A Bosniak young man, Osman Mehanovic, from Bratunac, near Srebrenica, was physically attacked by three people shouting racial slurs and insults based on his ethnicity, on Friday evening, at around 11 pm, suffering serious injuries.

Crossing Vidovdanska Street, Mehanovic said he saw several individuals sitting in front of the Cipovka bakery. Then he heard a man shouting something, but he ignored him, thinking he was not talking to him. After that several men approached him, asking him something that he said he did not understand well.

“At that moment, I answer with ‘what?’ while a man lunged at me and pushed me over the wall next to me. At that moment, another man shouted at me ‘What do you mean ‘what’, do you know who Kravica is’ and continued to shout various disgusting racial slurs and insults based on ethnicity like ‘Do you want us to slaughter you like we slaughtered you[r people] in Srebrenica’. As this was happening, I got up from the ground – shocked, when a man pushed me again, I got up again and then received a couple of hard blows to the head, knocking my tooth out. Raising my hand in self-defence, a man cuts me on the upper part of my left hand, at that moment I fell to the ground from a strong blow and heard a woman saying, ‘Hey, what are you doing to that boy?’ At that moment, the attackers moved away from the scene, and that woman came to my aid and helped me cross the street and go to the police station,” Mehanovic told the local TV station.

Podrinjemedia

Podrinjemedia

Podrinjemedia

Podrinjemedia

He confirmed to N1 that a group of young men attacked him, punching him, after which he felt that they had cut his hand with a sharp object and knocked out his bottom tooth.

“I don't know if it was a knife,” he said.

After this incident, the police detained several people who, according to Mehanovic, were known before for similar criminal acts. Allegedly, he adds, they recently attacked some Serbian citizens and stabbed them.

In April 1993, the UN declared the besieged enclave of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica a safe area under UN protection.

However, in July 1995, the Dutch battalion soldiers failed to prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb forces and the massacre that followed.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the days following July 11, 1995, and so far the remains of more than 6,600 have been found and buried.

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

International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars. Those who the ICTY sentenced to life imprisonment are Ljubisa Beara, Zdravko Tolimir, and Vujadin Popovic. But the most well known alleged masterminds of what happened in Srebrenica are former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and ex Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and both have been sentenced for it but have appealed.