Srebrenica, Bosnia – Nedzad Avdic stood on a gravel plateau with four men and children with their hands bound behind them, preparing for death. Only 17 years, Avdic had been captured by the Bosnian Serbian forces days before. Now, he stood up an execution squad.
Avdic said he heard shots, felt acute pain on the right side and the right arm and passed out. When he woke up, more prisoners were being aligned for execution. When the little truck that took him to the site he moved away, Avdic and another wounded man escaped in the dark. After walking to the forest for days, they crossed Central Bosnia controlled by Muslims.
Last week, Avdic told his experience to the members of the German Parliament in an event in Berlin that marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the “safe area” protected by the United Nations of Srebrenica. Two international courts have ruled that the systematic death of the Bosnian Serbs of Muslim Muslim prisoners, at least 7,000 in total, was the first genocide in Europe since World War II.
The next day, the members of the extreme right alternative for Germany, or the AFD party, argued in Parliament that mass murders did not constitute genocide. “The Serbs shot there, but generally saved women and children,” said Alexander Wolf in a speech.
A second member of AFD, Martin Sichert, invoked a conspiracy theory, warning that Muslims were fighting a “birth jihad” in Germany, a reference to the Germans who exceed Muslim immigrants. “Srebrenica reminds us that we end up with multiculturalism before it’s too late,” Sichert warned.
As the misinformation extends online, the negialism about war crimes, both past and continuous, is growing more and more throughout the world, experts warn. From current conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza to past atrocities in Syria, Bosnia and Rwanda, as well as in the Holocaust, the basic facts are now disputed or dismissed.
Denialism is also demonstrating to be politically profitable. In February, the AFD won the second majority of the seats in the Parliament of Germany, the best presentation of an extreme right party since World War II. In Bosnia, a local Serbian leader, Milorad Dodik, has obtained support in disseminating conspiracy theories about Srebrenica, calling it “a fixed tragedy.” It dismisses the identification of 6,981 victims, part of the largest DNA identification project in history, as a hoax.
The Dodik and AFD office did not immediately respond to requests for comments or evidence of their claims.
In a conference in Srebrenica that marks the 30th anniversary of the mass murders here, the chiefs of the Kigali genocide memorial in Rwanda and the museums of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Stutthof Concentration Camp in Poland warned that the propagation is online about the crimes of war has also become financially profitable. The denial of war crimes generates so much online traffic to make money, not a political or ideological gain, seems to motivate some of its suppliers.
At one time, the directors discussed whether better influential people could help, and several of them agreed that they could.
Avdic is determined to be one of them. As denialism spreads, it is more determined than ever to use what remains of your life to speak for the men and children who died by their side in that gravel 30 years ago.
“It is becoming more aggressive day by day,” he said, referring to denial. “You should know that we are all foreign bodies on this earth, and we will all evaporate naturally sooner or later.”
An unpotected “safe” area
I met Avdic for the first time that he covered the war in Bosnia as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. After the fall of Srebrenica, rumors spread that Bosnian Muslim men described mass executions. Avdic, then a peel teenager whose father was found in a Mass tomb, was one of the nine men who told me that they had survived the massive executions. When I later visited the gravel plateau next to a land dam in the town of Petkovci, I found two human femures.
Avdic and his father were among the approximately 10,000 Bosnian Muslim men who fled from Srebrenica on foot when the Serbian Bosnias forces attacked in July 1995. The surrounded city had been declared a “safe area” internationally protected, but the United States, Europe and 600 Peace Cavators of the Dutch UN did little to protect it to protect it.
Women, children and older men took refuge in a large battery factory that Dutch peace forces had become their main base. And the men, most of them unarmed, unfold through the forest on a 60 -mile walk to Central Bosnia controlled by Muslims.
When the Serbian forces attacked the column, Avdic and his father separated into chaos. “I lost it,” Avdic recalled. “I lost it immediately.” He continued walking with strangers but was finally captured. Two days later, he and other men were taken to the gravel plateau, and the executions began.
I need to speak
During the next 12 years, Avdic testified in war crimes trials on executions under a pseudonym and lived far from Srebrenica, fearing for his safety. In 2007, he returned to Srebrenica, his hometown. He and other Bosnian Muslims felt the duty to return to the area and preserve their Muslim community. Avdic, who had grown up in a town outside the city and also lost four uncles and three cousins in the murders, found being comforting in Srebrenica.
“I have less nightmares,” he said, shrugging. “I can’t explain it.”
In 2014, when he visited the execution site during an event with mothers of the victims, he was full of a desire to speak publicly about the mass murder that survived.
“When I got to the place, something forced me to say something; I felt a strong need to speak,” he said. “The words began to flow, something stronger than me.”
He met his wife, Elvisa, a Muslim survivor Bosnia whose uncle and cousin also died in the executions, in Srebrenica in 2008. The following year, they married. Today, Nedzad works as a manager in a company in Sreberenica that produces pieces for luxury cars interiors. Elvisa works at a local weather station. They have three daughters who attend local school with Serbian children. Serbs and Muslims coexist, but they generally do not discuss war.
“Hate destroys, first of all, those who hate,” said Avdic.
In recent years, Avdic has given dozens of speeches about massacres in multiple countries and has asked for the protection of civilians in Ukraine and Syria. Talking about Srebrenica is difficult but cathartic. “It was my choice to go to Berlin,” he said. “It’s not something I want. It’s emotional and it’s difficult for me.”
Local Bosnian Muslims have transformed the cavernous car batteries factory that the UN Dutch Peace Forces used as a basis in a museum that documented genocide. On the other side of the street, the heads of the thousands of Muslim men and children killed in the massacres cover an exuberant green field and a hillside.
However, in recent years, Muslims have slowly left Srebrenica, many of them citing economic and security concerns. Once a majority-musulum city, Srebrenica, is now approximately half Serbian, half Muslim.
Elvisa, Avdic’s wife, said she cares about her children’s future.
“I was 13 years old in 1995. My daughter is now 13 years old,” he said. “Now, I am more excited about that time. When we are older, we care more and we feel more.”
“Our grandmother was killed,” he added. “They cut their throat.”
Denial and threats
Avdic said the provocations still happen, even when a local priest once played Serbian nationalist songs to make fun of Muslim residents.
“He will die with his evil,” Avdic said about the priest.
As denialism spreads, Serbian nationalists have become more challenging. In nearby cities, Avdic is sometimes recognized and mocked by them.
“I’m not afraid of them,” he said, although he recognized the danger. “You never know what could happen, because I am a witness.”
Avdic and his wife are torn. Leaving Srebanica could be better for her children, but Avdic believes that it is her duty to raise her family here and talk to the men and children who died by her side.
“I’ll die proud,” he said. “And I think my children will be proud that they were born here.”
