Senate Resolution No. 1856
BY: Senator GRIFFO
MEMORIALIZING Governor Kathy Hochul to proclaim
July 11, 2024, as Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance
Day in the State of New York
WHEREAS, This resolution arises from a sense of human decency and
respect for the Srebrenica people and their history; and
WHEREAS, It is the sense of this Legislative Body to memorialize
Governor Kathy Hochul to proclaim July 11, 2024, as Srebrenica Genocide
Remembrance Day in the State of New York; and
WHEREAS, Fifty years after the world said "Never Again" to the
horrors of the Holocaust, genocide took place on European soil; and
WHEREAS, The name Srebrenica has become synonymous with those dark
days in July 1995 when, in the first ever United Nations (UN) declared
safe area, thousands of men and boys were systematically murdered and
buried in mass graves; and
WHEREAS, The victims, who were Muslim, were selected for death on
the basis of their identity; this was the worst atrocity on European
soil since the Second World War; and
WHEREAS, During the Srebrenica massacre, more than 7,000 Bosniak
(Bosnian Muslim) boys and men were slain by Bosnian Serb forces in
Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina; in addition to
these killings, more than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area
in a process known as ethnic cleansing; and
WHEREAS, The massacre helped galvanize the West to press for a
cease-fire that ended three years of warfare on Bosnia's territory,
however, it left deep emotional scars on survivors and created enduring
obstacles to political reconciliation among Bosnia's ethnic groups; and
WHEREAS, Beginning in 1992, Bosnian Serb forces targeted Srebrenica
in a campaign to seize control of a block of territory in eastern Bosnia
and Herzegovina; their eventual goal was to annex this territory to the
adjacent republic of Serbia, and to do so, they believed, required the
expulsion of the territory's Bosniak inhabitants, who opposed
annexation; and
WHEREAS, In March of 1995, Radovan Karadzic, president of the
self-declared autonomous Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb Republic),
directed his military forces to "create an unbearable situation of total
insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants
of Srebrenica"; and
WHEREAS, By May, a cordon of Bosnian Serb soldiers had imposed an
embargo on food and other supplies that provoked most of the town's
Bosniak fighters to flee the area; in late June, after some skirmishes
with the few remaining Bosniak fighters, the Bosnian Serb military
command formally ordered the operation, code-named Krivaja 95, that
culminated in the massacre; and
WHEREAS, The offensive commenced on July 6, 1995, with Bosnian Serb
forces advancing from the south and burning Bosniak homes along the way;
amid chaos and terror, thousands of civilians fled Srebrenica for the
nearby village of Potocari, where a contingent of about 200 Dutch
peacekeepers was stationed; some of the Dutch surrendered, while others
withdrew; none fired on the advancing Bosnian Serb forces; and
WHEREAS, On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic
strolled through Srebrenica and, in a statement recorded on film by a
Serb journalist, said, "We give this town to the Serb nation The time
has come to take revenge on the Muslims"; and
WHEREAS, On the night of July 11, 1995, a column of more than 10,000
Bosniak men set off from Srebrenica through dense forest in an attempt
to reach safety; beginning the following morning, Bosnian Serb officers
used UN equipment and made false promises of security to encourage the
men to surrender; thousands gave themselves up or were captured, and
many were subsequently executed; and
WHEREAS, Other Bosniaks were forced out of Potocari that day through
the use of terror; the women, children, and elderly were placed aboard
buses and driven to Bosniak-held territory, while the men and boys were
taken to various holding sites, mostly in Bratunac; and
WHEREAS, The total number of men and boys who were slaughtered was
initially a matter of some debate; under heavy international pressure,
the government of the Republika Srpska issued an apology in 2004 for the
"enormous crimes" in Srebrenica and acknowledged that an estimated 7,800
had perished; and
WHEREAS, The process of locating the graves and identifying the
victims was complicated by a well-organized effort undertaken by Bosnian
Serb forces in September and October 1995 to hide traces of the
Srebrenica crimes; soldiers used heavy tractors and backhoes to dig up
mass graves and moved the disinterred remains to distant sites, many of
which were later located by U.S. intelligence experts using satellite
photographs; and
WHEREAS, Furthermore, it required years of analysis by Western
scientists to piece together exactly where the killings had occurred and
how the bodies had been moved among an estimated 80 mass grave sites; by
early 2010, the International Commission on Missing Persons, a
nongovernmental organization established in 1996, had used DNA samples
to identify more than 6,400 individual victims; and
WHEREAS, By consistently remembering and forcefully condemning the
atrocities committed against these people, and honoring the survivors as
well as other victims of similar heinous conduct, we guard against
repetition of such acts of genocide and provide the American public with
a greater understanding of history; and
WHEREAS, This resolution declares that this Legislative Body
deplores the persistent, ongoing efforts by any person, in this country
or abroad, to deny the historical fact of the Srebrenica Genocide; the
failure of the international community to hold responsible nations
accountable for crimes against humanity results in travesty of justice,
and sets a negative precedent; and
WHEREAS, The State of New York endeavors to encourage and promote a
curriculum relating to human rights and genocide in order to empower
future generations to prevent the recurrence of genocide; now,
therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to
memorialize Governor Kathy Hochul to proclaim July 11, 2024, as
Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day in the State of New York; and be it
further
RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be
transmitted to the Honorable Kathy Hochul, Governor of the State of New
York.
