Thousands headed to Srebrenica on Thursday to lay to rest 33 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and at the 24th anniversary of the massacre to pay respects to the 6.610 victims already buried at the Memorial Centre there.
Every year, July 11th is an emotional day in Bosnia and Herzegovina when Bosniaks mark the worst crime committed on European soil since WWII.
On that day, in 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 executed some 8,000 men and boys over just three days.
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The bodies of the victims were buried in a large number of mass graves in the area.
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 the July 11 ceremony.
The youngest to be buried this year is Osman Cvrk, who was 16 when he was killed. His remains were found in several mass graves in the area of Srebrenica because after perpetrators initially buried the victims, they dug up the bodies and reburied them at other locations in an effort to cover up the crime.
This was mostly done with bulldozers and the machines tore up the bodies while loading them on trucks to be transported to some other location. By the time the remains were reburied into another mass grave, the bodies were a simple mix of people’s bones.
Among those to be buried are also Zaim Pilav and his son Fuad, brothers Fahrudin and Zijo Mujic and brothers Asim and Kasim Isakovic.
The oldest was Saha Cvrk, who was 82 years old and is the only woman to be buried this year.
The remains of another 140 victims and are stored in the DNA identification centre in Tuzla. Some have been identified, but their families do not want to bury them until more of their remains are found.
More than 1.000 Srebrenica genocide victims are still missing.
Among the 6,610 victims buried at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Centre, 26 are women.
The oldest of all victims is 94-year-old Saha Izmirlic. The youngest was Fata Muhic, not even a day old.
The first such mass funeral took place in 2003, when about 1,000 victims were laid to rest.
