Some 100 relatives of the six Bosniaks from Srebrenica who were killed by members of the Serbian paramilitary unit ‘Scorpions’ 25 years ago at Godinjske Bare in the Trnovo municipality, near the capital, gathered at the site on Friday to lay wreaths and pray for the victims, who were between 16 and 36 years old at the time of their death.
Nura Alispahic lost her 16-year-old son Azmir on that day, and with tears in her eyes, she said she feels as if “he was killed today here in front of me.”
“I feel worse every day. I cannot live anymore, I only want to die so I can join my son,” she said.
She explained that she was not aware of her son’s fate for a long time but then recognised him in a video in which several members of the Scorpions can be seen pulling six civilians, whose hands are tied, out of a truck. They then take them to the forest and shot four of them in the back.
“I fainted when I saw that, I couldn’t pull myself together for the next two hours. My daughter was with me, and only later did I fully realise what happened,” she said.
The last time she saw her son was during the fall of Srebrenica, she said.
“He was leaving Srebrenica but came back to kiss me. He came and said, ‘mother, I have not kissed you’, he returned to see me one more time. I thought to myself ‘my dear son, you will never see me or kiss me again’,” she said.
One of the members of the Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa Enclaves association, Kada Hotic, pointed out that there is no memorial plaque or anything indicating what took place at the site 25 years ago and that the perpetrators still deny it happened.
“They are lying to the world, they even recorded it to brag about their crime. We have graves, so many missing, the numbers are so high, none of this was made up. But the world remains silent, this world is watching us disappear,” she said, adding that those who committed the genocide were rewarded with half of Bosnia and Herzegovina – the Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS) entity.
The video of the killings of Safet Fejzic (17), Azmir Alispahic (16), Sidik Salkic (36), Dino Salihovic (18) and Juso Delic (25), which was recorded by the Scorpions, was presented at the trial of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2005.
