Families buried on Sunday 19 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide at a commemoration ceremony attended by thousands of those who came to pay respect to more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys killed in Europe’s worst atrocity since WWII.
The youngest victim buried on Sunday was 16 and the oldest 63.
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As Bosnian Serb forces, led by genocide convict Ratko Mladic, overran the eastern Bosnian town on July 11, 1995, the Bosniak population sought protection from U.N. peacekeepers, but the outnumbered and under-armed Dutch battalion could only watch as soldiers loaded the men on busses and trucks to take them to death.
Their bodies are being gradually excavated and identified through DNA analysis and buried at the Potocari Memorial Center every July 11.
Suhra Sinanovic lost 23 members of her family in Srebrenica and says that the intensity of the pain and the sadness remains the same for 26 years.
“Of those 23, I’m still looking for three,” she said. She appealed to all institutions to find the remaining mass graves.
“I’m getting old,” she said, adding that another Srebrenica mother, Sabaheta, died 20 days ago and only managed to bury her child but never found her husband Saban.
Thousands have taken part in various events leading to the main event that marks the 26th anniversary of the crime. About three thousand people have marched for three days through the forests and over mountains, walking the route many took to save their lives backwards.
Athletes ran their marathon and bikers from all over the country, Germany, Turkey and elsewhere flocked to the U.N. compound in the Srebrenica suburb where many of the victims were seen alive for the last time as Bosnian Serb soldiers separated them from the women and took them to the execution sites.
Local and international officials expressed their solidarity with the victims’ families and pledged never to allow such a crime to happen again. They also warned of the increased denial of the genocide that has been confirmed by 12 international rulings.
The Bosniak member of the country’s three-member presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic, urged the international community to help stop the glorification of war criminals among Bosnian Serbs and in Serbia and impose a law on genocide denial which Bosnian Serbs keep vetoing in the country’s parliament.
“Thousands of fathers and sons were killed, thousands of brothers and cousins, thousands of hungry, tortured people were taken out blindfolded and shot in the back and back of the head, and then buried in pits. With only one goal. Destroy one nation,” Dzaferovic said.
What followed was an international military intervention, the verdicts of the Hague courts which came with a delay, because innocent people had already been killed.
“All this gave at least a grain of hope that the conscience of humanity has awakened. However, if one is silent as these verdicts are being denied, then there is no reason to still believe that hope is alive,” he said.
“That is why I call on the international community to protect the verdicts of their courts from denial, to protect the dignity of the victims, but also its own dignity. Because if the followers of evil continue to be allowed to cynically insult the victims, there cannot be any serious talk about any civilizational values,” he said.
The head of Bosnia’s Islamic Community, Husein Kavazovic, said that Srebrenica “is not only our issue, or an issue of our conscience and morals, but also the question of morals and conscience of the whole of Europe.”
“Srebrenica is a place of remembrance of innocent people killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina before the eyes of the whole of Europe, which did not want to see them, and does not want to see the victims clearly even today, because it is silent and turns its head to the denial of genocide and glorification and decoration of war criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the religious leader said.
He stressed that “the evil of genocide did not happen by chance.”
“It was planned and executed according to plan. That evil has been covered up, denied and glorified all these years. It is deep and tough, and it is not easy to defeat. Its venom will circulate in this area for a long time to come,” he said.
“I am sure that the past, which is difficult, can also be an opportunity to understand each other and help each other if we accept the truth as a guide. All good people, from all sides, and especially in Europe, need to help Bosnia and Herzegovina and Srebrenica,” said Kavazovic.
So far, 6,652 Srebrenica genocide victims have been buried at the Potocari Memorial Centre, while another 237 victims have been buried at other locations, according to the wishes of their families.
Nearly 1,000 victims are still missing.
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