The Germans have never seen a real genocide they did not like
Esad Širbegović is a writer and analyst based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a member of the International Expert Team at the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada. In 2022, he served as the Director of the International Expert Team for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, focusing on the Srebrenica genocide denial case at the University of Vienna. Esad’s work is deeply rooted in his personal experiences and centres on the critical issues of Islamophobia and genocide
“Thank you for inviting us – those of us who did not intervene against Mladić and his accomplice.”
The words of Christian Schmidt, the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, echoed across the hills of Srebrenica on July 11, 2025, the 30th anniversary of Europe’s worst atrocity since the Holocaust.
He stood before thousands of grieving survivors and international dignitaries gathered to honor the victims of genocide—only to reaffirm the very political structure that rewarded the genocide and continues to uphold its legacy. In doing so, he did not commemorate the past; he indulged in genocide triumphalism..
“Let us not allow Dayton to be forgotten,” declared Christian Schmidt—effectively calling for the preservation of a political order born out of genocide and cemented by Western compromise with war criminals. For the traumatized survivors of the Srebrenica genocide, such a statement is not just tone-deaf; it is genocide triumphalism. Dayton did not end the genocide—it institutionalized it. Dayton is a continuation of the Bosnian Genocide.
Dayton’s primary goal was to halt the fighting, it was never intended as a permanent solution—only a temporary framework until a lasting political settlement could be established.
To tell Bosniak survivors that Dayton must be remembered is to insist they accept the continuation of their dispossession, now enforced through apartheid.
This, from a man who indulged in fascist music under the flag of the Croat entity—whose leadership was convicted of a joint criminal enterprise against Bosniaks.
A man who referred to a Nazi pilot from the Condor Legion— unit responsible for the bombing of Guernica—as a “victim” deserving rehabilitation, and who condemns multiculturalism as a path to poverty, warning darkly that “everyone will have to eat only lettuce.”
Schmidt is the embodiment of a Nunzi—a term derived from Bosnian Naci-Unuci or Nunci, meaning “Nazi grandchildren.” It refers to descendants of Nazis who believe they’ve moved beyond the past, yet continue to replicate its ideologies in new forms.
His words, far from a diplomatic blunder, reveal a darker truth: the genocide of Bosniaks did not end in 1995. It was not stopped—it was bureaucratized. And for three decades, the West has chosen to uphold the political consequences of genocide, rebranding them as peace.
Dayton Peace Agreement is a continuation of the Bosnian Genocide.
The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement is often hailed as a triumph of diplomacy for ending Bosnia’s brutal war. Yet in reality, it constituted a catastrophic moral and political failure – one that not only rewarded genocide but established a dangerous precedent for future atrocities, from Myanmar to Palestine. By dividing Bosnia into two entities and granting half its territory to the Republika Srpska (RS), the agreement effectively ratified genocide as a legitimate means of state formation.
The Serb entity RS was created through systematic genocide against Bosniaks, most horrifically demonstrated in 1995 in Srebrenica where over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed by Serb forces under Ratko Mladić – a crime conclusively ruled as genocide by both the ICTY and ICJ. Rather than dismantle this genocidal project, Dayton gave it constitutional legitimacy and territorial control.
The west didn’t just fail to punish genocide – but made it the foundation of Bosnia’s postwar order.
The consequences of this moral surrender continue to reverberate. In Bosnia, the Serb entity now openly threatens secession—seeking to walk away with the spoils of genocide.
Meanwhile, Western powers compound this injustice by maintaining the status quo while offering empty platitudes about “never again.”
Most alarmingly, Dayton established a template for subsequent atrocities. The international community’s willingness to reward genocide in Bosnia sent a clear message: genocide works. We see its echoes today in Israel’s occupation of Palestine, where decades of forced displacement are now culminating in Gaza’s destruction. Like the RS, Israel understands that Western powers may occasionally criticize atrocities but will ultimately accept them as political facts.
Thirthy years after Dayton, Bosnia remains frozen in injustice – a living monument to the world’s failure to confront genocide. Until this agreement is fundamentally revised to dismantle the RS’s illegitimate power, it will stand not as a peace treaty but as a grim warning: when genocide is rewarded with statehood. The road to justice in Palestine and beyond begins with reckoning with Dayton’s original sin.
Dayton’s Latest Mutation: Apartheid by Decree
On the very night of Bosnia’s 2022 elections, Christian Schmidt unilaterally enacted sweeping changes to the country’s electoral law just hours after polls had closed for the election.—changes that disproportionately empowered the Croat nationalist HDZ and severely diluted Bosniak representation. Simply put, Croat votes now carry significantly more weight than those of Bosniaks.
Furthermore, the law excluded minorities such as Jews and Roma from candidacy for key offices, despite a 2009 ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in the Sejdić-Finci case that declared such exclusions unconstitutional and discriminatory.
Even more shocking was the manner in which Schmidt pushed the law through. According to multiple attendees, he berated Bosnian leaders during private meetings, pounding his fists on the table and dismissing concerns publicly as “Rubbish! Full of rubbish.” He refused to answer questions from local journalists, screaming at them during public events. Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF devoted its Friday satire show to portraying Christian Schmidt as a superhero backing Serbian and Croatian nationalists in Bosnia.
The beneficiaries of these apartheid changes are troubling.
The Croat HDZ party that Christian Schmidt has empowered traces its roots directly to the wartime leadership of the self-proclaimed “Herceg-Bosna,” whose top officials were convicted in The Hague for their role in a joint criminal enterprise to ethnically cleanse Bosniaks. Today, in areas under HDZ control, anti-fascist cemeteries are routinely destroyed, and the perpetrators never held accountable.
Yet Schmidt appeared in public cheering for Croatia’s national football team under the banner of Herceg-Bosna, while listening to Marko Perković Thompson—a singer denounced as a fascist by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose concerts feature crowds giving Nazi salutes.
Leitkultur in Bosnia: German Domestic Racism Goes Global
Schmidt’s conduct in Bosnia is not an aberration—it is consistent with his past in German politics. As Germany’s former Minister of Agriculture, he attempted to introduce a law requiring pork to be served in all public institutions, including kindergartens—despite protests from Jewish and Muslim communities. “The compromise cannot be that everyone only eats lettuce leaves,” Schmidt said at the time, mocking religious dietary restrictions.
, he was ridiculed by German media and was met with a wave of mockery for his ‘compulsatory pork law’ on social media. Christian Schmidt was against kosher and halal meals in schools and kindergartens in Germany. He said:”The compromise cannot be that everyone only eats lettuce leaves.”
Such remarks were widely ridiculed in Germany as ‘compulsatory pork law. But in Bosnia, Schmidt is ridiculing the victims of genocide through his genocide triumphalism.
Schmidt’s actions in Srebrenica reveal an ideological commitment to Leitkultur (Lead Culture)—the notion that German white identity must be anchored in cultural superiority and Christian norms, positioned above all others. It echoes the “Über-concepts” of his ancestors, cloaking cultural supremacy in the language of integration. Mr. Schmidt is a CSU politician. On his party’s website, Leitkultur is described as the opposite of multiculturalism and arbitrariness.
His actions serve a dual purpose: to preserve the existing power structure and to provoke Bosniaks by humiliating them, hoping to incite noncompliance that can then be weaponized—casting them as a security threat, even as terrorists.
From Srebrenica to Gaza: The Price of Legalizing Bosnian Genocide
What began in Srebrenica did not end there. The political structure imposed by Dayton—and upheld for decades by figures like Schmidt—has sent a clear message to the world: genocide pays.
That message now echoes in Gaza. As Israel bombards the enclave under the guise of counterterrorism, thousands of civilians are killed, displaced, and starved. International courts speak of genocde, yet Western states continue to fund and arm the state carrying it out.
Just like in Bosnia, the victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. Just like in Bosnia, the West reduces the violence to a “complex” conflict rather than naming it for what it is: a crime. And just like in Bosnia, the perpetrators are rewarded with legal and territorial legitimacy—at the expense of international law.
The West’s decision to reward genocide in Bosnia helped make Gaza possible.
Bosnia is not Europe’s failure. It is Europe’s design.
“Remembering Srebrenica” is hollow without acknowledging the political reality that the West rewarded genocide by granting its perpetrators half of Bosnia’s territory—the Serb entity, RS. The other half (the Federation) was given to Croat fascists through the introduction of apartheid by Christian Schmidt. The victims of the Bosnian Genocide—the Bosniaks—are now completely politically dismembered in their own country.
The genocide was never truly stopped—it was frozen and repackaged. The very existence of the Serb entity RS – the entity whose leadership and military were found guilty of commiting genocide – is the continuation of the Bosnian Genocide.
Therefore, Christian Schmidt’s call to “never forget Dayton”—the political order that preserves the spoils of genocide—is an act of genocide triumphalism.
And if the world cannot confront the truth of Bosnia’s ongoing suffering, it will continue repeating itself—in Gaza, and wherever the impunity of past crimes is used as a blueprint for future genocides.
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