Never Again?

Often called Europe's second Genocide of the 20th Century, and labeled by President Barack Obama as "a stain on our collective consciousness," this year, on July 11, 2010 marked the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre where about 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the ethnic clensing of another 25,000-30,000 refugees, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladic' during the Bosnian War.

The date of the "11th" is an important one during commemoration, as it is the official commemoration date of the massacre, and more importantly, on the 11th of every month, Women in Black in Serbia and several mothers of Srebrenica groups in Bosnia hold silent public vigils in conspicuous public space throughout Serbia and Bosnia. The purpose of these demonstrations is to advocate for public and political recongition of Serbian/Bosnian-Serb military/paramilitary crimes agains the Bosniaks in Srebrenica, to call attention to Dutch (and UN/International) culpability for the crimes committed, and to call for reparations & assistance for the survivors and victims' families.

This month, the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, in association with the Noyes Museum of Art, invites the entire Stockton and greater surrounding communities to join us in education, commemoration and action as we honor the lives lost, remember the survivors whose lives have been permanently interrupted, and reflect upon the failures of humanity that made this massacre possible so we may all learn to think and act toward making the well-worn post-Holocaust Mantra "Never Again" a reality.

Ramet

Sabrina P. Ramet is a professor of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway and Senior Research Associate of the Centre for the Sudy of Civil War of the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO). She has authored and edited numerous publications on Yugoslavia, the 1990s wars of secession and post-war politics and culture in the Balkans including the frequently cited Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the War for Kosovo. In this, Ramet depicts the story of socialist Yugoslavia's challenges facing its successor states from May 1980 - December 2000.
 
Editorial Reviews (taken from Amazon.com):
Yugoslavia's would-be-system-builders failed three times over to build a workable system. The underlying problem was their failure to resolve the problem of legitimacy. In the 1980s, economic deterioration pushed people to despair and, under the pressure of Serbia's ambitious political establishment, the country broke up along ethnic fault lines.

A veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, Ramet traces the steady deterioration of Ygoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, while the federal system and multiethnic fabric laid down fault lines, the final crisis was sown in the failure to resolve the legitimacy question, triggered by economic deterioration, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on power - either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an "ethnically clensed" Greater Serbia. With her detailed knowledge of the area and extensive fieldwork, Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugosloavia's demise and the emergence of the Yugoslav successor states.

Ramet is also the author of Whose Democracy? Nationalism, Religion, and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post 1989 Eastern Europe (1997), and Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia (1998).
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