July 14, 2005
by Jonathan Luxmoore
Ecumenical News International

WARSAW – Ten years after the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst mass execution since World War II, reconciliation remains an arduous task, according to Mato Zovkic, vicar-general of the Roman Catholic Church in Sarajevo.

"Our congregations, whether Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim, expect us to side with our own ethnic groups – to see and hear them primarily, before we look at what's happening in the neighbor's yard," said Zovkic, who represented his church at a July 11 ceremony to commemorate the massacre, in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"Prophetic voices still represent only a tiny minority," Zovkic said. "Unless they gain support, we won't have real reconciliation."

The then-Muslim-majority town had been declared a "safe haven" by the United Nations, but was handed over to Bosnian Serb forces by Dutch peacekeepers.

Muslims accounted for 44 per cent of Bosnia's population of 4.3 million before the 1992-‘95 war that started after it declared sovereignty in 1991. Mostly Orthodox Serbs made up an estimated 35 percent and mostly Catholic Croats, 18 percent. The war cost 270,000 lives before ending with the formation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a federation of Serb and Croat-Muslim regions.

About 50,000 Bosnians were at Srebrenica's Potocari cemetery for the ceremony, which also was attended by foreign dignitaries and Serbian President Boris Tadic.

However, Vicar-General Zovkic accused Serbian Orthodox Church leaders of "lacking courage" for failing to attend.

"I would have expected the Serbian Orthodox church to take a courageous step – just to be there, without speaking, would have been meaningful," Zovkic told Ecumenical News International. "But although I searched for an Orthodox priest, I didn't see one."

So far six Serbs have been sentenced, and 10 others are awaiting trial, for their roles in the massacre, which formed part of a 1995 genocide indictment by the UN's war-crimes court against fugitive Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

About 1,000 Serbs took part in a separate ceremony on July 12 in the Bosnian Serb town of Bratunac near Srebrenica to commemorate their war dead. Serbs have accused Bosnian Muslim forces of killing Serb civilians before the area was captured by Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995.

The Serbian Orthodox Church said Orthodox Bishop Vasilije Kacavenda had been subjected to "repulsive and inappropriate defamatory attacks" in the Bosnian media after announcing that he would take part in the separate ceremony.

The Orthodox church issued a statement in which it said the bishop's willingness to perform a service for "innocent Serbs" who perished didn't mean he doesn't regret the deaths of other "innocent victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina."

"The church firmly condemns all crimes, and reminds that no crime can be justified by the misfortunes others inflict upon us," said the Orthodox communique.

Presbyterian News Service