Gaza war shows we have not learned lessons of Srebrenica, veteran reporter says

This Friday, July 11 marks 30 years since the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia. That day in 1995, 8,000 Muslim men and adolescent boys were slaughtered by Ratklo Mladic's Serbian forces in the midst of the Balkans war. And 30 years on, the war in Gaza shows we have learned nothing – that's what veteran reporter Janine di Giovanni writes for the Emirati paper The National. She compares her experiences as a reporter witnessing the atrocities in the Balkans to the "ethnic cleansing in Gaza" today. 

Le Monde pays tribute to the victims of the genocide on its front page. "Between remembrance and denial", the French daily says, noting that the legacy of the genocide is still a very divisive issue in Serbia.

This is being played out in the Serbian press. The French website Courrier International notes that despite a UN resolution declaring July 11 to be the day of remembrance of the genocide, Serbs continue to deny the genocidal nature of Srebrenica. Danas, a Serbian opposition paper, looks at President Aleksandar Vučić, who as prime minister visited Srebrenica in 2015. At the time, he said genocide implied that the whole Serbian population was guilty of genocide. That's completely untrue, Danas says: the only people guilty are the radical Serb nationalists who want to shirk their responsibilities for the crime they committed. Nonetheless, we can see on Thursday's front page of pro-government Serbian daily Večernje Novosti a cynical headline calling Srebrenica a "permanent tool for blackmail against the Serbs".

In the Bosnian press, there is an interesting article from Slobodna Bosna, a Sarajevo paper which cites a recent investigation from the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle into how the genocide is being taught in schools. In the latest generation of textbooks, the space devoted to the war has increased, but what's being said is alarming. Students are being taught that while the captured men were shot, many also died in combat – watering down the gravity of the slaughter of 8,000 men and adolescents.

Over in the US, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has given some insight into what it's like working with the conservative supermajority. The Washington Post reports that Jackson is the nation's first Black female justice and the most junior member of the Supreme Court. In a live-streamed discussion sponsored by the Indianapolis Bar Association on Thursday, she was very frank about working in the court, saying "the state of our democracy keeps her up at night". Jackson has emerged as one of the court's sharpest critics, issuing more dissents than any other justice this year – this as the conservative supermajority has greenlit President Donald Trump’s policies. Not surprisingly, her comments are not going down too well with the conservative papers. National Review says in its rebuke of her comments that the Supreme Court isn't the proper venue for Jackson's "feelings".

Finally, there's some good news for flamingos in Florida. The Miami Herald reports that around 125 American flamingos were spotted around the Everglades. It's the largest flock seen in 10 years. A photo released by the South Florida Water Management District shows the pink flamingos wading through water and flying high. The bird is considered native to Florida, but its populations were decimated by hunting in the early 20th century. Years of habitat protection and public awareness, however, are believed to have helped the species rebound. American flamingos are among the largest of the species – measuring about 5 feet tall!

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