Long shadow of Srebrenica

Twenty years on, the bloodiest ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II still casts its long shadow on the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international community, as many unresolved issues still remain.

While more victims of the cross-ethnic violence are still being identified two decades after the mass killing, new evidence points to the West's tacit approval to the imminent takeover of the UN safe haven, as plans for seizing Srebrenica were being hatched.

“People here are extremely unhappy with the role of the United Nations generally in the war in Bosnia,” says Denis Džidić, a journalist with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. “So the fact that the UN not only – as it was viewed until now – was so incompetent while this was happening, but they also knew about the [impending] operations in advance, I don’t think that this will shock a great many people and it will certainly not change the way they are perceived.”

Alicja Baczyńska reports.