With Sarajevo in the news, highlighting the war crimes committed during the siege, I want to stress the importance of learning about what happened in Bosnia, because genocide denial is unfortunately still alive and well.
Knowing the history helps protect the truth.
Learn about the concentration camps, where thousands of civilians were subjected to starvation, beatings, assaults, torture, rape, and untold abuses.
Learn about the targeted campaign of sexual violence against girls and women, who were systematically abducted, repeatedly assaulted, and forcibly impregnated as part of the ethnic cleansing campaign.
Learn about the rape hotels, where women and children were imprisoned and repeatedly raped and murdered.
Learn about how the soldiers dismembered the bodies and scattered pieces in different mass graves to make it harder for families to find and identify remains of their loved ones.
Learn about Prijedor, where the campaign of extermination and ethnic cleansing turned the area into a site of mass killings, mass rape, and untold horrors. Learn about how non-Serbs were forced to wear white armbands to identify themselves.
Learn about Srebrenica, where thousands of civilian Muslim children, men, and elderly were separated from their families, rounded up, and executed en mass.
Learn about the siege of Sarajevo, where, for years, the civilian population of the capital was cut off from food, medicine, water, and electricity - all while under constant and indiscriminate sniper fire.