World must avoid repeat of Srebrenica Massacre, says Pakistan

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi Saturday said that July 2020 marked 25 years since the Srebrenica Massacre, the murder of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims and ethnic cleansing of over 20,000 people.

In a tweet, he urged, “The world has a collective responsibility to ensure history is not repeated. What is happening IOJK (Indian Occupied Jammu Kashmir) and Palestine is chillingly similar.”

July 2020 marks 25 years since the #Srebrenica Massacre, the murder of over 8000 Bosnian Muslims & ethnic cleansing of over 20'000 people. The world has a collective responsibility to ensure history is not repeated. What is happening in #IOJK and #Palestine is chillingly similar.

— Shah Mahmood Qureshi (@SMQureshiPTI) July 11, 2020

In 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Men who were directly or indirectly involved in the massacre hold key positions in Serbia's political and economic spheres.

It is pertinent to mention here that international tribunals later classified the killings as genocide. "You must never forget what happened," the journalist Lamia Bravo told DW. "If you do, they can happen again: There must never be a second Srebrenica." The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) spent years investigating the massacre. The ICTY found that Bosnian Serb forces began planning the genocide during the final stage of the three-year Bosnian War, in March 1995.

The genocide occurred in the area which had been declared part of a UN safe zone in 1993 and the Serbian forces overrun about 400 poorly armed Dutch UN peacekeepers stationed and execute Muslims.