The silence in the fields of Potočari near Srebrenica is louder than any noise. Thousands of white marble gravestones stand in eerie rows, each a monument to a life that was violently cut short. Today’s peaceful valley stands in stark contrast to the chaos of July 1995, when the same area, inside and around the base of a Dutch United Nations battalion, was the scene of unspeakable horror, displacement, and the beginning of an industrial-scale massacre — 8,372 names of innocent victims are engraved on a memorial. Yet this sacred ground is not just a place of remembrance. It is still a place of struggle against the denial and glorification of the internationally recognized genocide against Bosniaks in and around Srebrenica during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia.
The 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide is not only a historical point, but also provides a roadmap to this ongoing war – the war against the deniers, not only of that atrocity but of so many others around the world. In the Bosnian context, the war is being waged between a global, networked coalition of conscience, led by the Srebrenica Memorial Center, and a transnational alliance of State-sponsored revisionists and their ideological sympathizers.
The evolution of the Srebrenica Memorial Center from a place that was only in the spotlight during the annual commemoration on July 11 to a proactive institution for “defending memory” offers a crucial, replicable model for other post-war societies and for the defense of democratic values against the tidal wave of authoritarian disinformation. This is not only about remembering the past of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also about the future of Europe and the world.
Sacred Ground and the Anatomy of Genocide Denial
To understand the depth and danger of today’s struggle, it is necessary to first deconstruct the campaign to deny the irrefutable truth about the crime of genocide and then decipher a political machinery designed to erase that truth.
The fundamental, legally confirmed facts of the genocide are indisputable. In the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the systematic killing of at least 8,372 innocent Bosniaks by the police and army of the self-declared Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, under the command of war criminal Ratko Mladic and supported by neighboring Serbia, was legally defined as genocide.
This crime did not happen in a vacuum. It was made possible by the profound failure of the international community, in particular the United Nations. The declaration of Srebrenica as a “safe area” was a promise that was not only broken but made the situation worse in its implementation by creating a trap that brought tens of thousands of refugees to one place without adequate protection. The “cowardly decisions” of the U.N. commander on the ground and the powerlessness of the Dutch battalion were not just an unfortunate mistake, but a systemic moral and political collapse.
This failure of the international community to prevent genocide created political and psychological conditions in which denial could flourish. The desire to downplay its own guilt made the West more receptive to narratives of “shared guilt” and “tragic civil war” that are central to revisionist rhetoric. If “all sides are guilty,” then the concrete failure to prevent one side from committing genocide becomes less terrible. Thus, inaction in 1995 was the “original sin” that made the later sin of denial politically expedient and psychologically acceptable to many in, and outside the region. The fight against denial is therefore also a fight against historical amnesia by the international community itself.
Architecture of Denial
The denial of the Srebrenica genocide is not a marginal sentiment or a conspiracy theory that can be easily dismissed. It is the deliberate and well-funded policy of the entity of Republika Srpska and the State policy of Serbia. This is, as the Institute for Research on Crimes Against Humanity and International Law at the University of Sarajevo has put it, the continuation of the war by other means.
The tactics of erasure are diverse and systematic. They include institutional revisionism, such as the establishment of “government commissions” tasked with producing reports that contradict the findings of international courts. There is also media saturation, the relentless promotion of denial by State-controlled and sympathetic media. The Srebrenica Memorial Center issues an annual report providing quantitative evidence of hundreds of such acts. The political blockade of any legislation at the State level in Bosnia that would criminalize genocide denial has continued for decades, demonstrating a clear intention to protect deniers and perpetuate criminality. Finally, there is the active celebration of figures such as Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, who are portrayed as national heroes.
This campaign of denial is not a phenomenon accompanying conflict, but a fundamental and final phase of the genocide process itself. The aim of genocide is the complete or partial destruction of a protected group, whereby the destruction is both physical and symbolic. The physical destruction took place in July 1995 with mass executions. Immediately afterwards, the perpetrators began the symbolic destruction by hiding the bodies in mass graves and later transferring them to secondary and tertiary graves to destroy evidence.
Today’s political denial project – rewriting history textbooks, producing false reports, glorifying murderers – is a logical continuation of this cover-up. As genocide experts such as Gregory Stanton argue, this is the final phase after the destruction of human bodies, which attempts to destroy the memory of their existence and the truth about their murder. He defines denial as an act of constant persecution and a direct threat to a surviving community.
Local denial is legitimized and intensified on the world stage. The Nobel Prize in literature for Austrian writer Peter Handke, whose work critics said included some that excused Serb complicity in atrocities, was a turning point, signaling a dangerous European tolerance for genocide denial. Denialists worldwide find support across the political spectrum, from “anti-imperialist” leftists who view the Serbian cause through a distorted anti-NATO prism to radical right-wingers who share an Islamophobic worldview.
Furthermore, the denial of the Srebrenica genocide is linked to the strategic interests of authoritarian powers, particularly Russia. Moscow is using the issue to foment instability in the Balkans, prevent the Euro-Atlantic integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and undermine the credibility of international law and Western institutions. Denial has become a geopolitical weapon.
From a Place of Sadness to a Force for Truth
Faced with this organized campaign of denial and erasure, the Srebrenica Memorial Center underwent its own transformation and became the main fighter in the war for truth, guided by a new vision shaped by the survivors.
Established by a decision of the international community’s High Representative in 2000 and opened in 2003, the initial role of the Memorial Center was primarily commemorative and archival work, focusing on the annual burial of the latest recovered and identified remains and accompanying commemoration ceremony on July 11. It was an important place of mourning, but institutionally passive.
The last six years have been marked by radical change, led by director Emir Suljagic. His own words illustrate a shift in mission: away from a legal focus, to finding and amplifying the voices of victims and survivors and taking control of the narrative. The goal was no longer just to remember, but to fight. Suljagic’s personal history – he witnessed the events firsthand as a 17-year-old U.N. translator – imbues the institution with a unique moral authority and relentless power.
He was among those moral forces who was instrumental in the 2024 adoption at the U.N. General Assembly of a resolution establishing July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 genocide. The resolution not only affirmed the facts established by international courts, but also fortifies the normative framework for remembrance, justice, and prevention. Its symbolic weight lies in the explicit condemnation of both denial and the glorification of war criminals — practices that continue to undermine reconciliation and destabilize post-conflict societies. While lacking binding legal force, the resolution nonetheless amplifies the moral and political obligation of the international community to confront the legacy of atrocity crimes with honesty and resolve. And yet the vote on the resolution is telling: 84 in favor, 19 against, and a daunting 68 abstentions, testifying to the ambiguities that have taken root over years of disinformation about the Srebrenica Genocide.
As Suljagic put it in his speech preceding the adoption: “When my fellow genocide survivors emerged from the woods of eastern Bosnia in July 1995, no one believed us. Our stories were so horrifying, so unimaginable, that everyone chose to disbelieve…Over the past 29 years, we have had to prove every single detail of our ordeal, over, and over again.”
The transformation of the Srebrenica Memorial Center (I have participated in its conferences and attend the annual commemorations) is a direct result of the leadership of Suljagic and other survivors involved in the center: to testify, to fight for and achieve recognition, and to ensure that history is told on its own terms. A proactive, sometimes confrontational and globally networked strategy by the center is not only a smart institutional shift, but also the institutionalization of the survivors’ imperative. Annual denial reports, international youth schools, global alliances – these are the tools of a survivor who, in the fight against denial and glorification, has crossed from witness to commander. This also explains the occasional criticism of his methods as aggressive; it is the translation of the desperate struggle of survivors into institutional politics.
The center has developed important programs as strategic instruments in this struggle. The annual report on genocide denial acts as a form of “counterespionage,” directly challenging the denialists’ tsunami of lies. The center systematically monitors, documents, and publishes cases of denial, creating an irrefutable public record that names individuals, media outlets and institutions.
The Oral History Project is the center’s “humanitarian and archival” weapon. In collaboration with organizations such as the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, the project records the testimonies of survivors, focusing not only on genocide but also on the lives of the individuals of the destroyed community before, during, and after. The result reaffirms their humanity and rejects denialists’ efforts to dehumanize the victims and survivors.
Finally, education serves as a kind of vaccine. Programs such as the “Srebrenica Youth School” and the SrebrenicaDocs documentary film festival are designed as a long-term strategy to expose the broader public and the next generation to the truth on the ground.
Global Alliance of Conscience
Perhaps the most significant element of the center’s strategy is the establishment of a global network for universalizing the lessons of Srebrenica, drawing the memory of Srebrenica out of its regional isolation.
The center has made a conscious effort to build partnerships with other major structures of conscience, aligning the memory of Srebrenica with the international order to protect it from revisionist attacks. The main political forces that deny the Srebrenica genocide are nationalist and often linked to authoritarian, anti-Western powers such as Russia. Their narrative aims to isolate Srebrenica as a single “Balkan” or even local “case.” In response, the Center has built partnerships mainly with institutions that operate within the liberal democratic tradition and whose moral frameworks are deeply informed by historical confrontations with mass crimes — primarily, though not exclusively, the Holocaust. It is not just about sharing teaching materials; it is about erecting a geopolitical protective wall around historical facts.
Ultimately, this networking universalizes the lessons of Srebrenica. It becomes part of human history. International heads of State and government who have engaged with the center now describe Srebrenica as one of the darkest moments in recent history. This universalization is the strongest antidote to the particularistic, nationalist poison of the perpetrators and their modern-day supporters. It fulfils the promise of “never again” by making Srebrenica a shared global responsibility.
The Role of Europe and the Future of Truth
The battle for Srebrenica’s memory has repercussions far beyond the Balkans. It raises fundamental questions about the nature of justice, the stability of Europe, and the future of truth in the age of disinformation.
The criminalization of genocide denial by High Representative Valentin Inzko in 2021, known as “Inzko’s Law,” was a necessary intervention after years of obstruction by politicians in Republika Srpska. But it still exists largely only on paper. There is an open protest movement in Republika Srpska, and the offices of the public prosecutor are mostly absent in enforcement. This demonstrates the serious limitations of international legal instruments without the political will to enforce them on the ground. The failure of the “Inzko Law” offers an important lesson that top-down mechanisms of transitional justice are inherently inadequate, and reinforces the fact that, in a captured state, the struggle for truth must be led by civil society and strengthened by international alliances.
The denial and glorification of the genocide of Bosniaks in and around Srebrenica is a direct threat to the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus also to Europe. There is a clear link between the revisionist rhetoric of figures such as Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, his secessionist threats, and the strategic support he receives from Belgrade and Moscow. Denial is not just offensive speech, but ideological preparation for a future conflict. Srebrenica is one of the key fronts in the broader “hybrid war” that authoritarian States are waging against the liberal order. It would be a devastating victory for these forces if the truth about the genocide of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the heart of Europe, were to be successfully erased.
Although the Srebrenica massacre is recognized as genocide under international law, research shows that it was only the final act in a broader campaign of genocide against the Bosniaks from 1992 to 1995. Renowned scholar Edina Bećirević challenges the prevailing legal interpretation that limits the definition of genocide to the events of July 1995 at Srebrenica, arguing that such a narrow view overlooks the systematic and widespread intent to exterminate the Bosniak population across Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to Bećirević, this intent was particularly evident in military campaigns whose sole purpose was to eliminate Bosniaks from targeted territories — not only in Eastern Bosnia (Zvornik, Foča, Višegrad) and Northwestern Bosnia (Prijedor, Sanski Most, Ključ), but in other parts of the country as well.
Other respected genocide scholars such as Martin Shaw, Ben Kiernan, and Henry Theriault also have argued that the genocide against Bosniaks began in 1992 and that Srebrenica should be seen as the culmination, not the exception. As Norman Naimark and others have emphasized, excluding earlier atrocities from the genocide framework distorts the historical and moral truth.
The work of countering denial and disinformation is therefore an essential act of security and defense for a Europe struggling with the resurgence of nationalism and right-wing radicalism. Thirty years later, the fields of Potočari bear witness to two contrasting truths: the depth of human cruelty and the resilience of the human spirit. Which truth will define 21st-century Europe depends on whether the international community finally decides to fight this unfinished war for memory with the same conviction as the deniers.
