\n<\/p>\n
This year marks three decades since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which an estimated 100,000 people lost their lives. The war culminated in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, in which the Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladi\u0107, known as the \u201cButcher of Bosnia\u201d, massacred more than 8,000 men and boys in a United Nations-designated \u201csafe area\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the following decades, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia heard hundreds of witnesses and sentenced dozens of high-ranking Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, including those convicted of genocide. Meanwhile, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and foreign donors put significant funds into the study, victim recovery and remembrance of the genocide.<\/p>\n
When the genocide in Gaza began, many Bosnians who survived the 1992-1995 war saw striking parallels\u00a0between their own experiences and the suffering of Palestinians. Many took to the streets and spoke out against the genocidal war in Palestine.<\/p>\n
However, many Bosnian intellectuals, especially those researching war crimes and genocide, have remained silent. Their refusal to speak out harms not just efforts to deliver justice for Gaza but also undermines the field of genocide studies.<\/p>\n
Before we explore why Gaza has become such a taboo topic for Bosnian genocide scholars, it is important to point out that not all have remained silent. A relatively small group of Bosnian scholars who are not only academics but also active advocates for Palestine and human rights have chosen to speak up.<\/p>\n
University professors and researchers, such as Lejla Kre\u0161evljakovi\u0107, Sanela \u010ceki\u0107 Ba\u0161i\u0107, Gorana Mlinarevi\u0107, Jasna Fetahovi\u0107, and Sanela Kapetanovi\u0107 have underscored that there is moral responsibility not to remain silent. They have led by example, participating in protests and speaking out in public.<\/p>\n
Belma Buljuba\u0161i\u0107, a professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, has criticised European and other political leaders who express sympathy for Srebrenica while justifying Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza as acts of \u201cself-defence\u201d. Such double standards, she has argued<\/a>, reveal a troubling pragmatism that undermines both solidarity and accountability.<\/p>\n In a recent\u00a0interview<\/a>, Edina Be\u0107irevi\u0107, a genocide scholar at the University of Sarajevo\u2019s Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies, said the genocide in Gaza clearly mirrors the dynamics seen in Srebrenica, defined by dehumanisation, ideological mobilisation and international complicity.<\/p>\n Ahmet Aliba\u0161i\u0107, the director of the Center for Advanced Studies and professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo, has also been outspoken. Last year, he co-organised a seminar called From the Balkans to Gaza: A Critical Analysis of Genocide, which examined contemporary dynamics of mass violence through a \u201ccomparison between the Srebrenica genocide, the Sarajevo siege and the unfolding genocide in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n Nid\u017eara Ahmeta\u0161evi\u0107, a Sarajevo-based journalist and media scholar, has also not hesitated to draw parallels between Gaza and the experiences of Bosnian survivors from besieged Sarajevo\u00a0and\u00a0Srebrenica.<\/p>\n For months, members of the Sarajevo Feminist Anti-Militarist Collective have been conducting demonstrations in downtown Sarajevo in which they read the names of children<\/a> killed in Gaza, juxtaposing war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory to Sarajevo\u2019s own war horrors.<\/p>\n These individuals have all responded in various ways to the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said\u2019s enduring\u00a0exhortation that intellectuals must claim the space to speak truth to power, connect local memory to global justice and resist the politics of convenient truth-telling. Silence remains not a neutral stance but a political choice that sustains harm.<\/p>\n Still, Said\u2019s call has not stirred everyone to action. Paradoxically, many Bosnian genocide scholars have remained conspicuously silent, even as their colleagues abroad, among them Israeli genocide scholars Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg\u00a0and Shmuel Lederman, have publicly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. This did not change even after the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world\u2019s largest academic body in the field, passed a resolution in August declaring that Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.<\/p>\n Various experts on genocide at the University of Sarajevo\u2019s Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, lecturers at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo and genocide scholars at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks have been reluctant to comment on Israeli war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n As an institution, the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law publicly addressed Gaza only after it was clear a ceasefire was soon to take effect. On October 8, it issued an\u00a0evasive<\/a>\u00a0statement that did not mention Israel as the perpetrator of atrocities. This prompted some\u00a0observers<\/a> to accuse the institute, led by Muamer D\u017eananovi\u0107, of a calculated and opportunistic approach to the issue.<\/p>\n However, probably the most notable is the case of Emir Suljagi\u0107, genocide survivor and director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center. When asked about his stance on Gaza in late 2023, Suljagi\u0107 told Haaretz: \u201cThis is not our battle.\u201d<\/p>\n Many Bosnia-watchers swiftly\u00a0condemned his remarks, pointing at the double standards of his position, given that just a year earlier Suljagi\u0107 published an op-ed urging Ukrainians \u201cnot to lay down their arms\u201d.<\/p>\n Furthermore, under his leadership, the Srebrenica Memorial Center produced a series of case studies funded by the United Kingdom government on Ukraine, Syria, South Sudan and Ethiopia, highlighting early warning signs of mass violence and genocide.<\/p>\n\u2018Not our battle\u2019<\/h2>\n