Stop genocide early

IN FOOTAGE of the fall of Srebrenica on July 11th 1995, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, strides past the nervous Dutch peacekeepers whose UN “safe area” he has just overrun. He hands out sweets to Muslim children, even as his soldiers prepare to round up their fathers and older brothers—all the men of fighting age. About 8,000 were slaughtered, the worst atrocity in Europe since the second world war.Twenty years later in the dock in The Hague Mr Mladic wears the same stubborn glare. He denounces the court; in his own eyes he is not a war criminal but a defender of his people and the victim of a Western conspiracy. Many of his compatriots sympathise: a recent poll in Serbia showed that, while 54% of people accept that a brutal crime took place in Srebrenica, 70% deny that it was genocide (see ). More depressing is the fact that Russia, at Serbia’s behest, vetoed a British-backed UN resolution deploring the genocide.