Among the thousands participating in the March of Peace in honour of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica, Arbenita walks barefoot, pleading for an end to the hatred that has caused so much pain and suffering.

The marchers have already passed more than half of the way from Nezuk to Potocari, where they will attend the annual commemoration event and burial ceremony for the newly identified victims of the massacre.

“The main message of the march of peace is – a crazy thing happened that can not and must not be forgotten,” said Sadikovic Ilijaz, from Bugojno, told N1.

He said that he met a woman who was marching along barefoot the day before.

“My friend, who knows English, asked her what the reason is for her not wearing shoes. She said that it is the only chance for her to pay her respects to the innocent victims who fell. And we were left speechless,” he recalled.

N1 found the woman.

She was the last person walking in the group of 5.000 people, and she stopped in Donja Kamenica, known as the ‘valley of graves’.

“I am Arbenita and I always said I come from God, because I do not like the idea of (national) belonging. If we did not have that idea of belonging, we wouldn’t have these dead people either – not only here, but throughout the world,” she told N1.

Arbenita traveled the world, came to Bosnia and Herzegovina and heard about what happened in Srebrenica while visiting a mosque.

She did not have any wounds on her feet, although she walked some 30 kilometres barefoot.

She said the first thing she felt when she joined the march was a flavour of blood in her nose, mouth and lungs.

“I came here, began praying the Yasin (prayer), and I feel the suffering of these people, I hear their screams,” she said.

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.

The bodies of the victims were buried in a large number of mass graves.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.

New remains of the victims are found and identified yearly and buried during a ceremony on July 11 each year. This year the remains of 33 victims will join the 6.610 already buried at the Memorial Centre.

“Please do not allow for something like this to happen again. It is not an issue of hatred – those are only people who want to make money, they make others hate each other,” she stressed.

“Please do not hate anymore. I beg you, in the name of God,” she added.

The 35-year-old woman said that hate does not have a reason, does not make sense, and that it is a result of people being manipulated.

She said she will continue marching barefoot for the rest of the 70 kilometres and that the only thing she is afraid of are the emotions that she expects to feel once she reached Potocari.