Disclaimer: Asymmetrical Haircuts is produced as a podcast, meaning it is meant to be listened to and not read. Because of this, we recommend that you listen to the episode while reading, because the written word does not do justice to the emotion or tone used by our speakers. However, because we recognise there might be bandwidth issues or you might be using a hearing aid, we have provided written transcripts for all our available episodes.

Gigi Green: 00:01  What does it mean to bear witness when the world turns a blind eye? And who bears witness when the witnesses are silenced? Hi, my name is Gigi Green and I’m a production intern at Asymmetrical Haircuts. Welcome to episode two of our 2026 summer series chronicling the theme Witness to War Crimes, a series where, together with my colleague Sam McGuire, we’re diving into the archives and republishing episodes looking at how journalists, filmmakers and investigators bear witness to global atrocities, often when no one else will. This episode is different. Instead of journalists bearing witness, we hear from survivors responding to a film that tried to bear witness on their behalf. This week we’re rerunning episode 39, Cinema Srebrenica, with Alma Mustafić and Emir Suljagić. Alma and Emir both survived the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, finding themselves at the UN base in Potočari when refugees flocked to the Dutch peacekeepers in hopes of protection. Alma’s father, who was killed, used to work for Dutchbat. Emir was a UN interpreter. In this episode, Janet and Steph sat with them to talk about their reactions to the highly acclaimed film Quo Vadis, Aida?, directed by Jasmila Žbanić, which depicts the Srebrenica massacre. They talk about what it means to see your own trauma turned into award-winning cinema, the power it has to reach people and the cost of what gets simplified along the way. Alma also pushes further into how the Dutch have told their own story about that day. Both Emir and Alma talked about their engagement with Srebrenica since, Alma through her work as a professor and activist and Emir by leading the Srebrenica Memorial Centre in Potočari. Stay tuned until the end, where we update you on what’s changed since 2021.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Narrator: 01:35  No one can act with impunity. These are crimes that are beyond the pale. We are talking about human beings. We’re not talking about numbers. We need a court. That’s as simple as that. This is Asymmetrical Haircuts, your international justice podcast with Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg. This episode was produced in partnership with justiceinfo.net. All rise.

Stephanie: 01:59  Hi, welcome to Asymmetrical Haircuts. I’m Stephanie van den Berg.

Janet: 02:03  And I’m Janet Anderson.

Stephanie: 02:04  And for this episode, we’re returning to Srebrenica, the Srebrenica massacre. It’s the atrocity that’s the most extensively dealt with by international justice and domestic courts in Bosnia and also the Netherlands.

Janet: 02:15  And now it’s also the subject of a highly acclaimed movie, Quo Vadis, Aida?, by Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić. And I’m the person who doesn’t speak BCS in this podcast. And yet I’m the one who gets to say her name to start with. The movie has won a slew of prizes and is in the running for an Oscar. And it’s gotten considerable buzz. Here for a taste is the trailer.

Trailer: 02:46  Start leaving the base in an orderly fashion. What is the point of having an ultimatum if you don’t deliver? Colonel Karremans, they are killing people outside. What difference does it make whether the Serbs kill us or you do?

Janet: 03:09  Such a film helps to define the image that we have of a mass atrocity like the Srebrenica massacre. And it shows people what actually happened. But such a popular film also risks narrowing the view and cementing a particular narrative.

Stephanie: 03:25  To talk about this, we invited two people who were actually there. We have Alma Mustafić and Emir Suljagić, who were at the UN base in Potočari when refugees flocked to the Dutch peacekeepers in hopes of protection. They now have both dedicated their time to educating people about what happened in Srebrenica. Hi, Emir. Hi, Alma.

Emir Suljagić: 03:44  Hello.

Alma Mustafić: 03:44  Hi.

Stephanie: 03:46  I will start with you, Alma. Do you want to introduce yourself, say a bit briefly about how you came to be at the compound and what made you turn to telling people about what happened?

Alma Mustafić: 04:00  Yes. Well, in 1995, I survived Srebrenica, but my brother and my father, who worked for Dutchbat, and many other family members didn’t survive. So when Srebrenica fell, my father took us to his work, to the compound in Potočari, because he was sure that we will be protected there. We spent two days in this compound and on July 13th, we were forced to leave this safe area. Even my father, who was working for Dutchbat and he has the right to stay at the compound, you know, he was sent away. So after Srebrenica, my mother, my brother, baby sister and I, we are moving to the Netherlands and we hold the Dutch state responsible for the death of my father. And the Supreme Court ruled in our favour. That was back in 2013. The Dutch state was 100% responsible for the death of my father, you know. And nowadays I work as an educational expert, lecturer and researcher at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. And I try to increase knowledge, you know, and awareness about genocide to ensure that something like this never happens again. I try to challenge the Dutch educational institutions, schools, to include Srebrenica in their educational programme.

Janet: 05:25  Alma, thanks so much for sharing all of the details. And we’ll go into some more specifics of the things that you’ve just spoken about, but already you’ve just brought us straight in to the whole story of Srebrenica. We also have Emir Suljagić, again, apologies if I’m saying your name slightly incorrectly, or very incorrectly, who’s the director of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre and a professor at the International University of Sarajevo. Hi, Emir, again.

Stephanie: 05:55  Emir was an interpreter for the UN in Srebrenica at the time of the massacre, like the protagonist of Quo Vadis, Aida?, and survived because of his UN employee status. He later became a journalist and ended up reporting on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where we met in the early 2000s. He wrote about his experience in a very moving book called Postcards from the Grave, and he had a stint in Bosnian politics as a regional minister for education, but returned to academics, and now heads up the Memorial Centre set up at the former Dutchbat base. What was it like, Emir, for you to see kind of the film version of you? Not so much Aida as the interpreter, you were the other interpreter. You were joking on Twitter that, you know, you’ll be remembered for smoking and kissing the girls in the movie, because that’s what the other interpreter seems to be doing?

Emir Suljagić: 06:52  Well, I mean, there’s really nothing wrong with being remembered like that. I don’t mind that at the very least. Actually, a lot of friends of mine were calling after seeing the movie and saying, okay, so this is what you did. You told everyone is gonna be dead, killed, you smoked pot and you made love to a woman. All right, so that’s, this is you, right? This, it actually happened. And I was like, come on, guys, you know, don’t do that to me. Now, if we’re talking about the movie, let’s just say what the movie is not about. The movie is not about the entirety of what happened in Srebrenica. It’s a movie about a subplot within the plot that was, within the drama that was taking place in Potočari between July 11th and July 13th. It’s geographically limited to the space, to the area of the UN base, Dutchbat base here in Potočari. It’s temporarily limited to only three days and it’s limited to a few, relatively few number of actors. There were a lot more actors here. The picture is a lot bigger. But I guess, you know, telling this story in its entirety is a much more complex and, if you will, much more expensive undertaking than focusing on this tiny, tiny little bit within the story because, relatively speaking, is comparatively small within the larger picture of what was going on in Srebrenica. The film leaves out the death march, the mass executions that were the result of death march. There was only, out of a series of mass executions, only one, as far as I know, was the result of what was going on in Potočari. The men who were selected in Potočari were actually killed on morning of July 15th, after staying overnight in Bratunac between July 13th and July 14th. So now, it doesn’t, once again, the movie doesn’t pretend or purport to be telling the whole story. And that’s good about it. It’s honest. It’s, you know, saying, okay, this is what happened here. This is one tiny little bit of it. It doesn’t happen to be saying any, it doesn’t want to be saying any ideological narratives. It’s not telling, you know, it’s not ideological at all. It’s, I mean, having been in the middle of it, you know, it’s adapted to what an ordinary person who has got nothing to do with that can actually put up with.

Janet: 09:50  Alma, what about you? How did it feel for you? Was it strange to see these kinds of images? I mean, what I imagine is that it might feel like it’s become somebody else’s story, that it’s become kind of a show business spectacle, or did it, did it feel right to you?

Alma Mustafić: 10:12  It felt okay. When I looked at this movie, you know, I was thinking it doesn’t even come close to our fear. The moment that you have to leave the compound, you know, I cannot describe it. I was so scared. You are actually no longer alive, you know, your soul has left your body. That’s how I felt. I was paralysed with fear. So I think it’s difficult to even come close to how we felt right, right then. But let me say this, as educational expert, I think those films are extremely important for raising awareness about this genocide among a general large public. So, and this is nothing new. We have seen this with films about Holocaust, you know. They had a great impact among large public. So it’s essential that there is a movie about Srebrenica from perspective of victims. And this is the first one. But I think we need more of those movies, you know, because just like Emir said, this is limited to two, three days. And we have to tell all of our stories. And of course, experiences that Emir had, or for example I had, are different. I was 14 years old girl. He was a young man. I had different fears. I was extremely afraid of being raped, just like any woman, you know. And of course, I was also afraid that my father and my brother would be killed. But I knew, I knew if I was killed, I would be raped first. So somehow, I was jealous of my brother, you know, at that time. It sounds crazy, but I was jealous of him being boy while I was a girl. And when I heard that there was a film, you know, coming from a woman’s perspective, I did expect that more attention would be paid to rape. Many women still don’t talk about it. They think it shouldn’t be about them, because they managed to survive somehow. But our men didn’t. They were killed. And we should talk about them, about men’s fate. And I think when we talk about genocide in general, we should talk about fate of group of people, you know, as a nation, fate of men, fate of women and children, because genocide is about intention to destroy a group as whole, men, women and children. And I understand that we cannot put everything in one single movie. So that’s why we need more of those movies to be made from the perspective of victims. And maybe next movie should be made from the child perspective, you know, just like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. And now we know that this movie had a huge impact on Holocaust education and awareness in, let’s say, popular younger population, just because it was made from child perspective.

Stephanie: 13:19  When I saw the movie, what struck me is how close it was kind of choreographed to look also like the videos I’ve seen in court of the compound. But what the movie did that the court videos didn’t is that it put me in the middle of the mass of people. The movie really did show that complete, you know, what the hell is going to happen here? And that fear was very palpable. And I thought that was translated very well. Complete with that, you don’t really have an idea what to do. So in a way, it deepened a bit my understanding of it as well. How important is Jasmila Žbanić in this? We have a quote from her where she explains she didn’t record it in Potočari herself, but she recorded it in Mostar. And she’s talking a bit about how getting extras from Bosnia also really helped the way she tells the story.

Jasmila Žbanić: 14:17  In the film, it was what I learned while making the film. There were many extras who did survive concentration camps and who, they did survive torture. There was one scene where I was telling actors to, extras, please go to this truck and, you know, do like this. And there was one man who said, it’s not what they did to us. It’s not the way they did to us. And I was like, what? And he said, you know, I was in concentration camp and I know when they are transporting us how they did it. So I said, okay, we will listen to him, how he explains what we should do. We will do it.

Stephanie: 15:03  Emir, do you think this movie could be made the way it would be by some international director?

Emir Suljagić: 15:10  I think this is a lot more to do with the way the movie is. There’s a lot more to do with the person of Jasmila Žbanić and the fact that she’s a Bosnian coming from this very specific cultural context. It’s a very, you know, I, i’ve, my experience of the movie was that of intimacy. It’s a very intimate film, very, very close. There’s a warmth to it that’s really, I think that the warmth of this movie is really what makes it shocking, you know, that she chose to tell the story in this particular way and that her warmth and her, the intimacy in her approach contrasted to, or in contrast to, what we know is the outcome and what we see at the end is the outcome, is what makes the movie very shocking. Because we get to know pretty much everybody there, you know, and we get to know them as they wanted us to know. We get to see, for instance, Ratko Mladić as he actually wanted to see himself back in 1995. We get to see the UN as they wanted to see, as they saw themselves back in 1995. So, and we see, we see the victims as they also saw themselves back in 1995, which is helpless, defenceless. On a personal level, as, as, as Alma put it, you’re dead already. When people ask me, I left here on July 21st, though I stayed on for another week. And I sometimes joke, although it’s not very much of a joke, with friends that, you know, when they asked me what my experience was, I sometimes retort that, well, I was dead for 10 days. And I, you know, actually, the thing is, there were actual reports that I was dead. My mom was informed that I was dead. I met the UN investigator in 2002, who told me, I met him in The Hague. And he told me, what are you doing here? I have actual statements of people saying that you were taken behind the building and shot. And I was like, okay, hold on. So that was the actual experience. And I can, you know, the movie that Alma and I would like to see is never going to be made. We are never going to get a chance to reenact that part of our lives. And I know that’s what we all want. What we want to do is we want an opportunity to reenact that part of our lives and change the outcome. That’s what we want. That’s never going to happen. This is, you know, this film is a tribute to what we had survived. But as every tribute it, every tribute, you know, eventually down the road pales in comparison to the actual, actual experience. And we shouldn’t put that burden on a single film. We shouldn’t put that burden on a single person to make up, to make it up to us. It cannot be done.

Stephanie: 18:22  Alma, you wanted to react?

Alma Mustafić: 18:24  Well, I think I couldn’t agree more with Emir, you know, but I think we could try to tell all of our stories. And there are some small steps, you know. For example, I’m involved in a theatre play right now called Dangerous Names. And in the Netherlands, we had like eight plays about Srebrenica. And all of them were from a Dutch perspective, but none from perspective of victims. And Dangerous Names is the first play in the Netherlands from the perspective of victims. And I’m one of the players, which is odd. And another one is a former Dutchbat soldier. And together with other three professional actors, we tell the story of Srebrenica. It’s from my perspective, it’s about my story, you know. And the story of this Dutchbat soldier is only supports my story, how it should be, let’s say. And in the beginning, no one wanted, you know, to see this. I remember theatre saying, no, thank you. We already have one play on Srebrenica. It’s a play about Karremans. And we tried to explain, but you don’t have one from perspective of victims. No, one play on Srebrenica topic was enough. So we had a few tryouts before everything went down, you know. And national theatre newspaper was there. And after watching this play, they gave us Choice of Critic, which can be compared to five stars. And then another theatre start to call us. Like suddenly everybody wanted to put our play in their programme. So this is some proof that people do want to see all of our stories, you know, from perspective of victims. We should just go on and try to, to make all those story. So I learned from this film, next thing, when I made an agreement with this theatre person, I was very keen on truth. Sometimes we had discussions for 45 minutes about one single sentence. We have been working two years on this script because everything had to be as much truthful and authentic as possible. That was very important to me.

Janet: 20:53  What do you think, Alma? Do you think that these kind of artistic representations actually help to define what, what truth is and to combat denialism? Or do people, can people actually use them and say, oh, come on, you know, it’s all just make-believe if you’re just showing it in theatre and films?

Alma Mustafić: 21:11  Well, one way or another, it does help, you know, to raise awareness on this genocide. But when we talk about denial, you know, there are many forms of denial and it’s very hard to combat them all. In addition to real denials, like lots of people in the region, they just say it didn’t happen. But there are some people who just try to downplay Srebrenica genocide, you know, by calling a different name, like mass killings or massacre. They try to avoid the word genocide, but that’s also denial, and using a different name or term won’t make less evil, I think. So this is why this movie is important. Some of the people are unaware of their downplaying, like Dutch people, for example. Focusing only on Dutch when we talk about Srebrenica is also downplaying Srebrenica genocide. So this Dutch attitude of Srebrenica genocide is very problematic. They always put Dutch at the centre, you know, of the narrative of Srebrenica, and in doing so, they help to minimise those human scars of the genocide in Srebrenica, like Emir put it, and to limit our story to the minimums of the European history. So this can also be seen as a form of genocide denial. And then we have this movie, you know, and the larger public can see it. I hope they start asking themselves, okay, is this the way that I look at Srebrenica? Is this, is this okay? Or do I have to do some more research on this topic?

Stephanie: 22:54  I want, when I watched somebody put on Facebook this interview with the main actor who plays Mladić, and he was actually explaining that he wanted to keep as close to the videos as possible and as close to the dialogue as possible, exactly to combat that denialism, because he wanted, when people saw the movie, that they wouldn’t be able to say, oh, this is different, so the movie is, is not true. But he wanted to stay as close to Mladić as possible. And I don’t have that clip because he spoke in Serbian. But I do have also Jasmila talking about why they were so precise with Mladić.

Jasmila Žbanić: 23:35  It was not easy because Mladić is considered hero in Serbia, where Boris lives. And, you know, he’s, he is a war criminal for the rest of the world. So we were very careful how to, how to show him. First, we decided to keep most of his lines like he told them. You know, we change only few. But Boris also insisted on being precise in order of the lines because we thought this guy is saying something which we can’t write, which we can’t imagine. It’s so packed with his character, every word he’s using, that we should keep this. And the key for me to unlock this character was a fact that he was always with camera person. He was always directing. He says, go to other side, film them, not me. You know, film this flag. He was the worst director that one can imagine, who has no power on, you know, creating beauty, but creating death. He had feeling of himself as a god. He was actor and director at the same time of this horror.

Stephanie: 24:59  Emir, the Memorial Centre has to deal with a lot of denial. I mean, you’re based in Potočari. Srebrenica is now run by the Republika Srpska, who don’t acknowledge the genocide. You know, does this movie in a way help you with the denial? Or have you gotten more of a backlash of denial based on the movie? Because, I don’t know, Serbs are angry that it’s gotten all this Oscar buzz.

Emir Suljagić: 25:30  Let me sort of try and answer your question in two parts. Memorial Centre is a unique institution in the sense that it is run by survivors or first generation or second generation survivors or people who have, have lost someone here. But literally all of us here are actually really scarred people, scarred individuals, by the events in Srebrenica themselves. So, and we are doing it in an environment that’s openly hostile towards us. Imagine, once again, it’s a very crude analogy, but imagine a group of Jewish survivors going back to a Nazi-occupied part of Poland where Auschwitz was and trying to run it. Once again, it’s a very crude analogy, and I’m not trying to, but that’s, that’s, so, genocide denial is constant. And in that regard, the political geography has changed also to accommodate genocide denial, to accommodate the notion that this is Serb territory, that we have come back to a completely changed political geography that actually is produced with the intent of producing a different kind of territory here, a different kind of, you know, to, to, to send us a message that this is someone else’s land, that we are alien here. So this is the environment where this is, you know, where the Srebrenica Memorial Centre is actually working, and this is where, you know where it’s all happening. And in that regard, movies is only, is only done good for us. The, the movie has been good to us because it has risen awareness of Srebrenica to, it has brought Srebrenica to the quarters that have ignored it, either willingly or unwillingly. It has, once again, risen awareness about what happened here, about, you know, the word Srebrenica now has been spoken over the past few months more than ever in previous 25 years. So I’m not concerned. At the same time, I’m really not concerned with the sort of nationalist pushback on the movie. Once again, this is part and parcel of that narrative, you know, this, the pushback, the denial is the integral part of the Serb narrative of what happened here. So yeah, the movie has been good to us. I have to be honest. And, you know, we should thank Jasmila for reaching out, for, you know, creating something that has reached, that has managed to reach out to so many people.

Janet: 28:30  And Alma, you’re based in the Netherlands, which you’ve mentioned, and you’ve mentioned the way that the Dutch focus in the discussion on Srebrenica has a lot of different layers going on. There’s the, kind of the shame, the backlash, and you’re trying to educate people. But you’re also involved in this 12-year legal battle with the Dutch government. And do you think that this movie can actually contribute in any way to, to real justice issues and to accountability issues?

Alma Mustafić: 29:04  Of course. My answer would be of course. Let me start with the first one. I think Dutch people need this film more than we do. Because when we talk about Srebrenica in the Netherlands, we always talk about one moment, one place, and one perspective. You know, it’s just July 11th, city of Srebrenica, and it’s always from Dutchbat perspective. And this is very dangerous in the long term, in my opinion. And it doesn’t support us battling this denial, you know. And this way we forget the main thing, genocide. How can genocide happen? You know, and genocide doesn’t happen in one day or even, even in one week, just like people in the Netherlands think, or in just one single city. With this narrative of Srebrenica, we are not going to learn anything from this genocide, you know, to understand genocide, we need to learn something from it. We need other perspectives. Like we said, we need the stories of survivors, but we also need to learn about perpetrators’ motives. Why did they do what they did? And these are the things that we never learn in the Netherlands. So I hope Dutch people watching this movie will try to answer those questions as well. For example, last year we had lots of attention for Srebrenica commemoration here in the Netherlands. But then again, it was mainly about Dutchbat soldiers. We have more than 60,000 Bosnians in the Netherlands. You hardly ever see them on television, you know. And I think that’s the wrong focus. When we talk about Srebrenica, we should tell those stories, you know, stories of survivors. And when people talk about Srebrenica here in the Netherlands, they always talk about civil war, you know, like civil war and genocide are two different things. Genocide never appears to their minds. So, and even though this was a planned genocide, like recently Emir did show us a genocide transcript, this research programme. I think it proves that Srebrenica was planned genocide. But in the Netherlands, they always invite some military guy, you know, to talk about military mission in Bosnia, about war, about two sides. They never invite a professor of genocide, you know, to tell us about Srebrenica and genocide in Bosnia. And that narrative needs to change. People are not aware of the fact that last genocide in Europe was in Bosnia 25 years ago. Ask a random, you know, Dutch guy, when was the last genocide in Europe? And everybody will say 75 years ago. So, this is the danger of this one-sided perspective. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like those Dutchbat stories are not important, but that story is about 5% of the whole story, you know, and should be supportive to the story of genocide survivors. 95% should be about genocide itself. But here in the Netherlands, it’s other way around.

Stephanie: 32:32  Srebrenica is in the Dutch canon of history. And I looked up the paragraph about Srebrenica. And there’s two para’s about peace missions. There’s two para’s about the actual genocide, which again starts by stressing that Dutchbat was, quote, lightly armed and had few ways to keep the peace in the enclave. And the responsibility paragraph stresses the NIOD report, which found that Dutchbat was on a mission impossible. And it finally ends by, and it says, has a sentence saying families are still fighting in Dutch courts about government responsibility. And it ends with, Srebrenica is still an open wound. So that’s, that’s the thing that is now in the Dutch canon.

Alma Mustafić: 33:14  You know, this is the thing that you get when you let military officers write history about Holocaust. You know, Mark van Berkel, he’s a Dutch, he holds PhD degrees on topic Holocaust in history books. He did similar research on Srebrenica education in history book in Dutch education. And his conclusion was devastating. He knows where he’s talking about because he understands genocides, you know. Three main conclusions were, first, there is hardly any learning about Srebrenica. Sometimes just two or three sentences in one whole book. Two, if there is any learning, then it’s not complete or it’s not correct. In fact, fake news. And three, it’s from one side, only from Dutchbat perspective, which means that the word genocide often does not even appear. So we have here in the Netherlands following problem. On the one hand, we have research that proves that education about Srebrenica is failing. And on the other hand, Srebrenica is included in the canon of Dutch history, just like you said, which means that students have to learn about Srebrenica. But what they are going to learn about Srebrenica? Future teachers don’t get to learn about Srebrenica themselves. So how can they teach future generations about the last genocide in Europe if they have never learned themselves?

Janet: 34:47  Emir, you’ve been, I don’t know, working on this field for a long time. You’ve been a journalist writing about it. You’re now running the Memorial Centre, so focused on this. Do you ever wish that your life, you know, wasn’t just defined by this thing that happened and that you could work in some other sphere?

Emir Suljagić: 35:10  I did spend time doing other things. I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve had a profession. How can I say? I had a job that required me to get up in the morning and go to work and, you know, feed my family. I was the breadwinner in the family. So I had to, immediately after getting out of Srebrenica, I actually had to find a job. And I was lucky in this, in that it was in journalism. And no matter, no matter how I felt about certain things, you know, Stephanie and I worked closely, relatively closely together when I was in The Hague. And she knows, you know, I mean, I was out there on the gallery of that courtroom together with all other journalists. I had to report on it. I had to file my articles. My editors didn’t really care about how I felt about it. I had to do it for a foreign media outlet. So, in that sense, you know, it’s kind of been helpful to me that I have, I’ve been very lucky that at the age of 21, I got into what was back then probably the best newspaper in Bosnia. It was a weekly called Dani. But yeah, I went, you know, I had completely different ideas about my life. I, you know, I would have much preferred to have spent the past 25 years of my life hanging out with my childhood friends, going down to the Drina River bank and swimming in the summer. Or, you know, I, of course, you know, I’ve wished so many times that all of it had played out differently. And that, you know, for the most part, this was not necessarily the first thing people think about, about me. I have other qualifications. I have other, I have a character that’s, you know, completely independent of what had happened in 92, between 92 and 95. I have character flaws that, you know, that have nothing to do with that. Not everything comes out from PTSD, for goodness sake. You know, so yeah, that’s, but to be honest, I’ve, you know, I’ve tried for a very long time to get out from under this burden of being a victim. It’s something that, it’s a burden, to be honest. And I don’t want to be seen as one. I’ve been, you know, striving not to be seen as one. I have, I see myself as a survivor. I see my friends as survivors, first and foremost, because what we have survived is actually important.

Janet: 38:38  I’ll just say in case other listeners notice, I think you’ve got some big building work going on around you. I hope that the Memorial Centre is being expanded or something, in case they hear the banging around.

Emir Suljagić: 38:30  Believe it or not, we actually have somewhere in the area of 1.5 million euros worth of construction work going on as we speak. So yeah, I’m very happy about it.

Stephanie: 38:42  I wanted to ask Alma. Emir talks about being very defined. In a way, I think you’re relatively unknown in, if you’d say your name to Dutch people, you’re maybe less defined by victimhood. Nobody knows that this happened to you, in Dutch society, how is that for you?

Alma Mustafić: 39:00  I choose not to be known as a victim in the beginning. So when we came to the Netherlands, you know, I didn’t want to be seen as a victim, just like Emir said. So I work very hard. I went to school, to university. You go to work, you try to pay your bills and then you have this legal case against the Dutch state. And I didn’t talk a lot about Srebrenica outside the court. I had one experience with a colleague and it wasn’t pleasant because I tried to speak about Srebrenica and that was 25 years ago, I think. So for years, I hide behind my professional life, you know, and my professional life and my personal life were separately two different things, just because I didn’t want people to see me as a victim. And it took me 25 years to realise that I am not a victim, that I am a survivor, just like Emir said. And not talking about Srebrenica, you know, is weak. So I have to talk about Srebrenica because a lot of people died so that I could talk. So it was just last year that I realised, okay, right now I’m going to publish this article on my LinkedIn page, because, before that, you couldn’t find nothing about Srebrenica on my professional page. I wanted to be a good educational expert and a good teacher and stuff like that, but I didn’t want people to see me as a Srebrenica victim.

Janet: 40:45  Alma and Emir, thank you so much for exploring a variety of issues with us, all come to our mind because of the fact that this film has come out, which I have not seen yet. So I’m planning to see as soon as possible. And we’re all holding our thumbs or whatever it is that you do in order to hope that it gets an Oscar for what it is. To wrap up the podcast, we always ask a number of questions. And the first one to both of you is, is there anything that you wish that we’d asked you that you didn’t get a chance to say? So Emir, to start with.

Emir Suljagić: 41:24  Every time I keep my mouth shut, I do myself a favour. So yeah, you’re fine.

Janet: 41:30  And Alma?

Alma Mustafić: 41:31  Well, I think we could talk about Srebrenica for three days, but this is the main.

Janet: 41:38  Okay. And our final question, the one that we actually enjoy asking very much, is what are you reading or listening to or watching at the moment that you’d like to share with us? What’s on your bookshelf? What’s in your Netflix queue? And it doesn’t have to be at all justice related. What, what you doing, Alma?

Alma Mustafić: 42:00  When I read, it’s usually about genocide. So right now I am reading Genocide en de crisis van Joegoslavië 1985-2005 [Genocide and the Crisis of Yugoslavia, 1989 – 2005]. It’s from a Dutch author. And I just wanted to see how they look at this genocide because I read a lot about genocide in Bosnia from English and American authors, Bosnian authors, but never a Dutch author because I never, I couldn’t find someone who really understand what was happening there. And this guy seems like he understands it. So that’s what I’m reading. And I’m watching Tiger Woods right now. It’s very interesting to see how somebody can get so big, you know, and then do all those mistakes, makes all those mistakes.

Stephanie: 43:01  Emir, what are you doing besides singing The Wheels on the Bus or, or Ježeva kućica reading? 

Emir Suljagić: 43:10  no no no

Stephanie: 43:11  I’m trying to do-

Janet: 43:12  Do you want to explain why you’re asking that?

Stephanie: 43:14  I’m asking that because Emir has a new baby, and I’m trying to dig in my brain because when I had my son, we moved to Serbia when he was four months old. So I have a lot of the kind of Yugoslav childhood.

Emir Suljagić: 43:27  Then you were, you are certainly familiar then with Džudža Džudža Trebavić.

Stephanie: 43:33  Yes.

Emir Suljagić: 43:34  Yes. So that’s what I’m going through now. Yes, and also there’s a song that goes something like, we went to Africa to plant paprika, which she, for some reason, loves.

Stephanie: 43:49  And Miša knows it inside and out, 

Emir Suljagić: 43:51  Right.

Stephanie: 43:52  It’s, It’s, I will play a clip.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Emir Suljagić: 44:05  That’s it. That’s, that’s what I’m listening to now. I’m reading, I’m sort of at the very start of a research that’s based on the intercepted telephone conversations between Milošević, Karadžić, Krajišnik and Plavšić. And I sort of want to put those, I mean, the outcome of the research should be for me to be able to put those conversations into historical context and to explain that there’s this really cool theory by, by Daniele Conversi about the Serbian secession from the centre. And I sort of want to test that proposition of secession from the centre based on the conversations that were recorded between the leadership of Serbia and Bosnia Serbs in 1991 and 1992 to show that there’s also a lot of talking about genocide and talking about Turks. And, you know, I’m at the start of it. And conversations are really morbid sometimes because these guys thought they were talking privately. They didn’t know they were being recorded. And, you know, there’s a lot of conversations between Karadžić and Dobrica Ćosić and Serb poets and philosophers with Radovan Karadžić, and Milošević is there as well. And I want to sort of try and fill this kind of gap that exists when it comes to the Bosnian genocide. It’s, you know, very interesting that a lot of people write about genocide in Bosnia, about genocide in Srebrenica. But no one ever, I mean, there’s so few people actually go and look at the documents. You know, there’s this, there’s this misconception that Bosnian, Bosnia was, Bosnian genocide was something that happened in a, you know, in dark Bosnian woods, that there’s no record of it. That when, as Stephanie knows, this is probably one among the best documented mass murders in history. I mean, these guys wrote everything. These guys wrote everything down to log books for bulldozers that went to dig mass graves. So I want to try and address that as well. And right now, once again, I’m doing, I’m looking at the documents. I’ll be reading some historical stuff later on to try and sort of frame these conversations, put them in their historical context. Eventually, I’m hoping to publish that and to publish a collection of these conversations like we did with the national, with the Bosnia Serb Assembly transcripts. I’m watching, what am I watching? I’ve started watching Breeders last night because, you know, it corresponds to how I’m feeling right now. It’s about a married couple with two kids under seven. So yeah, that’s how I’m feeling right now. I’m also watching, there’s a great show that’s completely been pushed to the background by this Narcos franchise. It’s called Snowfall. It’s about the social implications of the crack cocaine health crisis in the U.S. in the 70s. And it’s very, you know, it’s like sort of the receiving end of these, of the Narcos. If there was a sort of a reverse story to Narcos then this would be it. And I’m also watching this really great show that’s called the Snowpiercer. It’s like a sort of utopian, dystopian, sorry, dystopian kind of thing that I, I don’t know, anything that has to do with the end of the world, I’m there. I like it, you know, so.

Janet: 47:43  Wow, what an amazing range of recommendations and amazing cast of characters that you’re looking at, Emir, and, you know, so much stuff, so rich and so many different suggestions there. We’ll put them all onto our webpage.

Stephanie: 47:57  We’ll definitely put a link. So what Alma briefly mentioned, and Emir as well, is there’s a whole project from the Srebrenica Memorial Centre about genocide denial and the transcripts of what Bosnian Serb officials actually said. And it’s really black and white. And you can basically read it from day to day, how this is planned out. And this whole idea that it didn’t just kind of appear in Mladić’s brain on the 13th, that, hey, we have all these people, let’s kill them. There’s a whole organisation and they documented everything and it’s fascinating. So we’ll definitely link to that.

Janet: 48:31  Okay, genocide nerds alert here. Fascinating stuff for us all to, all to look at. Thank you all so much for giving your time and for forgiving me for my pronunciation of your names, so. Thank you.

Stephanie: 48:43  Thank you so much, guys.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Janet: 48:46  Just to say you can also support this podcast, check out our supporters page and there you’ll find details of our Patreon and our newsletter.

Stephanie: 48:54  Yeah, if you haven’t had enough of us chatting about war crimes and making inappropriate jokes, then go over to our Patreon where you can get extra bonus content where Janet and I run our own War Criminals Book Club. We read books about war criminals, we don’t commit our own.

Janet: 49:11  And it’s just the price of a cup of coffee, so see you there.

Gigi Green: 49:17  I hope you enjoyed that. I definitely did. As a recent graduate of international law myself, it’s definitely interesting to hear from survivors of such an infamous case in international justice, having studied case law from the ICJ and ICTY all the way to the Dutch Supreme Court. And there’s so much to update here. And who better to speak with than our very own Steph, who’s not only found her passion for international justice while reporting on the ICTY, but also spent several years in Serbia, which, fun fact, and she doesn’t know this, so did I. So hi, Steph.

Stephanie: 49:47  Hi, Gigi. It’s great to have a fellow Belgrade aficionado on the podcast. I know I bore Janet with my endless love of the former Yugoslavia, but now I have maybe found a kindred spirit. So that’s great.

Gigi Green: 49:59  So as I mentioned, there’s a lot to update here, but I’ll get the most anticipated update out of the way first. Did Quo Vadis, Aida? win the Oscar? No, unfortunately it did not. And I actually Googled this last night, but it lost out to the Danish film Another Round, which follows four high school teachers consuming alcohol daily to see how it affects their lives. So the Academy really looked at a searing indictment of genocide denial and international failure versus day drinking with your co-workers and picked day drinking. Make of that what you will.

Stephanie: 50:11  Well, it’s a very Balkan choice. I’ll say that for them, you know, rather day drinking than dealing with the failure of international justice. But we read that Jasmila Žbanić, the Bosnian film director who made Quo Vadis, Aida?, is currently shooting a sequel, Quo Vadis, Aida? – The Missing Part, and that is expected next year. And it is set to focus on justice seeking for the crimes committed in Srebrenica. So perhaps that one will get a little more international attention. 

Gigi Green: 50:56  So we’re airing this rerun about a month after the 31st anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. The United Nations actually designated the 11th of July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide in 2024. And this was all as a part of an effort to counter denial. But how’s that going, Steph?

Stephanie: 51:15  Well, it’s not great. Bosnia is still a country divided. And for years, the Serbian part of Bosnia was run by staunch genocide denier Milorad Dodik. He was the former president of the Republika Srpska. He was actually convicted in February 2025 for defying the International High Representative’s rulings. That’s the guy who runs Bosnia for the international community. And Dodik got a one-year sentence plus a six-year ban from holding office of the Republika Srpska presidency. But of course, his party is still running it, even if he isn’t. And instead of quieting down, he did what many extremist politicians do and doubled down and essentially got back to his Islamophobic roots. Now, last year, he suggested that Bosniaks, which is a word for Bosnian Muslim, should, quote, return, unquote, to the Orthodox Christianity. And just this May, Republika Srpska submitted a report to the UN Security Council framing itself as a defender of Christian Europe against what it called Islamic domination.

Gigi Green: 52:17  Which so, isn’t that something that came up in Slobodan Milošević’s trial at the ICTY?

Stephanie: 52:22  Yeah, this is a very well-loved talking point for Milošević, who basically cast himself as the defender of Europe Christianity against Islamic extremism in Bosnia and terrorism. He was very much framing it in, like, September 11th, kind of. That was the frame at the time in the early 2000s. He was kind of showing it in this international war against Islamic terrorism. We also spoke with Emir Suljagić. He still runs the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, which has recorded 99 documented cases of genocide denial or minimisation in the region, just in the period from June 2024 until May 2025. And although the criminal code of Bosnia and Herzegovina provides for penalties for genocide denial, prosecution of individuals for such acts are rare to the point of essential non-existence. Following Dodik’s conviction, the Memorial Centre had to actually temporarily shut down its operations because of security threats. 

Gigi Green: 53:22  So speaking of justice, I mean, since we’re recording from The Hague, I think it’s worth giving a little update on the Srebrenica criminals we’ve got locked up here, most notably Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić and ex-Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadžić. The episode we just played for you was recorded in April 2021. And since then, on the 8th of June 2021, the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals issued its judgement. And this basically affirmed Mladić’s convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws or customs of war, as well as his life sentence for imprisonment imposed by the Trial Chamber. And Karadžić was moved to the UK to serve his life sentence in May 2021. I also Googled where exactly that was yesterday and turns out it’s the Isle of Wight, where I also have family. So this is really a hard-hitting episode for me. So a lot of today’s episode was also about seeing Mladić depicted on screen. And I watched the film last night, and I have to say, when I compare it to all the videos of Mladić coming in on his tank into Srebrenica, the similarity is really stark. So what’s the Mladić update, Steph?

Stephanie: 54:29  Well, he keeps trying to get out of prison, not by spectacular escaping, but essentially claiming bad health. Earlier this year, in May, his lawyers had filed a petition for him to be released to Serbia on the grounds that he is near the end of his life. Now, that request was denied. Essentially, the court said he’s in extremely serious condition and even acknowledged that he’s in the final stages of life. But they ruled that the care he’s receiving in the detention facility already meets the standard of care, and it doesn’t justify a release because he’s getting as well or even potentially better care than he could get in Serbia. They don’t really see why he would be moved. And this request, this is a kind of continuation of a string of requests. There was an identical request the year before in 2025, which was also denied. And then in 2024, he tried to get the court to agree that he could serve out his sentence in Serbia instead on the grounds that he would get better care and more language access, which was also denied. So it’s been three strikes. He’s still in The Hague. And I think at this point, essentially, he’s probably going to die in the UNDU. I know that I, for Reuters, have already prepared kind of the basic stories that we need in the event that that happens, because it doesn’t sound from his health condition that he will have very much longer to go.

Gigi Green: 55:47  Well, I’m excited for that headline. Butcher of Bosnia. Well, I’m sure you’ll come up with something great. And I’m sure there’s also a lot of arguments from both sides as to why he should or shouldn’t stay. But let’s shift gears to focus on the survivors. And I really like the way Alma put that in the episode, saying that they weren’t victims, but survivors. And this is something Alma was very vocal about in the episode in general, especially with regard to how the voices of these survivors have often been silenced in favour of the more, air quotes, palatable Dutchbat history of events. And I have to say, I was very surprised to see that the 2019 Mothers of Srebrenica ruling wasn’t mentioned at all in the episode as a sort of contrast to Alma’s situation, because Alma was one of the few survivors who successfully managed to hold the Netherlands to account for its role in the genocide. So could we maybe get a little Stephopedia on Alma’s case, please?

Stephanie: 56:37  Of course. Back in 2013, Alma was one of the named plaintiffs in the Mustafić-Mujić et al versus the Netherlands case, which was essentially decided along the same way as the much more often cited Nuhanović case. But they both came at the same time to the Dutch Supreme Court. And they affirmed that in both cases that the Netherlands at some point did have effective control over the UN compound, because at some point the kind of structure had broken down from the UN and the UN was not reachable. So then the Netherlands had effective control. So they could be held responsible for what was happening, for the conduct of peacekeeping operations. And this is the first time that an individual government was held to account for the conduct of its peacekeeping troops operating under a UN mandate. The court then found that the Netherlands was responsible for the deaths of three Bosnian Muslims killed in Srebrenica massacre. Alma’s father, Rizo Mustafić, and the father and brother of the former UN interpreter Hasan Nuhanović.

Gigi Green: 57:36  Right. And then the Mothers of Srebrenica case, which actually got to my attention while I was doing one of my courses at university on global security and collective action. And it was an example of how, faced with the decision to sort of want to hold UN peacekeepers to account, who do you go to? And of course, it’s infamously known that you can’t sue the UN. So the second option was to look at Dutchbat and the Dutch peacekeepers. And this is what happened in the Mothers of Srebrenica case in 2019. And this was less of a success than Alma’s case. If anything, it was a perpetuation of this evasion of liability. And this was a case led by the Mothers of Srebrenica Foundation, which is made up of relatives seeking Dutch liability for the deaths of their husbands, sons and fathers in Srebrenica. And when the case finally concluded at the Dutch Supreme Court in 2019, the Dutch state was found liable for just 10% of the losses suffered by the relatives of approximately 350 Bosniak men on the reasoning that even if the peacekeepers had kept the men in their compound, there was only a 10% chance that the men would have survived. The whole 10% discussion is a really big one. And how they got to it is quite unknown. They did a lot of statistics. It’s tort law. And initially, I think at the District Court, it was 30%. And then at the appeal, it got brought down to 10%. But in general, it’s definitely a very sober number. 

Stephanie: 58:58  I mean, Srebrenica is always about numbers, right? It’s murder by numbers. How many? How responsible? What level of responsibility? And every time these victims have their immense tragedy kind of expressed in a different number and somebody’s looking at it like an accountant. I know at the time, and I covered that case and the outcome of it in 2019, I was at the Dutch Supreme Court with the Mothers of Srebrenica. And they were happy that there was some responsibility. But I mean, even that, I think the 350 Bosnian Muslim men, those were the ones inside the compound gates. And there was a whole thing of who’s inside the gate and who’s outside. And then if you’re inside, then maybe you get some compensation. But then there’s this weird thing that you get only 10% of the compensation you would have gotten because, yeah, they kind of plucked this 10% kind of out of thin air, this idea that even if they had protected them, then they still would have had like a 90% chance of getting killed. It’s always extremely complicated to speak in hypotheticals.

Gigi Green: 01:00:01  So, it’s a mixed picture on the legal side, and we’ve seen both real precedent setting wins regarding liability for peacekeeping missions, but we’ve also seen real limits to what accountability looks like in practice. But the theme of this summer series is witnesses. So, what do you say we end this update by highlighting some of the true witnesses of Srebrencia, specifically the survivors.

Stephanie: 01:00:21  Yes, I think they deserve the most attention and that’s what we should be doing also when we talk about these legal things and remind us that these are people that we’re talking about and not just legal concepts. But it brings us back also to what Alma was pushing for throughout the whole episode, that she said that the whole story should be supportive to the story of genocide survivors and 95% should be about the genocide itself. And last year, she did exactly that by working alongside Dutch journalist Marjolein Koster on a project called De 11 stemmen van Srebrencia or the 11 Voices of Srebrencia. And this is a multimedia podcast and an exhibition marking the 30th anniversary of the genocide.

Gigi Green: 01:01:02  Yeah, and it’s a project built entirely around survivor testimony as opposed to the Dutchbat heavy narratives Alma really did critique in the podcast. And Steph reached out to Alma actually to join us today and she was very enthusiastic but unfortunately for us, she’s currently doing the Marš Mira, which is the reverse of the route the Srebrencia men took and it’s walked each year in commemoration. So she’s out there being an activist, which good for her, but also good for us and the world. So the podcast is in Dutch, but even in my half broken Dutch, I was able to follow along owing to the immigrant background of the interviewees. But what do you think, Steph? This is quite a first in terms of getting Srebrencia survivors voices out on public radio.

Stephanie: 01:01:40  Alma is very right that a lot of Dutch press attention goes to Dutch men mainly who were in Dutchbat, talking about how horrible it was to witness genocide and not to the people who were actually living it. And this 11 part series goes back to the beginning of the war, it’s telling the story of Satko, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, and it goes all the present and the story of Zoran, who was born during the war and now works as a journalist challenging the black and white narrative about the genocide, and we’ll link to Alma’s podcast and the cases mentioned above in the show notes.

Gigi Green: 01:02:15  Definitely. And for more Asymmetrical Haircut’s content on the Srebrencia genocide and for more of Stephopedia on what happened in Bonsia, please have a listen to episode 25 with Liesbeh Zegveld, who is one of the main lawyers in all of the litigation regrading Srebrencia in the Netherlands. So, Alma’s case as well. And episode 27 with Iva Vukusic and Jennifer Trahan and Hikmet Karcic. Thank you for listening.

Stephanie: 01:02:40  And thank you for inviting me in for this, Gigi, I love to talk about the former Yugoslavia, as you know, so thank you.

[OUTRO TUNE]

Narrator: 01:02:47  This was Asymmetrical Haircuts, your international justice podcast, created and presented by Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg. This episode was created in partnership with justiceinfo.net, an independent site covering justice efforts for mass violence, and with The Hague Humanity Hub. Music is by Audionautix.com. You can find show notes and everything about the podcast on asymmetricalhaircuts.com. This show is available on every major podcast service, so please subscribe, give us a rating and spread the word.

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