[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 113 (Thursday, July 10, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1436]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  REMEMBERING BOSNIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JOHN W. OLVER

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 10, 2008

  Mr. OLVER. Madam Speaker, as we commemorate the 13th anniversary of 
the Srebrenica genocide, perpetrated by nationalist Serb forces 
predominantly against Bosniaks, Bosnian Muslims, it is time to pay 
tribute to the tragic episodes not only in Srebrenica, but also in 
other less-known places in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
  In the spring of 1992, a deliberate, centrally planned, and well-
organized campaign of ethnic cleansing, mass murder, rape, torture, and 
intimidation terrorized the civilian population throughout Bosnia and 
Herzegovina and took the lives of 200,000 men, women, and children. Out 
of those, 8,000 perished in Srebrenica alone during a period of less 
than five days in July of 1995. In the end, 2 million Bosnians were 
displaced from their homes, and the country's rich cultural and 
religious heritage and monuments were deliberately destroyed. Shattered 
state institutions remain dysfunctional from the chaos and are 
struggling to cope with the significant loss of Bosnia's population. 
Today, survivors are battling post-traumatic stress disorder, orphans 
are still searching for their parents' remains, and new mass graves 
continue to be discovered. The entire western Balkans region has still 
not fully recovered from the violent break-up of Yugoslavia.
  The human tragedy that befell Bosnia and its citizens in places less 
known such as Bihac, Zepa, Gorazde, and Visegrad needs to be revisited 
and marked in its proper place in the memory of human experience and 
history. If the international community had possessed the will to 
protect the UN-designated ``safe haven'' of Srebrenica, it would have 
prevented the tragic outcome and thousands of innocent lives would have 
been with us here today. The world had said ``never again'' to 
genocide, only to abandon the people of Bosnia to an unspeakable 
nightmare. Today, let us remind ourselves of the consequences: 
Srebrenica was the worst single atrocity in Europe after World War II. 
We cannot pretend that Bosnia's struggles are simply in the past, nor 
that the country has fully stabilized. The people of Bosnia are still 
trying to rebuild their country, to reform the institutions that were 
responsible for the genocide, and to move beyond ethno-territorial 
divisions into a functional democratic state.
  As we mark July 11th, we must always remember the innocent people who 
lost their lives while the international community failed to act. We 
must acknowledge that justice will prevail only when General Ratko 
Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are apprehended, and we must never forget 
the horrors that befell the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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