of the 10th, all of the
members who went on this assignment,

including Branjo, participated in those
executions, did they not?

No.

As reports of these crimes emerged, the
ICTY began to investigate.

The investigations were hampered by the
secret removal of the executed boys and

men from their mass graves and their
relocation to secondary or tertiary

sites to avoid detection.

What we mean by secondary graves, this
is a term that was used by the

archaeologists when they...

exhumed these large mass graves where
the executions took place, they found

very few bodies in them and found
evidence

that the bodies had been removed and
taken somewhere else.

This was determined from the
archaeological analysis of the soils,

anthropological analysis of the bodies
being hacked in pieces by something like

heavy machinery.

and by aerial imagery that showed the
soil being disturbed in July when the

crimes occurred, and then again in
September.

So secondary graves were the name that
was given for the graves where the

bodies that were stolen or robbed from
the primary graves were taken.

And over the years we identified over 50
secondary graves that contained the

vast majority of the 6 ,000 people that
we have now identified coming out of

mass graves.

So again, this was...

And a concerted action required a lot of
resources, and we speak about around

7 ,000 men who had to be reburied. So
that was in an attempt to hide the

crimes committed.

The identification of the mortal remains
found in mass graves was essential to

establish the facts of what happened and
to offer closure for the families of

the missing.

The International Commission was
established in 1996, originally to

cooperation of the governments in the
former Yugoslavia to account for the 40

,000 persons who went missing as a
consequence of the conflicts of the

So trying to use, let's say, traditional
methods to identify missing persons

cases, which is something that
Physicians for Human Rights was

to do, meaning taking anti -mortem data
from families of the missing and trying

to match the anti -mortem data to the
skeletal remains, was impossible because

the bodies were unrecognizable. They had
been so disarticulated.

There were five primary graves that we
were aware of. Each contained well over

,000 bodies, some more, some less.

By December, there were serious
negotiations going on at Dayton that

potentially allow NATO forces into
Bosnia to secure the peace.

So we believe that in September, when we
know that these reburials

occurred,

that there must have been some concern
that...

five big graves could be found, or at
least one or more of them could be

and if they contained a thousand bodies,
that would be incredibly damaging to

the Bosnian Serb and Serbian cause, and
that to prevent that, they should

rob those graves and spread them out and
hide them in isolated places all over

eastern Bosnia.

The effort to cover up crimes was the
most extensive we have ever seen. I

I can't now compare that to any other
place in the world, but it was massive.

Using DNA, we were able to reveal the
extent to which these secondary graves

existed. For example, there were bodies
so severely disarticulated that it

became clear that heavy machinery was
used to bulldoze mortal remains from

primary sites and remove them, as I
said, to multiple secondary sites.

With DNA, to make one Cerbanese
identification, on average, we'd have to

about seven DNA match reports, meaning
that we'd have one bone sample found in

location X, another one found in
location Y, sometimes 50 kilometers away

each other. So this was extensive.

The ICMP began the process of reaching
out to all families of the missing

throughout the region and the world to
take reference samples for DNA

on a large scale.

to identify the mortal remains found in
mass graves.

Using DNA proved not only instrumental
in being able to identify the victims,

and just to give you numbers now, of the
40 ,000 people that went missing in the

region of the former Yugoslavia, over 70
% of those individuals have now been

accounted for. That is unprecedented.
That's never happened ever in the world.

With regard to the 8 ,000, approximately
8 ,000 persons who went missing from

Srebrenica, we have been able to assist
Bosnia -Herzegovina in identifying

almost 90 % of these victims.

There were a number of trials before the
tribunal that dealt with the events in

Srebrenica. Amongst them, there were
four trials that only considered the

in Srebrenica, which were the trial
against Kerstic, the Blagojevic

case, the Popovic case, and the Ptolemy
case.

Apart from these four trials, there was
also a case against Razan Erdemovic. who

pleaded guilty, and also in the
Blagojevic case, two of the accused,

Obrenovic and Momia Nikolic, pleaded
guilty and were sentenced based on these

guilty pleas. There are also the trials
against Karadzic and Mladic, which,

amongst others, also have been accused
for the events in Srebrenica.

In parallel to the indictments and
investigations by the ICTY, Authorities

Serbia and Republika Srpska promoted
alternative explanations for the crimes.

Here in Serbia, what was the

strongest side of the propaganda was
persistent persecution and displacement

with responsibility for crimes.

Then the entire state machinery shifts
to that. But there is also that

injustice, always historical,

In the case of the Serbs, they were
constantly accused of Srebrenica, which

a lot of weapons.

It was a hidden base of the soldiers
Orić and Izetbegović.

In this way, the factual basis

of what was done in Srebrenica was
constantly weakened.

Every marker here with a stick with a
piece of yellow tag, every marker here

a bullet casing of some sort.

As the investigations and trials
progressed, other theories evolved,

deny or diminish the crimes.

These denials continue to this day.

that on July 1,

1995, in the house of a Muslim, former
president of the municipality, in

Zvornik, where two representatives of
the Muslim government were present in

Sarajevo, representatives of a paid
military

formation in the Serbian Army, but not
under the command of

the Serbian Army, but the French
intelligence service,

initially i think some of the
allegations were that only 100 people

Srebrenica that was number one then
secondly that there was a conflict that

place that soldiers died on a massive
scale and that there was a conflict that

took place I've also heard, I think,
other stories when ICMP began working

Thailand to assist persons and identify
missing persons from the Southeast Asian

tsunami, that we actually took bodies
from Thailand and we buried them in

Srebrenica. That's another interesting
story.

Another one was that people went into
Bosniak cemeteries in Sarajevo and they

removed dead bodies from these
cemeteries in Sarajevo and moved them to

Srebrenica. So I think the narrative
about what happened there, either

the extent to which persons were killed
in Srebrenica or fabricating these

different scenarios is profound.

under President Kolević at the end of
August.

Lies. Nothing happened in Srebrenica.
And it didn't happen in Srebrenica

My attention was turned to Srebrenica
and civilians.

And something happened 80 to 100 km away
from Srebrenica and not with civilians.

The attack on Srebrenica was not an
attack on civilians.

It seems much more

understandable that the murders are
immediately for

disrespecting Mladić's demands for
surrender or the consequences

of a malicious decision to remove the
potential

danger that a large number of prisoners
represent for...

The defense over the years have tried to
suggest the secondary graves aren't

really secondary, that they're primary,
that they're battle casualties that were

put there, or that they were removed for
some sort of health purposes, but

there's really never been any
significant effort to try to explain

it's so obvious what, the evidence is so
obvious what really happened and why it

happened. Well, he never talked about
the facts.

Not a single politician, not

during the trial of Milosevic, not
later, not with

a single judgment, said that the facts
that the Hague Tribunal claimed were not

true, that they were true.

Another method, another approach has
always been chosen, to say that the

Tribunal a political tribunal, that he
is against Serbia, that he is making

decisions against Serbia, that the
Serbian people want to be seen as a

genocide people. And when that message
is sent to people that they are members

of a genocide people, I think it is not
pleasant for people. No one wants to be

a member of a genocide people.

But the message is very skillful,
urgent,

I want to state clearly that our defense

does not deny that a large but still
unknown number of Muslim men was

after the fall of Srebrenica in July
1995.

It was apparently a serious crime
punishable under both national and

international law.

However, we strongly deny that such
crime amounts to genocide.

Similarly, We dispute the Church from
paragraph 25 of the indictment that

VRFs and MUC forces murdered over 7 ,000
Muslim

men and boys.

Our submission is that such allegations
have been widely and

unnecessarily exaggerated to meet one of
the requirements for Genocide

Church.

Ethnic cleansing is not genocide.

What happened in July 1995 is that the
VRS was looking for a piece of

land to be in a good position to
negotiate, as the ABIH was doing trying

fight in Sarajevo, and as the Croats
were doing fighting for Operation Storm.

So what are they arguing then? They're
arguing that a crime against humanity

committed? In what way is a crime
against humanity less horrifying than

genocide?

When they broke through the Serbian
territory, they could not identify and

more than 2 ,500 or 3 ,000 people.

And then that research material is being
judged here by people.

For Srebrenica, that research material
goes from eye to eye. The unkilled were

killed by 8 ,000. Let's see that
material, let's see DNK.

The work that we did with Mr. Karadzic,
who was mounting his own defense, where

he wanted all the genetic reference
samples related to Srebrenica, which

huge. I think the trial chamber in that
case ruled that we could work with Mr.

Karadzic, that he could select 300 cases
himself randomly, which he did. And we

went back to 1 ,500 families of the
missing, because remember we had to have

three reference samples per missing
person, to see if they would be willing

provide their genetic information to the
alleged perpetrator. So we were able to

do that. We met the needs of... the
defense in these cases and in each one

these cases there was irrefutable
evidence regarding the identity of this

person.

The total number of persons killed after
the fall of the enclave has also been

disputed by defense teams for the
accused as well as by Bosnian Serb

Then based on the evidence as a whole
including forensic evidence and the

demographic evidence, it simply cannot
be concluded beyond a reasonable doubt

that more than 7 ,000 Muslim men from
Srebrenica were killed as a result of

crimes forming the basis of this
indictment. Our submissions in our brief

clearly show that beyond a reasonable
doubt, the maximum number of

persons who have been killed as a result
of the crimes committed in this case

does not exceed 3 ,000.

It's sufficient that thousands of men
were killed, whether it's 4

,000, 5 ,000 or 7 ,000 men.

It's sufficient to establish that
genocide was committed.

However, the sheer number is also not
the only criterion and should not be the

only criterion to establish genocide.

There are other criteria.

The recognition of the truth in
Srebrenica is necessary for all sides.

Part of this truth is that despite the
pain, despite the suffering, despite the

loss caused by the murderers in
Srebrenica, these actions were not

done with the intention of destroying
the whole or the whole of Bosnian

as a group.

The truth is...

Some of the criteria that were found by
the trial chamber and made it

conclude that genocide was committed was
the systematic and organized manner

with which the killing operation took
place.

The fact that only Bosnian Muslim men
were targeted.

Attempts were also made to justify the
Srebrenica killings with crimes

committed in the area against Serb
civilians.

Another powerful message was that when
there was a war, everyone committed

crimes, and that Serbia was different,
but others

committed crimes, and that Serbia wanted
to say that everyone committed crimes.

That worked for people, so people said,
yes, everyone committed

crimes.

This accusation, and it is clear, it
exists, it is easy to prove, this

accusation for all Muslim holidays and
Catholic holidays issued an order to

on as much as possible.

And they killed us in World War II and
this war, the biggest Serbian holidays.

You will see here what they did in
Kravica.

In 1993, on Božić Street, 8 -9 months
after the war broke out, the

people who were ready to celebrate were
slaughtered.

Civilians, without any reason.

It was an attack on civilians, without
any reason.

The Kravica Christmas attacks by the
Muslims were one of the incidents

that Serb propagandists and others point
to as a vicious attack where hundreds

and hundreds of civilians were killed.
Well, we have the report from the

Ratanats Brigade on that attack, and
it's not more than...

I believe 17 or 18 civilians that are
killed in the context of a very heavily

fought and heavily defended fight over
the Kravica area. The actual number of

murders that we can prove has been very
low. It's nothing like the thousands and

thousands that we saw in Srebrenica.

The Center for Research and
Documentation in Sarajevo has come up

of how many victims they can document,
and that number is 116.

Republika Srpska in making its official
claims gives a number of 600.

The Center for Research on Genocide
based in Belgrade has offered a number

,200, but they haven't told us what that
number is based on or which 1 ,200

people are being counted.

That number is probably invented.

But then this memorial center in
Bratunac, which could have, I suppose,

116 victims to commemorate what they
have done, they have grouped together

civilian with military victims in order
to increase the number.

They have brought in remains of military
victims and combined the burial site

with a military cemetery that had been
previously existing to further inflate

the number.

They have brought together military
victims from other parts of Bosnia and

Herzegovina and from previous conflicts
so that finally the number of victims

that are commemorated at Bratunac is
around 3 ,200.

And you can see what the strategy is.

It's to try to make the number of
victims larger and larger so that it

competitive, although this is a vulgar
way of putting it.

One of the things that's often said is,
oh, well, the Srebrenica massacres were

revenge for earlier killings of Serbs in
Bratunac now.

I'm not sure that that is actually the
case, but whether or not it is the case,

it's no grounds for carrying out mass
murder.

Many chambers established that revenge
is not a defence and the fact that

one group commits crimes against another
group doesn't justify it.

the other group then in turn to commit
crimes against the first group.

But I must say, in all these years I
have seen it repeatedly that the defense

has again and again tried to bring that,
this is the so -called argument, so

what you do to me, I will do to you, and
yeah, it has never been, I mean.

considered by the Chamber.

But that is why the loudest are those
who react when someone says, let's see

many crimes were committed, which
crimes, let's see those legal decisions,

see those facts, how many victims of war
crimes, not soldiers, let's see the

victims of war crimes.

how many Serbs there are, and how many
Muslims

are victims of racial crimes.

Then they come to the conclusion that
very few are accused, given the number

of crimes.

But frankly, it's still possible to find
many people who will reject the notion

of genocide and even reject the evidence
that over 8 ,000 men and boys were

murdered north of Srebrenica in the
events in July 1995.

They'll say, oh, there was something,
but it was an exaggeration.

Maybe 2 ,000, maybe 1 ,000.

The court record shows very clearly over
8 ,000 people were killed and

somewhere close to 6 ,000 of those, I
believe, have been identified.

The remains of others remain
unidentified still, but the remains are

As the trial and appeal judgments were
rendered for crimes in Srebrenica, the

facts were established of what happened
before, during and after the fall of the

enclave.

Imagine thousands of people stuck in
some buildings, without water,

without food.

The witnesses described in front of the
chamber the climate of terror that

reigned, the rapes, the murders, the
mistreatments, to the point that some

refugees committed suicide or tried to
commit them.

Bosnian Muslim prisoners who were
captured or surrendered from the column

to Sandici Meadow were marched or
transported to the nearby Kravica

What followed this initial killing
episode can only be described as a

of the prisoners held in the warehouse.

Members of the Bosnian Serb forces
besieged the prisoners with gunfire and

grenades.

The assault upon the prisoners lasted
through the night. By the end, at least

,000 Bosnian Muslim men had been killed.

Excavators arrived on 14th and 15th of
July to remove the bodies.

These crimes were committed in little
more than one week with a level of

brutality and depravity.

not previously seen in the conflict in
former Yugoslavia and are among the

darkest days in modern European history.

Loaders and excavators were either
already at the time of the executions

or arrived soon after to bury the dead
in mass graves.

In the wake of these mass executions,
The Bosnian Serb forces ordered a

so -called mopping -up operation
throughout the enclave and executions on

smaller scale continued in the Dzvornik
area between the 16th and the 27th of

July 1995.

Bosnian Serb forces, triggered by a main
staff order, took measures to conceal

these crimes.

A massive reburial operation was set in
place.

The victims from Kravica warehouse,
those killed in Orahovac, Petkov Zidam,

Kozluk, Branjevo Farm and Pilica, that
had been buried after their murder,

were disinterred and buried again in
secondary gravesites at, to name a few,

Hodzici Road, the Snagavo -Lipje Road,
and a total of 12 sites along the

Chanchali Road.

The establishment of the facts of these
crimes was aided by the guilty pleas of

several of the perpetrators.

first guilty plea at the tribunal.

And what was important about it was the
combination of, in his case, a VRS

soldier acknowledging he was involved in
mass murder. That's hugely important

for the world to see, that there is an
acknowledgment from someone inside the

criminal system that is doing it, for
the naysayers and the deniers of the

to actually see a soldier admit it. So
that's hugely important by itself.

What was important...

for the ongoing investigation and trial
was also critically important in that

Erdemovic told us where it happened, who
did it to some degree, the extent of

it, and everything he told us was backed
up and we were able to corroborate by

investigation. So that was a huge boost
for the investigation.

It put us light years ahead of where we
would have been without it.

He also agreed in that plea agreement to
testify in all Srebrenica trials,

which he did, and he did beautifully, I
will add, and it was never...

seriously contradicted or hurt by any
cross examination.

and its victims, that the state bodies
of the Republic of Srpska

and all individuals who took part in the
crime follow my path,

admit their participation and guilt,
surrender and answer

for what they did.

Several ICTY trial and appeals chambers
independently found that the Bosnian

Serb forces committed genocide against
the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.

So the definition of genocide comes from
the Genocide Convention, which was

adopted by the General Assembly in 1948.

is actually a verbatim record of Article
2 of the Genocide Convention.

deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring

about its physical destruction in whole
or in part, imposing measures intended

to prevent births within the group,
forcibly transferring children of the

to another group.

These requirements have been found to be
customary international law.

All the men of Srebrenica, at the age of
fighting, decided

to make it impossible to survive the
population of

Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. In other
words,

we went from ethnic cleansing to
genocide.

Well,

once it was determined to be genocide by
the Kerstet Trial Chamber, then it was

the Appeals Chamber's turn, in that
case, to review it.

They looked very carefully at it and
very strictly at it, and they found it

be justified as genocide. So it's a
legal determination that is made by the

trial chamber and backed up by the
appellate chamber.

Those who devise and implement genocide
seek to deprive humanity of

the manifold richness its nationalities,
races, ethnicities, and religions

provide.

This is a crime against all of
humankind.

It's harm being felt not only by the
group targeted for destruction, but by

of humanity.

The chamber found that from at least
1994 and throughout July 1995,

the accused made numerous statements
expressing a need to take revenge on the

Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica.

adding that they would have, and I
quote, disappeared a long time ago,

end of quote, had it not been for the
involvement of the international

community.

He further stated on several occasions
during the Hotel Fontana meetings that

the Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica
could, and I quote again, live or

vanish, end of quote, and

quote again, survive or disappear.

For having committed these crimes, the
chamber sentences Mr. Ratko Mladic

to life imprisonment.

The overwhelming evidence in most of
those cases against the people that were

closest to the killing.

found them guilty of genocide, but
always found that there was what we call

murder operation to commit mass murder.

We've identified the crime scenes and
we've identified the victims to an

extent that was unimaginable 21 years
ago. We've found almost everyone.

We've found almost all the sites.

And we have convicted the people most
responsible for it. We have the most

serious and awful crime committed in a
four -day period.

And we have identified it and convicted
the people responsible for it. The story

is, you know, in terms of the numbers of
persons that were killed, I think

there's irrefutable evidence.

And I think this is where the scientific
proof that ICMP provides using DNA

now cannot be contested.

It does not require us to read all the
existing documents, all the evidence,

but it is enough to see the regime of
the strongest evidence, then

it is clear what it is about, what it
should be about and how much it is.

How many political confessions are there
here, just so that facts are not known,

how much is the passion to just hold
positions, at least by repeating

the same thing all the time, we are the
victims, we are the victims, but how

long will it be acceptable?

I don't think there is a big future for
that.

And if you ask me as a legal
professional and somebody who has

the testimony of hundreds of witnesses
who witnessed the events,

thousands of documents, I can only say
there is no

basis for you to still deny it. If you
ask me also as a German

looking at...

What happened in Germany, now in
particular during the Second World War,

Holocaust, it took us at least two
generations to be

really able to admit our guilt or to
admit what has happened and to confront

us with it.

So in that sense, I'm also hopeful that
at one point...

the communities will be able to face it.

Those who deny this is their problem and
they need to face the fact

that this is happening because of
themselves, not because of us, but

their children, and of course because of
ourselves.

We will never start to calm down.

The process of change will never start
without true recognition.

Through DNA and other evidence, guilty
pleas by some of the perpetrators, and

testimony from over 1 ,000 witnesses,
the ICTY irrefutably established that

crimes committed after the fall of
Srebrenica amounted to genocide.

The tribunal also showed that those who
commit these crimes will not escape

justice, and will be held accountable
for their actions.

Dear revisionists, deniers, you will
never succeed in hiding the true

nature of this genocide.

Your children, your grandchildren will
one day realize that the truth

of what happened here does not lie in
the homes where it has been distorted,

outside where it is readily available.

They will discover the truth.

the undistorted truth and when they do,
they will wonder what else you have

hidden from their view.