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	Thousands commemorate anniversary of Srebrenica massacre by The Associated Press Bosnia-Herzegovina - Srebrenica   July 11, 2007   Hundreds of newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre were reburied Wednesday, their relatives sobbing as the thin green coffins were laid in the ground on the 12th anniversary of the mass wartime killing.   More than 30,000 people turned out for the ceremony, where a child read aloud the names of the 465 victims identified after being found in the many mass graves around Srebrenica.   Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Serb forces who separated men and boys from women on July 11, 1995, and killed the males over several days. It was the worst mass slaughter in Europe since World War II.   Every year, more victims'' bodies are found in dozens of mass graves around Srebrenica. DNA tests and other forensic methods have led to the identification and burial of more than 3,000 victims, including Wednesday''s 465.   The bodies were laid to rest at a memorial center in the Srebrenica suburb of Potocari, which consists of a huge cemetery, a small museum and a row of marble blocks on which the names of the victims — those found and those not — are engraved.   Beyond the sea of 3,000 victims'' graves lies a huge field awaiting the 5,000 yet to be excavated from mass graves that have still not been found.   "Every year, we bury a few hundred. This will go on for another decade until we find and if we find and bury them all," says Mehmed Kolenovic, 54, who survived the ordeal.   During the 1992-95 war, the United Nations declared Srebrenica — which had been besieged by Serb forces throughout the war — a U.N.-protected safe area for civilians, but then did nothing to prevent the massacre and expulsion.   In July 1995, Serb troops led by now indicted war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the enclave. The outnumbered U.N. troops never fired a shot and could only watch as Mladic''s troops rounded up the entire Srebrenica population in the Dutch compound and took the men away for execution.   "Only when you come here and see this field of graves, and meet the families, you start to understand the scale of the crime — genocide — that took place here 12 years ago," said Bosnia''s recently appointed top international official, Miroslav Lajcak.   Some 15,000 men tried to escape the slaughter by fleeing over the mountains toward the safe town of Tuzla. They were hunted along their 105-kilometer (65-mile) walk and killed if caught. Hazim Mehmedovic was 3 years old at the time, and was carried along the path in his father''s arms.   Hazim, now 16, arrived a few days ago from Copenhagen, Denmark, where he is living with his mother. Survivors today live in 107 countries around the world as refugees, he said.   For the past few days, he walked the escape route the other way from Tuzla to Srebrenica and arrived for the anniversary.   "I don''t remember anything and wanted to see where it happened. The Serbs shelled our group and killed dad while he was holding me in his arms. Someone else, I don''t know who, carried me the rest of the way to Tuzla," he says.   The body of Hazim''s father, Edhem, was found in a mass grave along the route and buried last year in Potocari.   Srebrenica was described by former Secretary General Kofi Annan as the darkest page of U.N. history.   Mladic and the former Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, both indicted for genocide, are still in hiding. Mladic is believed to be in Serbia, while Karadzic''s whereabouts are unknown.   Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, attended Wednesday''s ceremony. She has been pressing for the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic for years.   Muslim Bosnians have cited the massacre in their arguments for ending the country''s postwar territorial division. The peace accord that ended the war divided the once multiethnic country into two ministates — one for Orthodox Christian Serbs and the other shared by Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats.   Srebrenica ended up in Serb-controlled territory of the ministate called Republika Srpska, or the Serb Republic. Muslim Bosnians consider the existence of Republika Srpska an award for the perpetrators, achieved through genocide.   "These innocent victims fell because of a project not worthy of human kind," said Haris Silajdzic, the Muslim member of Bosnia''s three-person, multiethnic presidency. He called for the division to be dismantled and "for Bosnia not to be the way the perpetrators of this crime wanted it to be."   His Croat colleague in the Presidency attended the ceremony, but his Serb colleague did not.
	How crime is quietly becoming a global killer by Moisés Naím Foreign Policy   July 2007   In the past five years, the bird flu epidemic claimed 186 victims worldwide. In the same period, another less-recognized but growing menace maimed or killed millions of people and produced massive economic losses. Like others, this dangerous pandemic ignores national borders and erupts in different places at different times. Inexplicably, it has surged in Boston and abated in Bogotá. Experts disagree about its precise causes and what explains its sudden eruptions. Unlike bird flu, it is not caused by a virus transmitted from one species to another; it is exclusively created and spread by people. I am talking about street crime.   The world is experiencing a crime pandemic. Crime rates are on the rise almost everywhere, and these statistics typically are distinct from the death and mayhem that comes with terrorism, civil war, or major conflict. The data reflect the booming number of civilians assaulted, robbed, or murdered by other civilians who live in the same city, often in the same neighborhood. Frequently, the victims are as poor as the criminals.   Crime has increased steadily for all the countries the United Nations measures, according to a 2003 U.N. report. Even in the United States, where crime rates famously declined since the mid-1990s, violent crime has risen sharply in the past two years. In 2005, violent crime had its largest annual increase in 15 years. The Police Executive Research Forum, a U.S. law enforcement association, reports that homicides increased in 71 percent of the American cities that were surveyed, robberies increased in 80 percent of them, and aggravated assaults with guns increased in 67 percent between 2004 and 2006. In Boston, murder rates are at an 11-year high. Crime is also a major problem in Britain; the European Union (EU) calls it a “high crime country.”   Of course, the United States and Europe are still relative paradises compared to other countries. In many, the situation has gotten so bad that frustrated citizens in Johannesburg, Mexico City, and even Milan have staged massive marches to protest the inability of their governments to protect them. And they are right.   The streets of many cities have become more dangerous than war zones. Postcard-perfect Rio de Janeiro, for example, has become more dangerous than the bullet-riddled Gaza Strip. According to the Washington Post, 729 Palestinian and Israeli minors died as a result of violence and terrorism between 2002 and 2006. Yet in that same period, 1,857 minors were murdered in Rio.   And Brazil is not even at the top of the list. The world’s most murderous region is the Caribbean, followed by South and West Africa, and then South America. But the trend is global. Russia’s homicide rate is roughly 20 times higher than Western Europe’s. Rising crime rates are also reported throughout Asia.   In the poorest countries, the consequences of high crime rates are crippling. Crime increases the costs of doing business and makes countries less competitive. High crime rates can also scare away investors. “We were making good money in Colombia in the mid-90s,” the CEO of one multinational corporation told me. “But I decided that there was not enough money in the world to compensate for the despair that I felt during the many sleepless nights I spent worrying about my kidnapped colleagues there. We paid the ransom, got them back … and left the country.”   The World Bank reckons that Latin America’s economic growth could be 8 percent higher if its crime rates dropped.   But the main reason to reduce crime rates is not to spur economic growth or attract foreign investors. The paramount purpose is to give citizens the right to walk their streets—or stay home—without fearing for their lives, a basic human expectation that millions around the world are increasingly losing.   Unfortunately, while the consequences of high crime rates are clear, their causes are far less so. Consider, for example, the notion that crime is the inevitable consequence of poverty. This idea is as common as it is wrong. There is no correlation between poverty and crime. Some poor countries have high crime rates; others don’t.   Russia is far richer than Costa Rica, but its crime rates are substantially higher than those of Costa Rica. Some have suggested that crime rates may be explained by the strength of religious institutions, measured by church attendance and involvement in religious activities. Again, the statistical evidence isn’t there. Countries with high church attendance rates, such as Guatemala or the Philippines, for example, can also be plagued by murder.   So what drives up crime rates? Researchers can agree upon little beyond the general notion that crime soars in places where there is a combination of a high percentage of young males, ample drugs, and easy access to guns.   Economic inequality and urbanization also accelerate crime rates (but experts disagree by how much). And, once criminal behavior takes root in a neighborhood or city, it takes a long time and an immense effort to reclaim the streets.   It is easy to dismiss growing crime rates as either a local problem or one that has been with us since time immemorial. But that would be a major mistake. Because, though we may have recently lost ground, the problem has the potential to be a far greater global nightmare. Consider China and India. They have growing populations of young males, growing levels of economic inequality, and rapid urbanization. And, though drugs and guns are still relatively hard to come by, they’re becoming easier to obtain every day. If these two nations become more like other poor countries in this regard, too, their crime rates could soar to unimagined levels. Suffice it to say, the crime pandemic would never be hidden from anyone again.   * Moisés Naím is editor in chief of Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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