With this film drama between ‘Dara of Jasenovac’ and ‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ comes out the talking point of numbers and what constitutes genocide. The argument is that the murder of 8,373 people isn’t genocide b/c 50,000+ Serbs were murdered in Jasenovac.

Of course, genocide has nothing to do with the number of people killed and in fact has everything to do with the intent to systematically exterminate, either in whole or in part, a group based on their identity. Genocide is deliberate and targeted.

But the problem isn’t just that it’s that the genocide in Bosnia is more than the 8,372 people murdered in Srebrenica. Genocide is the concentration camps in Prijedor and all over Bosnia. Genocide is the rape camps in Foca, Visegrad, and all over Bosnia.

Genocide is the deliberate targeting of children by snipers in Sarajevo. It’s the torture camps set up where Bosniak women were forcibly impregnated, converted, and sold into slavery. Genocide is the targeting of cultural and historical buildings and heritage.

Yes, what happened in Jasenovac was a horrific act of genocide. However, Bosniaks do not systematically deny Jasenovac or justify it. But the horrors of Srebrenica, Prijedor, Visegrad, Zvornik, Sarajevo, Doboj, Bijeljina and so many other places is systematically denied by Serbs.

It’s not a competition about who suffered more and it shouldn’t be one. Suffering in the past at the hands of the Ustaše doesn’t excuse or justify the brutal and systematic genocide of Bosniaks in the 1990s or the denial of those crimes even to this day.