House of Lords written statement – made at on 11 July 2013.
Baroness Warsi
Senior Minister of State (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) (Jointly with the Department for Communities and Local Government), Senior Minister of State (Department for Communities and Local Government) (Faith and Communities) (also in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office)
I wish to inform the House that the Department for Communities and Local Government is funding “Remembering Srebrenica” (http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/), an initiative dedicated to commemorating and honouring the victims of Srebrenica and teaching future generations about the consequences of hatred.
In July 1995, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica was overrun and captured by Bosnian Serb forces and Serbian paramilitaries commanded by General Ratko Mladic, despite having been declared a UN Safe Area. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered and buried in mass graves in actions that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Court of Justice have determined constitute genocide.
In recognition of this, the Government are providing £170,000 to the community-led Remembering Srebrenica initiative in its first year of operation. This will fund an online educational archive, a commemoration event on
I wish to express my thanks to my Right Honourable Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague) for the support and co-operation that his Department has provided.
Srebrenica represents a catastrophic collective international failure to protect civilians. Commemorating the event will teach future generations about the devastating consequences of hatred on our doorstep.
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