Srebrenica Massacre Anniversary

Debate between Ann McKechin and Karen Lumley

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ann McKechin]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who accompanied me on the visit in February. Following the passing of the resolution by the European Union in 2009, and given the problems within Europe—I will touch on those later—it would be very helpful for other countries to look at the good practice being followed across the United Kingdom. I know that the delegation will also be visiting Cardiff and Birmingham as part of its week of visits to see the good work being done by the charitable sector and by central and local government across the country.

Srebrenica’s fate in July 1995 continues to haunt us as the starkest failure in Europe’s history post-world war two. It was not, of course, the only massacre in the long and bloody war, which lasted more than four years, following the collapse of Yugoslavia, but it was by far the largest and most calculated in its planning, its execution and in the subsequent attempts at cover-up.

Following months of constant siege and the failure of the Dutch UN peacekeeping force to safeguard the population, the Bosnian Serb forces took control of the town on 11 July 1995. A day later, on 12 July, women and children were evacuated from the town while Bosnian Serb forces began separating out all men between the ages of 12 and 77 for

“interrogation for suspected war crimes”.

The night before, about 15,000 Bosnian Muslim men had attempted to escape from the town and were shelled and shot at as they fled through the mountains. It was basically a walk of terror and death, which for many of them lasted over five days. In the five days after the Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed. Many of the bodies were buried in hastily dug mass graves, but following the unintended release of US satellite photographs showing the location of a number of the sites, a gruesome and chaotic reburial was organised, scattering body parts in many cases over multiple sites in the heavily wooded hills surrounding the town.

As we discovered on our visit in February to the International Commission on Missing Persons, it was only after the possibility of using DNA technology just over a decade ago, and the taking of tens of thousands of samples from the surviving family members of those who were massacred, that substantial numbers of the victims could be properly identified and interred with the respect and dignity that they deserved.

Nineteen years after the massacre, a number of Bosnian Serb leaders have been indicted for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The two most prominent—Radovan Karadzic, the former President, and Ratko Mladic, the military leader—remain on trial to this day at The Hague.

In February, I travelled to Bosnia with five fellow Scots: the Very Reverend Lorna Hood, who was then moderator of the Church of Scotland; the Church’s director of communications, Seonag MacKinnon; the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson); Sergeant David Hamilton from the Scottish Police Federation; and David Pratt, the foreign affairs editor at the Sunday Herald. We were met with warmth and friendliness at all our meetings, including with the Grand Mufti and the remarkable Mothers of Srebrenica, who have fought so hard to ensure that their dreadful loss does not vanish from our memories. However, there was an overwhelming sense that this was a country and people too long stuck in an uncomfortable limbo, relying on a bare ceasefire agreement that halted the killing but has failed to address the main problems that the country faces. The presidential palace had been firebombed the week before our visit, and protests were continuing, as we witnessed on our visit.

The Dayton agreement was never designed to be a permanent solution. Twenty years later, that agreement has institutionalised the factionalism that over the years has led to the current political impasse. In my role as vice-chair of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which has worked extensively in the region for many years, I am only too aware of how the current overloaded bureaucracy throttles political progress and leaves many in Bosnia giving up hope of finding a better alternative.

Understandably, attention in the European Union during the past few months has focused on the emerging conflict in Ukraine, but I argue that there is a clear need, post the May European Union elections, for a much greater focus on finding a long-term political solution for Bosnia.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing the debate. Does she agree that it is important that we keep Bosnia and Herzegovina high on the agenda? Obviously, as chairman of the all-party group for Bosnia and Herzegovina, I have visited it many times, and I visited previously with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. I will visit it again in a couple of weeks with Lady Warsi to do some refurbishment of a rape crisis centre outside Sarajevo. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is important that we keep up these visits and that we make them as often as we can, to ensure that Bosnia is high on the political agenda?

[Ann McKechin]

I entirely agree. I know that the hon. Lady has done a lot of good work personally in this area, both in her current position and in her work previously with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

When a country comes off our TV screens and out of our newspapers, it is all too easy for us to forget and think that the situation has been solved, but that is not what is happening in this case. I visited Croatia the year before, and the difference in tone and approach that I witnessed in Croatia and Bosnia was stark. That drove home to me the need for us to ensure that this issue is a foreign policy priority.

While I was in Bosnia, I met a senior female member of the Social Democratic party, one of the Labour party’s sister parties. She stressed that the engagement of the international community was vital in creating the necessary momentum and support for change in the political process.

The Westminster Foundation, as the hon. Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) is aware, has been working to encourage the development of secular political parties, particularly in work with young people and women. I believe that the encouragement of a secular political landscape should still be a key part of the United Kingdom’s contribution.