The US Ambassador to Bosnia is to join on Tuesday the last leg of the Peace March which is organised every year to commemorate the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

Two days ago, some 6,000 set off for a 100 kilometre walk from the village of Nezuk to the Srebrenica Memorial Centre in Potocari, marching the route survivors took to escape the massacre in reverse.  

US Ambassador Maureen Cormack is to join the march on Tuesday afternoon, the President of the Sub-committee of the “March of Peace Nezuk-Potocari 2018”, Munir Habibovic, said.  

A group of 35 people, who walked all the way from Sarajevo, have also joined the march two days ago. Their 280 kilometre walk began on July 3.  

The massacre they are commemorating is often referred to as the worst crime committed on European soil since WWII.  

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian enclave and rounded up the town’s Muslim Bosniaks, separated men from women and little children and systematically executed some 8,000 men and boys.  

Two international courts, The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the World Court later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.  

The march is also in the spirit of a protest meant to bring domestic and international actors to increase their efforts in bringing those responsible for the atrocity to justice as quickly as possible and to punish them accordingly.  

The bodies of the victims were dumped into numerous mass graves in the area. Forensic experts continue to excavate them for decades. The remains are then identified through DNA analysis before they are returned to the families. Those rebury them every year on July 11 at the Memorial Centre’s cemetery. 

This year, 35 newly identified victims are to be buried. Among them are four minors, as well as a young woman who was pregnant at the time of her death.