Remembering Srebrenica

Lord Pickles Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

My noble Friend the Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister for Faith and Communities at the Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Warsi) has made the following written ministerial statement:

I wish to inform the House that the Department for Communities and Local Government is funding “Remembering Srebrenica” (http://www.srebrenica.org.uk), an initiative dedicated to commemorating and honouring the victims of Srebrenica and teaching future generations about the consequences of hatred.

In July 1995, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica was overrun and captured by Bosnian Serb forces and Serbian paramilitaries commanded by General Ratko Mladic, despite having been declared a UN safe area. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered and buried in mass graves in actions that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Court of Justice have determined constitute genocide.

In recognition of this, the Government are providing £170,000 to the community-led “Remembering Srebrenica” initiative in its first year of operation. This will fund an online educational archive, a commemoration event on 11 July 2013 and a series of visits from local communities to Srebrenica.

I wish to express my thanks to my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague), for the support and co-operation that his Department has provided.

Srebrenica represents a catastrophic collective international failure to protect civilians. Commemorating the event will teach future generations about the devastating consequences of hatred on our doorstep.