Stories from no land: the women of Srebrenica speak out

It is argued that the stories of the survivors of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995
have been neglected by the memorial culture of Bosnia and by the various national
reports that investigated how the massacre could have taken place. The author
argues that a satisfactory history of the genocide has to include the voices of the
survivors, in this case, the women. These are stories of trauma that are hard to
listen to. She compares listening to them to the difficulty historians experience in
listening to the stories of other genocides like the Shoah/Holocaust, they are stories
based on silence about what cannot be told. The argument relies on the oral history
literature on listening to trauma as personal and subjective accounts of survival.
They are not straightforward referential narratives. One narrative, the narrative of
Sabaheta who lost her child and husband, is central to the piece. She is one of the
women interviewed by the author. The interview expresses sorrow about loss and
rage about the international community; these stories are interwoven. The narrative
also describes through the eyes of the victim what she felt happened. The author is
Dutch, so is part of the one nation - more than any other - that is accused of
"doing nothing." It was the Dutch army that was supposed to protect the civilian
population of Srebrenica. The government of The Netherlands has halted any
negotiation on financial support for the research as "the project does not help to
overcome trauma." She argues that giving a voice to the victim is a necessary step
toward closure.