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    From the Sunday Times, Russia getting involved again.


    Its name is synonymous with death — the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War. Row upon row of white gravestones march over a hillside at a sobering memorial centre. Yet the new mayor of Srebrenica not only denies genocide took place but wants to create an international spa resort here. As the first Serbian mayor since the massacre of about 8,300 of its Muslim men and boys by Serbian forces in the Bosnian War, Mladen Grujicic has outraged relatives and survivors by refusing to accept what the International Court of Justice in the Hague declared genocide. “I consider it a horrific crime, but what happened to Serbs was just as bad,” said the former chemistry teacher, sitting in his town hall office under a framed periodic table. “It’s just Muslims got all the attention.”

    He also claimed to have “lots of evidence” that not all the names listed at the memorial were genuine victims. “We know some of them are still alive, or came from other areas. The whole thing is fishy.”
    Such comments infuriate local Bosniak Muslims whose relatives were murdered and dumped into mass graves in the July 1995 massacre. “Having a Serbian mayor of Srebrenica is like making Osama bin Laden the mayor of New York,” said Sadmir Nukic, who was nine when he lost his father.
    He returned in 2006, one of few Muslims to do so. “My mother asked how can you go back to somewhere from which we barely escaped,” he said. “But I refuse to be party to their plan to swipe away Muslims from this area. My biggest revenge was to return here alive.”

    Abandoned houses dot the small mountain town and surrounding areas, silent witnesses of the horror that occurred. According to the mayor, there are about 7,000 inhabitants compared with 37,000 before the war. Then it was three-quarters Muslim, now the majority are Serbs. Just down the road in Tuzla is the largest forensic DNA project in history, the Missing Persons Institute, where specialists have painstakingly analysed thousands of bones of Srebrenica victims dumped in more than 500 sites. So far they have identified 6,938 bodies, some as young as 13. Hundreds more white body bags of remains line the shelves, waiting to be pieced together, tested and corroborated with families. “This is 100% accurate,” said Dragana Vucetic, the senior forensic anthropologist.
    Few of their relatives have returned home. “Ethnic cleansing worked,” said Hasan Nuhanovic, who lost his parents and brother in the massacre and successfully sued the Dutch government for the failure of its UN peacekeeping force in Srebrenica to protect them.

    All three ethnicities have their own narratives and documentation centres of the war. Egged on by politicians in Zagreb and Belgrade, Croats are arguing they should have their own entity within Bosnia while Serbs are demanding a referendum on independence, stirred up by their long-time allies in Moscow. Last week, the Night Wolves, the ultra-nationalist Russian biker gang, visited Republika Srpska. Four years ago, President Vladimir Putin presented their leader with a medal after they took part in the covert invasion to annex Crimea from Ukraine. General Curtis Scaparrotti, the top US military commander in Europe, has warned of increased covert and overt pressure from Russia on the Balkans, and said that Washington and Nato need to act. He told senators last month: “Russia is at work in the Balkans and we have kind of taken our eye off the area.” He said Moscow had “overtly interfered” in Bosnia’s political processes in 2016, when ethnic nationalists did well in local elections — and Grujicic ousted Srebrenica’s previous Bosniak mayor.
    Lord Ashdown, who was the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002-6, blames the European Union for not using the considerable leverage it has through the extensive financial aid it provides and Bosnian aspirations to join the EU, to focus authorities on proper governance and reconciliation. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “I think Brussels has acted fantastically irresponsibly. All the progress made has been allowed to reverse and we’ve let this country inside Europe become a playground for Russia and also for Islamic extremism.” bodik, the president of Republika Srpska, once a darling of the West, is now an avowed nationalist who wants a referendum on secession.
    He has banned teaching about the Srebrenica genocide or the siege of Sarajevo and has frequently met Putin, sending his police to be trained by the Russians and recently buying 4,000 automatic weapons from Moscow.

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