Vol.:(0123456789) International Politics Reviews https://doi.org/10.1057/s41312-022-00133-5 THE FORUM Genocide and grievability Marie E. Berry 1 Accepted: 15 December 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2022 Abstract This response to the forum on Dirk Moses’s book focuses on issues of grievability. Keywords Hierarchy · Imperialism · Justice · Violence · Security In 2013, I sat down with Tabiha 1 at her home in the Krajina region of Bosnia. That summer marked the 18th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, and dozens of international dignitaries and tens of thousands of mourners were preparing to visit the memorial center to pay respects to the 8000 boys and men massacred by Serb extremists over a period of three days in July 1995. 2 Less than 200 miles away, how- ever, Tabiha was frustrated. No plaques marked the concentration camps where she was detained by Serb forces in 1992. No dignitaries had come to pay their respects for her eldest son, whose body has never been found. Little to no aid had come to the families of the 5000 others in the region who were murdered by Serb forces in 1992. Srebrenica has emerged as the singular case of genocide during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Defined as such by both scholars and international courts, Sre- brenica has ascended to the top of a hierarchy of crimes during the Bosnian war, situated in global human rights consciousness alongside Rwanda, the Holocaust, Armenia, and a handful of other canonical cases of twentieth-century genocides. The tens of thousands of other Bosnians killed during the war were ultimately deemed by the courts to be victims of lesser logics of violence—of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, or, simply, war. Tabiha lamented, “What happened in Srebrenica—they got sacrificed in a few days, but we were bleeding from the knee. We had camps, rapes, [Serbs] stole stuff. They set our houses on fire, put bombs on our doors.” Tabiha notes how the spectacular speed and intensity of the violence in * Marie E. Berry Marie.Berry@du.edu 1 Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Denver, USA 1 Pseudonym, Interview May 2013 (see Berry 2018). 2 Džidić, Denic. 2013. “50000 Join Srebrenica Anniversary Commemorations.” Balkan Transitional Jus- tice: https://balkaninsight.com/2013/07/11/srebrenica-sends-a-message-of-peace-and-sorrow/.