Boris Johnson: UK to continue to help Bosnia in the fight for justice

Frank Augstein / POOL / AFP

UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in his address during the 25th Srebrenica genocide commemoration on Saturday, that the Srebrenica massacre must never happen again and that the UK will make sure of it.

“Twenty-five years ago when the terrible conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina had been raging for three years, Europe witnessed the worst atrocity on its soil since the Second World War.

Over 8,000 mainly Muslim men and boys were killed in the genocide at Srebrenica – and more than 20,000 women and children were forcibly deported.

I want to join with you once more in mourning the victims of those terrible events, and to stand with the families in their fight for justice.

As in so many cases from this conflict, which brought violence and destruction across the Western Balkans, many families still do not know what happened to their loved ones.

Many perpetrators still have not been held to account. And there are those who would prefer to forget or deny the enormity of what took place.

We must not allow that to happen. We owe it to the victims and to future generations to remember Srebrenica and ensure it never happens again.

I am proud of the role Britain has played over the past 25 years in the fight for justice, including the work carried out by British judges, lawyers and prosecutors.

We will continue in that work, remaining by your side, and working together to eliminate prejudice and discrimination, so that we can create a safer and more hopeful future for everyone,” Johnson said in his video message.

During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war for independence from the former Yugoslavia, the country lost over 100,000 people, over 8,000 of which were lost in July 1995 in Srebrenica, when Bosnian Serb forces, which received financial and logistical support both from Serbian authorities and individuals during the war, overrun the then UN-protected zone of Srebrenica.

The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.

International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars.

Those who the ICTY sentenced to life imprisonment are Ljubisa Beara, Zdravko Tolimir, and Vujadin Popovic. But the most well-known alleged masterminds of what happened in Srebrenica are former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and ex Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and both have been sentenced for it but have appealed.