Genocide is the hardest word to say

IT'S HARD to say sorry, but it's even harder to say you're sorry for a genocide. The word just sticks in the throats of those who should be saying it, as the Turks have been demonstrating for the past hundred years in the case of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia. And the Serbs have just shown themselves to be as tongue-tied in the case of the Bosnian Muslims slaughtered at Srebrenica.

The weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the murder of 7000 to 8000 people when Srebrenica was taken by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. The town's population was swollen by refugees who had fled there to escape the "ethnic cleansing" that was being carried out against Muslims elsewhere in eastern Bosnia, because it was a United Nations-designated "safe area" defended by Nato troops. Or rather, not defended.

When the Bosnian Serbs, having surrounded Srebrenica for three years, finally moved to take it in July 1995, the UN and Nato commanders refused to use air strikes to stop them. And the Dutch troops who were there to protect the town decided they would rather live and let unarmed civilians die.

So all the Bosnian Muslim men and boys between the ages of 14 and 70 were loaded on to buses - the Dutch soldiers helped to separate them from the women and children - and driven up the road a few kilometres. Then they were shot by Serbian killing squads and buried by bulldozers. It took four days to murder them all.

The crime has been been formally declared a genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serb president of the time, Radovan Karadzic, and the Serbian military commander at Srebrenica, General Ratko Mladic, are awaiting verdicts in trials for directing genocide. You would think that even the Serbs cannot deny that it was a genocide, but you would be wrong.

THERE are certainly some Serbs, such as journalist Dusan Masic, who are willing to call it what it is. His idea was to have 7000 volunteers lie on the ground before the National Assembly in Belgrade on Saturday, symbolising the approximate number of Muslim victims at Srebrenica. "On July 11, while the eyes of the whole world are on the killing fields near Srebrenica", he said, "we want to send a different picture from Belgrade.

"This will not be a story about the current regime, which has failed to define itself in relation to the crime that happened 20 years ago," he continued, "or about a place where you can still buy souvenirs with images of Karadzic and Mladic. It will be a story about ... a better Serbia." But the better Serbia has not actually arrived yet.

Words matter. Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandr Vucic, who seems to have changed his mind about Srebrenica since his early days in Serbian politics, still cannot bring himself to use the word "genocide" when he talks about it.

Back in 1995, Vucic was a radical nationalist who declared in the Serbian National Assembly, only a few days after the Srebrenica massacre, that, "If you kill one Serb, we will kill 100 Muslims". By 2010, however, he was saying that a "horrible crime was committed in Srebrenica".

Vucic even travelled to Srebrenica at the weekend to take part in the commemoration of the events of 20 years ago, a brave gesture for a Serbian prime minister who must contend with an electorate most of whose members do not want to admit that Serbs did anything especially wrong. But he still does not dare to say the word "genocide". The voters would never forgive him for it.

Most Serbs would acknowledge that their side did some bad things during the Balkan wars of the 90s, but they would add that every side did. They will not accept the use of the word "genocide" - whereas that is the one word Bosnian Muslims have to hear before they can believe that the Serbs have finally grasped the nature and scale of their crime.

That is why, when Vucic was at Srebrenica paying his respects in the cemetery, some Bosnian Muslims started throwing stones at him. His glasses were broken, and his security detail had to hustle him away.

It was a stupid, shameful act, and the Bosnian Muslim authorities have apologised for it. But like the Turks and the Armenians, the Serbs and their neighbours will never really be reconciled until the Serbs say the magic word.

-Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.