20 years after Srebrenica massacre, irate people take it out on Serbian PM

Europe’s worst massacre since the Holocaust — the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic places flowers during a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in Potocari, near Srebenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina on Saturday. Abandoned by their U.N. protectors toward the end of a 1992-95 war, 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed by Bosnian Serb forces over five July days, their bodies dumped in pits, then dug up months later and scattered in smaller graves in a systematic effort to conceal the crime.

Anger boiled over Saturday at a massive commemoration of the Srebrenica slaughter 20 years ago as people pelted Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic with water bottles and other objects.

Mr. Vucic, once an ultra-nationalist, came to represent his country at the commemoration in an apparent gesture of reconciliation.

Booing

As Mr. Vucic entered the cemetery to lay flowers, thousands booed and whistled. A group of women from Belgrade, Serbia, who for years have demanding Serbia to admit its role in the slaughter, yelled “responsibility!” and “genocide!”

Someone threw a shoe at him, others threw water bottles and other objects. The crowd eventually chased Mr. Vucic away from the ceremony. A few people carried banners with his own wartime quote- “For every killed Serb, we will kill 100 Bosniaks.”

Europe’s worst carnage

Tens of thousands came to mark the 20th anniversary of Europe’s worst massacre since the Holocaust — the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica — with foreign dignitaries urging the international community not to allow such atrocities to happen again and to call the crime by its real name — genocide.

“I grieve that it took us so long to unify ... to stop this violence,” said former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was in office at the time of the massacre and whose administration led the NATO airstrikes against Serb positions. This ended the Bosnian 1992-95 war and the U.S. brokered a peace agreement.

Serbians in denial

Serbia and Bosnian Serbs deny the killings were “genocide,” and claim that the death toll has been exaggerated.