S T A T E   O F   N E W   Y O R K
 ________________________________________________________________________
 
                                   7934
 
                        2023-2024 Regular Sessions
 
                           I N  A S S E M B L Y
 
                              August 4, 2023
                                ___________
 
 Introduced  by  M.  of  A.  BUTTENSCHON -- read once and referred to the
   Committee on Governmental Operations
 
 AN ACT to amend the executive law, in relation  to  the  designation  of
   "Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day" as a day of commemoration
 
   THE  PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEM-
 BLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
 
   Section 1. Legislative intent. This act arises from a sense  of  human
 decency  and  respect for the Srebrenica people and their history. It is
 the intent of this legislative body to designate July 11 of each  calen-
 dar  year  as  "Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day" in the state of New
 York.  Fifty years after the world said "Never Again" to the horrors  of
 the Holocaust, genocide took place on European soil. The name Srebrenica
 has  become  synonymous  with  those dark days in July 1995 when, in the
 first ever United Nations (UN) declared safe area, thousands of men  and
 boys  were  systematically  murdered  and  buried  in  mass  graves. The
 victims, who were Muslim, were selected for death on the basis of  their
 identity;  this was the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second
 World War.   During the Srebrenica massacre,  more  than  7,000  Bosniak
 (Bosnian  Muslim)  boys  and  men  were  slain by Bosnian Serb forces in
 Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and  Herzegovina;  in  addition  to
 these  killings,  more than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area
 in a process known as ethnic cleansing. The  massacre  helped  galvanize
 the  West to press for a cease-fire that ended three years of warfare on
 Bosnia's territory, however, it left deep emotional scars  on  survivors
 and   created  enduring  obstacles  to  political  reconciliation  among
 Bosnia's ethnic groups.  Beginning in 1992, Bosnian Serb forces targeted
 Srebrenica in a campaign to seize control of a  block  of  territory  in
 eastern  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina; their eventual goal was to annex this
 territory to the adjacent  republic  of  Serbia,  and  to  do  so,  they
 believed, required the expulsion of the territory's Bosniak inhabitants,
 who  opposed annexation.   In March of 1995, Radovan Karadzic, president
 
  EXPLANATION--Matter in ITALICS (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
                       [ ] is old law to be omitted.
                                                            LBD11917-01-3
              

 A. 7934                             2
 
 of the self-declared autonomous Republika Srpska  (Bosnian  Serb  Repub-
 lic), directed his military forces to "create an unbearable situation of
 total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhab-
 itants  of  Srebrenica".  By  May, a cordon of Bosnian Serb soldiers had
 imposed an embargo on food and other supplies that provoked most of  the
 town's  Bosniak  fighters  to  flee  the  area; in late June, after some
 skirmishes with the few remaining Bosniak  fighters,  the  Bosnian  Serb
 military  command formally ordered the operation, code-named Krivaja 95,
 that culminated in the massacre. The  offensive  commenced  on  July  6,
 1995,  with  Bosnian  Serb  forces  advancing from the south and burning
 Bosniak homes along the way; amid chaos and terror, thousands of  civil-
 ians fled Srebrenica for the nearby village of Potocari, where a contin-
 gent  of  about  200 Dutch peacekeepers was stationed; some of the Dutch
 surrendered, while others withdrew; none fired on the advancing  Bosnian
 Serb forces. On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic
 strolled  through  Srebrenica  and, in a statement recorded on film by a
 Serb journalist, said, "We give this town to the Serb nation.  The  time
 has come to take revenge on the Muslims". On the night of July 11, 1995,
 a column of more than 10,000 Bosniak men set off from Srebrenica through
 dense  forest  in  an  attempt  to reach safety; beginning the following
 morning, Bosnian Serb officers used UN equipment and made false promises
 of security to encourage the men to surrender; thousands gave themselves
 up or were captured, and many were subsequently executed. Other Bosniaks
 were forced out of Potocari that day through  the  use  of  terror;  the
 women,  children,  and  elderly  were  placed aboard buses and driven to
 Bosniak-held territory, while the men and boys  were  taken  to  various
 holding  sites, mostly in Bratunac. The total number of men and boys who
 were slaughtered was initially a matter  of  some  debate;  under  heavy
 international pressure, the government of the Republika Srpska issued an
 apology in 2004 for the "enormous crimes" in Srebrenica and acknowledged
 that an estimated 7,800 had perished. The process of locating the graves
 and  identifying  the victims was complicated by a well-organized effort
 undertaken by Bosnian Serb forces in September and October 1995 to  hide
 traces  of the Srebrenica crimes; soldiers used heavy tractors and back-
 hoes to dig up mass graves and moved the disinterred remains to  distant
 sites,  many  of  which  were later located by U.S. intelligence experts
 using satellite photographs. Furthermore, it required years of  analysis
 by  Western  scientists to piece together exactly where the killings had
 occurred and how the bodies had been moved among an  estimated  80  mass
 grave  sites;  by  early  2010,  the International Commission on Missing
 Persons, a nongovernmental organization established in  1996,  had  used
 DNA  samples to identify more than 6,400 individual victims. By consist-
 ently remembering and forcefully  condemning  the  atrocities  committed
 against  these  people,  and  honoring  the  survivors  as well as other
 victims of similar heinous conduct, we guard against repetition of  such
 acts  of  genocide and provide the American public with a greater under-
 standing of history.  This  act  declares  that  this  legislative  body
 deplores  the persistent, ongoing efforts by any person, in this country
 or abroad, to deny the historical fact of the Srebrenica  Genocide;  the
 failure  of  the  international  community  to  hold responsible nations
 accountable for crimes against humanity results in travesty of  justice,
 and  sets  a  negative  precedent.  The  state  of New York endeavors to
 encourage and promote a curriculum relating to human rights and genocide
 in order to empower future generations  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of
 genocide.
 A. 7934                             3
 
   §  2.  Subdivision 3 of section 168-a of the executive law, as amended
 by chapter 237 of the laws of 2020, is amended to read as follows:
   3.  The  following  days  shall be days of commemoration in each year:
 January sixth, to be known as "Haym Salomon  Day",  January  twenty-sev-
 enth, to be known as "Holocaust Remembrance Day", February fourth, to be
 known  as "Rosa Parks Day", February fifteenth, to be known as "Susan B.
 Anthony Day", February sixteenth, to be known as  "Lithuanian  Independ-
 ence  Day",  February  twenty-eighth, to be known as "Gulf War Veterans'
 Day", March fourth, to be known as "Pulaski Day",  March  tenth,  to  be
 known as "Harriet Tubman Day", March twenty-ninth, to be known as "Viet-
 nam  Veterans'  Day", April ninth, to be known as "POW Recognition Day",
 April twenty-seventh, to be known as "Coretta  Scott  King  Day",  April
 twenty-eighth, to be known as "Workers' Memorial Day", the first Tuesday
 in  May to be known as "New York State Teacher Day", May seventeenth, to
 be known as "Thurgood Marshall Day", the first Sunday  in  June,  to  be
 known  as  "Children's  Day", June second, to be known as "Italian Inde-
 pendence Day", June twelfth, to be known as "Women Veterans  Recognition
 Day",  June  nineteenth,  to  be known as "Juneteenth Freedom Day", June
 twenty-fifth, to be known as "Korean War Veterans' Day", JULY  ELEVENTH,
 TO  BE KNOWN AS "SREBRENICA GENOCIDE REMEMBRANCE DAY", the second Monday
 in July, to be known as "Abolition Commemoration  Day",  August  twenty-
 fourth,  to  be  known  as  "Ukrainian Independence Day", August twenty-
 sixth, to be known as "Women's Equality Day", September eleventh, to  be
 known  as "Battle of Plattsburgh Day" and also to be known as "September
 11th Remembrance Day", September thirteenth, to be known as "John  Barry
 Day"  and  also to be known as "Uncle Sam Day in the State of New York",
 September seventeenth, to be known as  "Friedrich  Wilhelm  von  Steuben
 Memorial  Day",  the  third Friday in September to be known as "New York
 State POW/MIA Recognition Day" except  if  such  date  of  commemoration
 cannot  be  observed  due to a religious holiday, such observances shall
 then be conducted on the second Friday of September, the  last  Saturday
 in  September,  to be known as "War of 1812 Day", the fourth Saturday of
 September, known as "Native-American Day", the last Sunday in September,
 to be known as "Gold Star Mothers' Day", October fifth, to be  known  as
 "Raoul Wallenberg Day", October eleventh, to be known as "New Netherland
 Day in the State of New York", October eighteenth, to be known as "Disa-
 bilities  History Day", October twenty-seventh, to be known as "Theodore
 Roosevelt Day", November ninth, to be known as  "Witness  for  Tolerance
 Day", November twelfth, to be known as "Elizabeth Cady Stanton Day", the
 third  Tuesday in November to be known as "New York State School-Related
 Professionals Recognition Day",  November  thirtieth,  to  be  known  as
 "Shirley  Chisholm  Day",  December third, to be known as "International
 Day of Persons with Disabilities", December  seventh,  to  be  known  as
 "Pearl  Harbor  Day",  December sixteenth, to be known as "Bastogne Day"
 and that day of the Asian lunar calendar designated as new  year  to  be
 known as "Asian New Year".
   § 3. This act shall take effect immediately.