Srebrenica Memorial Week

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Srebrenica Memorial Week.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the opportunity to hold this debate in time to mark the commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide. I also thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who are co-sponsors of this debate. Their support is a testament to the fact that this issue transcends all party divides in this House and across the country.

The Srebrenica genocide and the events leading up to it contain important lessons on which we must take this opportunity to reflect. The House is familiar with the story of the appalling atrocity. The Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995 saw the planned, systematic and industrialised murder of just under 100,000 Muslims, the displacement of 2 million people and the genocidal rape of about 50,000 women simply because of their Muslim identity.

In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb General Mladić and his forces seized the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, which had been declared a UN safe area. Over just a few days, more than 8,000 people, mainly Bosnian Muslim men and boys, were systematically murdered by the Bosnian Serb forces. The bodies were dumped in mass graves and later moved to secondary and even tertiary mass graves as the Bosnian Serb soldiers sought to cover up what they had done. There are still some people missing.

I am sure that, like me, colleagues here today remember the harrowing scenes of the war in Bosnia on our television screens. We watched neighbours turn against neighbours, friends against friends, ethnicity against ethnicity. I will not forget seeing the images of the emaciated prisoners held in the concentration camp while looking on in disbelief that ethnic cleansing, systematic mass rape and genocide were all happening not in a faraway place, but in Europe.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. I apologise to you, Sir Robert, and to the hon. Lady for not being able to make a speech. I wish to do so, but I have to attend the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee—I have permission to leave it for a short time and then return.

The genocide convention places obligations on the UK Government not only to punish the perpetrators of such crimes, but to predict and prevent those atrocities from happening. Unfortunately, as Srebrenica showed, we keep forgetting that duty. The International Development Committee’s report, “From Srebrenica to a safer tomorrow”, challenged the UK Government to incorporate prevention at all stages of the policy cycle, including trade, education, supply chains and asylum policy. Does the hon. Member agree that that work needs to be done at pace to prevent an escalation because of not just what happened in Srebrenica, but what is happening now in Sudan and Nigeria?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree and thank the hon. Member for his intervention. We need to continue to work on this and take action across the board, so that these things do not happen again.

Bosnia was a horrific reminder of the vulnerability of ordinary people. It made me question how that could happen on our doorstep when the world had pledged “Never again” after the second world war. I also questioned what chance ethnic minority communities have in Europe if the xenophobic claims of ethnic superiority could prevail among white indigenous people who have been assimilated, integrated and lived together for hundreds of years. For me, Srebrenica demonstrates where the hatred and the dehumanisation of others can lead. Only when we reflect on those lessons can we truly strengthen our resolve to stand up to hatred in our own society.

Srebrenica

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Jim Shannon

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that from 4 to 11 July 2022, the UK marked Srebrenica Memorial Week with commemorations taking place in hundreds of schools, local authorities, places of worship, community centres and police forces to name but a few to mark the 27th anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica where over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces; expresses concern about the current threat to Bosnia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty from secessionists who are operating with the support of Russia and the prospect of a return to conflict; commends the invaluable work undertaken by Remembering Srebrenica in using the lessons of Srebrenica to tackle prejudice to help build a safer, stronger and more cohesive society in the UK; and urges the Government to continue funding this vital work which since 2013 has educated nearly 200,000 young people on Srebrenica, enabled over 1,500 community actions to take place right across the country each year, and created 1,450 Community Champions who pledge to stand up to hatred and intolerance in their communities.

Before I go into the substance of the debate, I wish to say a number of thank yous. First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting me and the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) this debate to mark the commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide 27 years ago, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who attended the Backbench Business Committee with me to support my application for the debate. Like your, Madam Deputy Speaker, she is stepping down as a Member of Parliament at the next election, and I am truly sad about that.

Secondly, I thank the Speaker for granting my application for a commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide. That commemoration took place at Speaker’s House, and I thank him and his staff for allowing us to host it. Thirdly, I thank the Administration Committee for allowing a book-signing commemoration in Portcullis House yesterday. I declare two interests: first, I have been the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Srebrenica since 2013, which I helped found with Baroness Sayeeda Warsi. Secondly, from 2000 to 2002, I worked for the United Nations mission in Kosovo.

Two genocides have taken place in Europe. One was the holocaust, in which over 6 million Jewish people were murdered. The other was the Bosnian genocide between 1992 and 1995, which involved the planned, systematic and industrialised murder of just under 100,000 Muslims, the displacement of 2 million people, and the genocidal rape of up to 50,000 women simply because they were Muslims. Many of us of a certain age will remember seeing images of the war in Bosnia on our television screens during the 1990s. We remember watching with horror the footage of Sarajevo under siege and people being held in concentration camps, and slowly learning about the reports of atrocities being committed across Bosnia, which culminated in a genocide taking place on European soil just 50 years after the world pledged “never again”.

This week marks the 27th anniversary of events in Srebrenica where, over a period of just a few days in July 1995, over 8,000 men and boys—Bosnian Muslims—were systematically murdered by Bosnian Serb forces. The victims’ bodies were dumped in mass graves as the Bosnian-Serb soldiers sought to cover up what they had done. Twenty-seven years on, the remains of a significant number of victims are still missing.

Although the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide gives us an opportunity to commemorate and reflect on what happened, it is important that we understand the reason why commemorating the anniversary is so important. We commemorate it, first, so we can recognise the suffering of the victims, their loved ones and the survivors. In 2018, as a guest of the charity Remembering Srebrenica, I had the privilege of visiting Bosnia and meeting the survivors and some of the mothers. They are inspirational women who, despite experiencing the very worst of humanity, have shown great strength and determination to rebuild their lives and resist hatred. By commemorating the genocide, we help to ensure that the victims are not forgotten. I also visited the genocide memorial centre just outside Srebrenica. Thousands of simple white gravestones stretch across the hillside as far as the eye can see. Even today, the remains of the victims are still being found and identified.

Secondly, commemorating the genocide is made even more important by the continued denial of what happened. To be clear, the events of the Srebrenica genocide have been documented in forensic detail by the investigations of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Despite that, Bosnian-Serb political leaders in Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina today, in which Srebrenica is located, continue to deny and minimise the events that occurred. The Serbs refuse to allow the history of the genocide to be taught in schools.

Further afield, we know that the genocide has been an inspiration for far-right extremists and Islamophobes. The Christchurch mosque attacker played a song glorifying Karadžić just prior to the attack and, years earlier, Anders Breivik in Norway also sought inspiration in the Balkan wars and Serb ultra-nationalism. There have been other events around the world in the past few years that reinforce the importance of remembering what happened in Srebrenica.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady on securing this debate, which is so important. I speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. The week before last, the Government held and sponsored an international conference for those who are persecuted across the world. The conference remembered all the genocide that has taken place across the world, so I commend her on bringing this issue to the House.

I am reminded of a verse from Ecclesiastes:

“Wisdom is better than weapons of war”.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the international community must have the wisdom to learn from its errors and finally put an end to repeating the same mistakes over and over? We always hope that this one will be the last, but it never seems to be.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and commend him on and thank him for all his work on religious freedom and preventing the persecution of people because of their religion.

There are worrying similarities between Srebrenica and the plight of the Rohingya in Burma, or the rise of Hindu nationalism in India—the Hindutva movement under Prime Minister Modi—and the growing tide of anti-Muslim violence. Indeed, there are numerous examples around the world of people being targeted and killed because of their identity or beliefs. That makes it critical that we continue to remember and reflect on Srebrenica.

Even here, the Srebrenica genocide and the events leading up to it contain important lessons for us. Low-level prejudice escalates to crime, violence and hatred. It creeps up on us in stages. It begins with differentiation and discrimination, fostering and fostered by a sense of grievance or perceived grievance, yet at every stage, as we watch hate unfold, we have the opportunity to break into and halt that journey. I hope that the Minister will take note of that for the Government’s strategy in tackling far-right extremism. We must actively promote tolerance in and between our communities; work with them and encourage them to educate and share with one another; support individuals bravely speaking out against hate speech; recognise and act on inequality and injustice; and intervene at the earliest possible stage.

I recognise that there are clear differences between Bosnia in the 1990s and the UK today. None the less, these events demonstrate where hatred and the dehumanisation of others can lead.