Nezuk – Potocari Peace March kicks off in memory of Srebrenica genocide victims

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The Srebrenica genocide survivors and over five thousand others from Bosnia and the world took off on a march from Nezuk to Potocari Memorial Centre, Eastern Bosnia, where they will hold a prayer and attend the funeral for 33 victims of the genocide that took place in the Summer of 1995.

Many youths are taking part in this year's three-day march which honours the victims of the genocide which took place after the Serb forces took hold of the town of Srebrenica, in July 1995 and killed over 8,000 men and boys from the region of Srebrenica, only because they were Bosnian Muslims.

Besides the funeral and the prayer, the Nezuk-Potocari peace march is one of the main activities in the framework of the marking of the genocide against the Srebrenica Bosniaks.

 The march is also held 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. They rebury them every year on July 11 at the Memorial Centre’s cemetery.

The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ruled in 2004 that the massacre of the Srebrenica, the enclave which was declared the UN's safe zone in 1993, constituted a genocide. The ruling was upheld by the International Court of Justice in 2007.