The Jewish Diplomatic Corps of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) called on the international community on Wednesday to raise awareness about the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide and commemorate the “innocent men and boys who were murdered only because of their ethnicity and religion.”
In a Facebook post, the Jewish Diplomatic Corps pointed out that July 1 marks the 25th anniversary of “one of the most horrific atrocities in Europe since the Holocaust.”
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“Over the course of ten days, Bosnian Serb forces killed over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. These systematic murders were part of a plan to ethnically cleanse the Srebrenica area from its Muslim population,” the post said.
“The WJC Jewish Diplomatic Corps is calling for unity to combat all forms of racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism. We believe that it is imperative for all faiths and minorities, and all of society, to stand together in this common endeavor. We must protect freedom of religion for everyone,” it said.
“Let us all pay tribute to every innocent victim and work towards a better future where genocide will never happen again,” the post concluded.
Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-protected eastern Bosnian enclave on July 11, 1995. They then separated men from women and little children and executed some 8,000 men and boys.
The bodies of the victims were buried in a large number of mass graves in the area.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.
New remains of the victims are found and identified yearly and buried during the July 11 ceremony.
