Bosnian Genocide survivors reflect on the parallels with Uyghurs’ suffering

Survivors of the Bosnian Genocide 30 years ago told Radio Free Asia that they see parallels between their suffering and the experiences of Uyghurs in China’s far-western Xinjiang region.

At that that time, the international community failed to stop the mass killings and other crimes against Bosnian Muslims. The 1992-95 Bosnian War left 100,000 dead, including the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

Bosnians don’t want to see that happen again, and yet they see it unfolding in various locations around the world.

“We have been shouting for many years that ethnic genocide should never happen again, but we are witnessing it every day,” said Almasa Salihovic, 36, who at age 8 fled with her family from advancing Serb forces and lost a brother in Srebrenica.

(Darko Bandic/AP)

“We know that Uyghur Muslims, because of religion and everything else, are being forced to perform labor, basically tortured,” said restaurant owner Abdu Porcovic, 39, who also survived Bosnia’s genocide.

“All their freedoms are being reduced,” he added.

Muhtar Abdurrahman, a Uyghur scholar whom RFA interviewed in Sarajevo during an October meeting of the World Uyghur Congress, called on the Chinese government to stop its persecution of the mostly Muslim Uyghurs.

“They should remember how the perpetrator of the Bosnian genocide, Slobodan Milosevic, was brought before an international criminal court and faced justice,” he said.

Milosevic, president of Serbia between 1989–1997 and president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 until his overthrow in 2000, was tried on charges of committing war crimes at an international criminal tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, in the early 2000s. He died before the case concluded.

‘Fascist government’

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who led the Bosnian Serb Army and was known as the “butcher of Bosnia,” were also tried and convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

(AP)

Their fate suggests that those responsible for modern-day genocides also will see their day in court, Abdurrahman said.

“We firmly believe that [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and his henchmen and his fascist government one day will face justice here in the International Criminal Court one day,” he said.

The Bosnia War ended with the signing of the Dayton Accords in December 1995, a peace agreement that divided Bosnia and Herzegovina into two autonomous states — the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina dominated by Bosniaks and Croats, and the Bosnian Serb Republic dominated by Bosnian Serbs.

Despite the immense hardships facing Uyghurs, Abdurrahman is hopeful that the situation in Xinjiang will follow a similar trajectory.

“We are convinced that this genocide will eventually play a role in the birth of an independent Uyghur nation,” he said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.