By Laial Allaham
Last week we went to visit to the well-known Srebrenica. We were inside the factory, which was the former base of the UN peacekeeping mission in BiH. In this factory thousands of people, including women and children, were handed over by the UN soldiers and sent to be killed. We heard a heartbreaking stories from Hassan, who survived the Srebrenica march at the age of 16 and had to find his Father and brother death after many years.
Being in this place without being emotional is impossible and being in tears is nearly inevitable. I was questioning myself, listening to the story and crying does not change anything, how can we prevent such horrible things from happening again?
When I look around me, I still see the same things happening; mass murders are being committed, the use of chemical weapons is still there and many people without even political opinion are killed and suffering of what has to overcome to them without being able to influence even the slightest change in their situation. Our guide said that he will not tell us all the stories; they are too horrible to be true, but actually did happen. This reminds me of the situation in Syria.
The UN is still politically driven and one big power can paralyze the whole system and you’ll end up with genocide or mass violence under the watch of the UN. If you wonder whether the world has learned the lesson, my answer would be no. History keeps repeating as human don’t learn from lessons of things didn’t go wrong with themselves. I hope someone could convince me to a more positive answer, the positive outcome I will have from this visit is that Hassan came out to be able to tell his story in public. Also his believe that we should teach our children love and forgiveness because if we hate the others the same way they hate us, we will not be better than them.