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Edinburgh Reporter
11-07-2025
- General
- Edinburgh Reporter
Thirtieth anniversary marked with commemoration at the Botanics
Scotland marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica on Friday with a solemn commemoration at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). The event, organised by genocide education charity Beyond Srebrenica, honoured the memory of more than 8,300 Bosniak men and boys murdered in Srebrenica in July 1995 and reflect on the broader Bosnian war that claimed over 100,000 lives and displaced more than 2 million people – including thousands who sought refuge in the UK. The youngest of the victims was two days old. Sabina Kadić-Mackenzie, chair of Beyond Srebrenica and survivor of the war in Bosnia, said: 'This tree carries deep symbolic meaning – and chilling parallels to the human experience of war and genocide Like so many Bosnians, it found a way to survive despite everything that was done to erase it. 'On the 30th anniversary of the genocide, we remember not just the loss and horror – but the endurance, and the hope it takes to recover from the rubble of war. This tree now thrives in Scotland, just as so many of us Bosnians have. Its roots now touch Scottish soil, linking our two nations in remembrance and in hope. 'The spruce stands as a living memorial to both environmental and human resilience – and Scotland's quiet but enduring connection to Bosnia's story.' During the ceremony, guests tied white ribbons to the tree – a quiet act of solidarity and remembrance. Sabina, who is a survivor of the war, continued: 'This Spruce is more than a tree. It is a living memorial to all that we lost, and all that we refused to let be destroyed. It stands as a symbol of our survival, and of the profound connection between Bosnia and Scotland forged in the most painful of times. 'The tree stands now not only as a symbol of ecological resilience but also as a quiet testament to the resilience and grace of the Bosnian people who, like it, endured immense suffering yet refused to disappear.' Speaking at the ceremony, Simon Milne MBE, Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, said: 'Rare and resilient, this tree is now listed as endangered. It survives in only a handful of shrinking mountain refuges in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Its story mirrors that of this region – scarred by war, threatened by change, but still standing. 'Today, the tree grows far from its homeland, in botanic gardens and conservation sites across Europe – thanks to the work of organisations like the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. But like memory, it cannot thrive without care. As we protect these rare trees, let us also protect the truth.' The commemorative event was hosted by Beyond Srebrenica, a Scotland-based organisation working to ensure that the memory of the genocide endures and its lessons are never forgotten. 11th July 2025 Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Scotland. Elsa (11) and Olive (8) Kadic-Mackenzie , at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, pictured as white ribbons are tied to a group of Picea omorika tree, a rare and ancient conifer native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Pic Phil Wilkinson / Beyond Srebrenica 11th July 2025 Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Scotland. Elsa (11) and Olive (8) Kadic-Mackenzie , at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, pictured as white ribbons are tied to a group of Picea omorika tree, a rare and ancient conifer native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Pic Phil Wilkinson 11th July 2025 Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Scotland. Sabina Kadic-Mackenzie with daughters Elsa (11) and Olive (8) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, pictured as white ribbons are tied to a group of Picea omorika tree, a rare and ancient conifer native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They joined charity Beyond Srebrenica and members of the Bosnian community to mark the 30th anniversary of the Bosnian Genocide in Srebrenica. 11 July is the UN international day of remembrance and reflection for the victims of the genocide. Pic Phil Wilkinson / Beyond Srebrenica Like this: Like Related
The Herald Scotland
11-07-2025
- General
- The Herald Scotland
Remember Srebrenica. Why genocide is being marked at a tree
Ðuherić was born in Scotland to a Muslim Bosniak father who had fled ethnic cleansing in his hometown of Doboj, one of the sites of Serb atrocities during the war in Bosnia, narrowly escaping being shot along with a busload of companions, by soldiers who stopped them at the side of a road. The white ribbon is symbolic, a chilling reminder of the white armbands that from 31 May 1992, any non-Serbs, chiefly Muslims and Croats, in the Prijedor municipality were ordered to wear, one of the early acts that set up for the horror that was to come. But the conifer, in a corner of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, also has a new and potent symbolism, for this is the Picea Omorika, once common in Bosnia, endemic in the Drina valley, an area targeted by Serbs for ethnic cleansing. According to documents of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, some 3,000 Bosniaks were killed during at Višegrad. Across wider Bosnia, tens of thousands were murdered. This Friday, to commemorate the atrocities at Srebrenica, where thirty years ago over 8,000 Muslims, mostly men and boys, were shot, a small group of people will gather at this small stand of conifers, to remember. The charity Beyond Srebrenica came up with the idea because, says chief executive Barry Fisher, 'there isn't a place for the Bosnian community in Scotland to commemorate, on a national level, and the idea of a tree seemed an excellent parallel of renewal and telling a new story.' Initially Beyond Srebrenica had thought of planting a new sapling but, when the charity contacted the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, they found its International Conifer Conservation Programme had already been growing the key, threatened Bosnian spruce for many years. Threatened with extinction and listed as endangered on the IECN red list, the conical and graceful picea omorika was once a widespread species, but is now restricted to a small and contracting area within Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The current limited distribution of this species, says Dr Hannah Wilson, head of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh International Conifer Conservation Programme, reflects a 'post-glacial contraction' in a 'cold-adapted species' that thrives in areas that are still cold. But in addition to have a limited range, the species is in decline and there are other distinct reasons for that decline. Dr Wilson says: 'There are have been lot of wildfires and deliberate burning. This has been a major threat. The 2021 fires in the Balkans resulted in the loss of 30-80% of the trees in some different populations. There was also, she notes, 'conflict-related' destruction. 'In the 1992-1993 part of the conflict a lot of the forest was intentionally burnt and that resulted in fewer than 100 mature individuals surviving in some populations.' Partly it was burnt to use as fuel, as Ðuherić explains: 'There was no electricity. The winters in Bosnia are pretty horrific, and the winter in 1993, especially, was really, really bad, and without electricity, without heating – never mind war - people die. They were just dying from cold. So many trees were chopped up to be used.' 'Even till recently you could see lots of the cities, especially Sarajevo, which was under siege, there is a weird lack of trees or greenery. That has improved a lot in the last 10-15 years. The first time I went to Bosnia was in 2002 and when you look at photos from that time, there's hardly any trees in the cities because they've been chopped down. People needed them.' Ðuherić, a lawyer, was born after the war was over in Scotland, in 1997, to a Bosniak father and Scottish mother. While her father wants, she says, not to think about the atrocities, she believes it is important for her generation, and all of us, to remember. Her father had been finishing his studies in Sarajevo when the war started, and took part in a massive student demonstration in which Radovan Karadzic, who would later be convicted of genocide and was then president of a Serb nationalist political party, had his guards shoot into the crowd. Six people were killed. It was the catalyst that started the war. 'My dad remembers running to get away because they were shooting. And so he called his dad and was like, shall I leave? Shall I stay? And his dad said, 'Well, I can't tell you. You need to make that decision.' Her father returned to Doboj, his home town, while her uncle continued to travel back and forth to Sarajevo until the city was shut off. 'In Doboj, the Serb army basically walked in unimpeded. There was no real resistance, and there was a curfew, so all non-Serbs were only allowed out between seven o'clock and 11 o'clock in the morning. People were being taken off the streets and beaten up and thrown in prison. Serbs were taking people's cars. They were coming into people's houses and saying, basically, 'What have you got, and when are you going to leave?'' The Serbs, who had military positions in the mountains around the town, bombed its mosque. Duheric says, 'When they started bombing the mosque my grandfather said, 'Now I see what this is about. Now I understand.'' It was then that her father got a seat on a convoy of buses. But the bus, she explains, which was heading to Novi Sad, was stopped en route. Soldiers got on and ordered all the Muslims to get off and to line up to shoot them. 'Luckily," she says, "there was this guy who was a Serb, and he started shouting at these, these soldiers, 'Don't you dare do that. I'm a proper Chetnik [Serbian nationalist], your family aren't proper Chetniks. I was tasked to take these children.' He was taking the children of some Muslim neighbors out to safety. He made a massive scene and they eventually let everyone back.' Ðuherić's grandparents were then still in Doboj, and during this period her grandmother found a lump in her breast. Treatment was impossible as she wasn't allowed, as a Muslim, to travel, or even permitted out of the house after 11 O'clock each day, anyway.' Though her grandparents did eventually escape to Croatia and then Slovenia, and ultimately, on a bus to the United Kingdom, arriving in February 1993, her grandmother was dead, of cancer, by October. A Bosnian woman mourns the victims of the Srebrenica genocide (Image: PA) Throughout Ðuherić's childhood, Bosnia was where they went for holidays. 'For me, it was magical. If someone said holiday, that's the same as saying Bosnia and this was the first time most of my dad's aunts and uncles and cousins had ever met us because they couldn't travel to the UK.' But, she remembers too, seeing the scars everywhere. 'There were bullet holes in every building. Some of my dad's aunts and uncles houses were half destroyed, and they were being they were in the process of being rebuilt.' It was only later she had the 'weird realisation' of quite awful it was. 'I mean, obviously war is awful, but as a child, you have no sense of what really that means.' 'When people left, many Serbs went in and lived in their houses. The first couple of years that we went back to Bosnia, there were people living in my family's houses. There was my dad's oldest uncle, his wife and adult daughter and her son all living on the top floor, and there was a Serbian family living on the bottom. People were obviously supposed to leave, but they didn't, and then to go to the courts takes a very long time.' READ MORE Beyond Srebrenica takes delegations and even school groups out to Bosnia. 'When we do,' says Fisher 'one of the first things we do is go for a walking tour around Sarajevo. And without exception everyone says, 'This is an incredible place. What an amazing European capital'. And that's the point, yeah, because it was an incredibly successful, even during the Tito years. 'On one street, in Sarajevo,' he observes, 'there is a synagogue, a mosque, a catholic church. So you can just see, yeah, without having to explain it, that, you know, the community was so mixed.' Ðuherić notes, 'There hasn't been much healing in Bosnia, I think it's fair to say, and a lot of that is politics and the country the people haven't sort of been allowed to move on because of the way the political system is structured, and that has meant that so many people are are living with their trauma every day.' 'At this point in time, lots of people who were convicted of war crimes have now served their sentence and they're back out there living in their own houses down the road from people that they were murdering and raping 30 years ago. There are also still separate school systems in Bosnia with Serb children learning one history and Muslim children learning another. Barry Fisher (left) and Hana Duheric (right) from Beyond Srebrenica (Image: GordonTerris/Herald&Times) 'How can there ever be any kind of reconciliation? How can the country ever come back together unless people are able to come together and talk to each other? Because there's very little that is actually different about these three groups of people. It's the same culture, it's the same language, it's the same history.' 'In many ways,' she says, 'the Serbs did win. The country is split into two entities. Many of these towns that were more mixed before the war are now 90-95% Serb. Srebrenica is like that. The town my dad is from is like that.' Even now, it's still believed that not all the bodies have been found. 'Every year they have a funeral for the bodies that have been found in the last year. They buried them then the Serbs unburied them. There are secondary grave sites, tertiary grave site, most of the tombs, it's not the whole person. It's a leg bone. It's bits.' But also, as Barry Fisher points out, denial is still rife in spite of the recognition of the genocide at Srebrenica by both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Even in Srebrenica, where the Memorial Center tells the story of the genocide, and where each year newly found remains are buried, there are those who still deny what happened. 'People will say there's nothing in the graves,' he observes. 'The last mayor of Srebrenica denied it had happened. Even though international delegations come and visit and get the story told to them by survivors, and the incredible mothers of Srebrenica, we've done so much to keep the story in people's consciousness. Graves at Srebrenica (Image: James McEnaney) It is therefore important, says Ðuherić, for the rest of the world to act as witness in the face of denial, to show that what happened in Bosnia has been seen. 'The world is very connected and there is so much untruth, so many stories out there that are untrue. If people are taught this is what happened and what the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia found, these are the facts, when people go online and there are lots of really right wing nationalists denying, they can challenge that.' 'This is about solidarity with ordinary people in Bosnia. They're not alone in this. There are other people who know what happened and they can tell people what happened and eventually there will at some point be no more of this denial of fact.' Never again, is a phrase often uttered. But what is clear is that the lessons of the Holocaust and of Srebrenica have not been learned. People are still othered. Atrocities are still committed. A conflict in Ukraine, and, attacks on Gaza, described by some, including Amnesty International, as a genocide, are reminders of the ever-present threat of that 'again'. Such conflict can also be a deeply upsetting reminder to Bosnians of what happened in their home country. 'What is happening in Ukraine and in Gaza is horrifying on any level,' says Ðuherić. 'But I remember especially when the war in Ukraine started there were lots of people, friends and family, who found what was happening very triggering. It's pretty close to home. It's in Europe again. Are we letting people down again, are we repeating history. We say never again but it keeps happening.' Beyond Srebrenica has many forms of outreach. The tree is their latest addition. Picea omorika has been in cultivation in the UK since 1881, but RBGE collections made during recent expeditions have greatly increased the strength of our ex situ conservation collections, resulting in over 1000 trees being grown across their network of safe sites for the conservation of threatened conifers by 80 partner gardens and institutions. 'We feel,' says Fisher, 'that the trees are a lasting place where the Bosnian community can come and pay quiet respect at a time of the year that suits them, not necessarily every year, or on the 11 July.' 'The word survivor is used a lot in our conversation. These trees are survivors. They started their life in Bosnia and are now thriving in Edinburgh. So there's a really potent parallel. I think it's about promoting a sense of looking forward, renewal. Rooted in the fact that they are survivors too.'
