Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 27/8/2024; Author: Irna Halilović
The president of the journalist association in Republika Srpska shared a post in which he manipulatively “explains” the meaning of the number 8,372 on the monument in Potocari, claiming that it represents the number of victims in “the area from Bijeljina to Sarajevo”.
On July 8, 2024, Danijel Simic, president of the Association of Journalists of Republika Srpska shared on platform X two pictures showing part of the monument in the Srebrenica Memorial Center. The pictures show the number of victims of the genocide in Srebrenica, written on the monument, as well as the names of the cities and municipalities from which they came. With the publication, he implied that the number of genocide victims was falsified, since “it refers to the area from Bijeljina to Sarajevo”.
This is how they do it: They show a photo that completely outclasses their claims, without saying a word about it. It is undeniably engraved on the stone, at the beginning, the number 8372 refers to the area from Bijeljina to Sarajevo. That it was not final. They “uncover” everything except the glasses on the nose.
The images from the publication were taken from Raskrinkavanje’s analysis regarding the disinformation about the genocide in Srebrenica. By the time this analysis was written, the publication had over 4,500 views.
The next day, the web portal Vaseljenska reported Simic’s announcement as the “tweet of the day”, while the web portal Frontal decided to publish a longer text about the announcement on July 11, 2024, on the day of the collective funeral in Potocari and commemoration of the anniversary of the genocide. The text was published under the following title:
Stone of uncovering: In Potocari, people are buried from Bijeljina to Sarajevo
In the article, the annual collective funerals in Potocari were described as a “happening”, and the following words were used to make the point:
As it is clearly carved here in the previously photographed stone, and it cannot be changed, erased, or hidden so easily – the concept was initially to create some kind of central shrine in Potocari for the alleged genocide, carried out in the area from Bijeljina to Sarajevo, and that the number of victims there is somewhere around “8372”; so there was a change of concept.
Due to this change, a new stone-altar was made, on which the delegations lay the Christian symbol – the lily flower. This, somewhat older and more famous stone, which is also the source of the number 8372… which is used today as the final one, was shortened on the side and separated by a fence so that none of the foreign delegations would ask why Sarajevo is also on the list of those buried.
What are the facts?
Revisionism and denial of the Srebrenica genocide take various forms, and one of the most common is disputing the number of victims or claims that the number was falsified. On the page of the Srebrenica Memorial Center dedicated to this topic, the denial of genocide by disputing the number of victims is described as follows:
Revisionists are trying to reduce the number of 8,372 victims of the Srebrenica genocide, despite forensic evidence and legal consensus supporting this number. They additionally refute the identity of the known victims and the circumstances of their death to deny that genocide was committed in Srebrenica against Bosnian Muslims and Bosniaks.
Danijel Simic’s X post insinuates that the number of victims on the monument in Potocari does not refer to the victims killed in and around Srebrenica in 1995, after the operation codenamed “Krivaja 95” when the Army of the Republika Srpska occupied Srebrenica, which is “explained” by the list of the cities from which the victims came.
The campaign of ethnic cleansing in eastern Bosnia, which the Bosnian Serb forces started in 1992 at the beginning of the war in BiH, resulted, among other things, in a large number of refugees, some of whom found refuge in the few enclaves in eastern Bosnia, such as Gorazde and Srebrenica.
As stated in the publication of the International Residual Mechanism for UN Criminal Courts entitled “Chronology of a Genocide”, thousands of refugees came to Srebrenica by 1995.
Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from the surrounding areas, fleeing their towns and villages from attacks by Bosnian Serb forces, found refuge in Srebrenica. For three years, Bosnian Serb forces kept the enclave in the vicinity and shelled it regularly. These forces controlled access roads and prevented the delivery of food, medicine and other international humanitarian aid to the enclave. The town of Srebrenica was overpopulated with refugees.
In July 1995, Srebrenica was flooded with refugees. After three years of war, the number of inhabitants in Srebrenica was 42,000, of which as many as 36,000 were refugees.
One of the reasons why refugees and exiles came to Srebrenica is that the enclave has been a UN-protected zone since 1993. The website of the Srebrenica Memorial Center states the following:
Faced with a humanitarian disaster, on April 16, 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution No. 819. In it, they request that all parties involved in the conflict in the Republic of BiH consider Srebrenica and the area around it as a “protected zone”, in which there will be no armed attacks or hostilities.
Resolution No. 824 of the Security Council, which declared a “protected zone”, was passed on May 6, 1993. At that moment, there were about 40,000 people in Srebrenica.
Operation “Krivaja 95” resulted in the capture of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, after which Bosnian Serb forces organized the expulsion of women and children in the territory under the control of the RBiH Army, and the execution of captured men. In the analysis of the facts about the Srebrenica genocide, which we published in July of last year as part of the series called Uncovering, we stated that more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in Srebrenica, in the mass executions that began on July 13, 1995 and lasted until the beginning of August of that year. The victims were then buried in mass graves, some of which were later moved. These executions have been qualified as genocide in numerous court rulings, including those of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Court of Justice, and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Srebrenica Memorial Center and Memorial Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide was founded in 2000 by the decision of the then High Representative, according to the Center’s website. The first collective funeral took place on March 31, 2003, when 600 victims identified at the time were buried. As stated in the Detektor article from July 9, 2024, before this year’s funeral for 14 identified victims, 6,751 genocide victims had been buried in Potocari. About 250 victims were buried in other local cemeteries in accordance with the wishes of the families.
The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), an organization that works on DNA identification of found victims, estimates that slightly more than 8,000 men were killed in and around Srebrenica in July and August 1995. This organization has identified 7,015 remains of victims by June 2022.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined that the number of victims ranges between 7,000 and 8,000.
The list with 8,372 names of reported victims can be found on the website of the British initiative Remembering Srebrenica.
Therefore, it is not true that the victims buried in the cemetery in Potocari died in other cities than Srebrenica. The names of the towns and municipalities on the monument in Potocari refer to the place of origin of the victims who were killed in and around Srebrenica in July and August 1995. The majority of the 8,000 victims were killed in mass executions organized and committed by Bosnian Serb forces after the capture of the Srebrenica enclave. These murders have been qualified as genocide in the judgments of several courts.
According to the facts, the claim that the number of victims on the monument in Potocari refers to “the area from Bijeljina to Sarajevo”, that is, to victims from cities other than Srebrenica, published on the X account of Danijel Simic, we evaluate as fake news. We rate other publications of this claim as a distribution of fake news.
