Srebrenica Day
“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold’ – TS ELIOT
A funny thing happened in July. Cross-party consensus about a significant world event broke out and, in the splendid surroundings of Lancaster House, Ramadan was referenced with sensitivity and warmth by an audience gathered to commemorate one of the most shameful acts of the 20th Century – the Srebrenica Massacre.
That Britain became the first nation to officially mark July 11th as ‘Srebrenica Day’ was commendable, although some of those present were little more than children when it took place; when 8,000 moslem men and boys were ‘ethnically cleansed’ by Serbian forces in an act of genocide that played out under the noses of UN peacekeepers.
As the Lancaster House audience listened to the chilling narratives of four survivors, the years began to fall away. More compelling than the rhetoric of William Hague, Lord Ashdown, Martin Bell, Baroness Warsi, Eric Pickles, Hilary Benn, Dr Waqar Azmi, or the Archbishop of Westminster, their stories highlighted with shaming simplicity the consequences of ‘failure to act’.
Against a projection of Potočari Cemetery and Memorial Centre the story of Srebrenica was retold in words, pictures, music and dance. Probably like everyone else present in that dimly lit room, I revisited my own memories.
In 1964 the image of an attractive blonde woman on the cover of a travel magazine invited tourists to visit ‘Romantic Yugoslavia for exciting holidays’. My mother was one of them; a huge fan of the Adriatic Coast and ‘delightful Dubrovnik’, she returned regularly with rolls of film that captured images of beaches, landscapes and quaint historic buildings.
She is dead now; the photographs have faded and the country she used to visit has disappeared.
In 1984 the Winter Olympics put Yugoslavia’s on the map when Britain’s Torvill and became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time. The country went mad! Ravel’s ‘Bolero’, with its tantalisingly slow crescendo, was heard everywhere and suddenly everyone had heard of Sarajevo. They were heady days
But that uplifting event was the gloss on an apple that had already begun to rot at its core; a process that arguably started with the death of the country’s unifying force, President Josip Tito, four years earlier.
More to follow. . . .