Barely more than 20 years ago in the heart of Europe, we witnessed mass murder, expulsion and systematic rape committed against tens of thousands of innocent victims – simply because they were Muslims.
A whole network of concentration camps was used to imprison, torture and kill Muslims as part of the genocide in Bosnia. Hundreds of thousands were forced out of their homes. Rape centres were set up where tens of thousands of Muslim women were imprisoned and repeatedly raped by soldiers. In Srebrenica during just 5 days of July 1995 more than 8000 Muslim men and boys were rounded up by the Serb army, murdered and dumped in mass graves.
The campaign of extermination against the Muslims in Bosnia extended to every trace of Muslim religion and culture. Serb militias dynamited mosques in areas they occupied and the Serbian army specifically targeted sites of cultural importance to Muslims such as the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo – burning more than 5000 ancient manuscripts. The perpetrators of this genocide sought to extinguish even the memory of Muslim life in Bosnia.
These Muslims were white Europeans, just like their non-Muslim neighbours. They spoke the same language as their non-Muslim neighbours. They wore the same clothes and led the same lifestyle. Yet they became the victims of a horrific genocide while the world stood by and watched.
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