Wednesday marks the 27th anniversary of the Tuzla Gate (Tuzlanska kapija) massacre also known as the Crime against the Tuzla Youth, which occurred on May 25, 1995 when 71 young residents of the northern Bosnian town were killed and more than 100 injured in shelling.

The date used to be marked in former Yugoslavia as the Youth Day, which is why the city downtown was crowded, with hundreds of Tuzla residents gathering to spend a sunny day in the open amidst the war, to get a day of “normal life.”

The joy was interrupted by shelling at 8.55 p.m. and replaced by deaths and sorrow. Those who survived have ever since been coping with consequences – both mental and physical.

27 years later, the families will gather at the memorial in the city downtown as they do every year to pay respects to those killed.

Bosnian state Court sentenced in 2010 a commander of the Army of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity Novak Djukic to 25 years in prison for ordering the shelling which, according to the indictment, killed 71 and injured more than 140 civilians.

The sentence was reduced in February 2014 to 20 years in prison after the Bosnia's Constitutional Court established a wrong application of the law in Djukic's case. Djukic then departed to Serbia for, as his attorney said, medical treatment and has been unavailable to Bosnia's judicial institutions since then.

Tuzla Canton authorities declared May 25 the day of mourning in 2016.