Over 30,000 Bosnians gathered at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the genocide and pay their respects as 35 more victims were buried.
Mourners at the Memorial Centre in Potocari near Srebrenica on Wednesday. Photo: EPA/JASMIN BRUTUS.
Crowds of mourners gathered on Wednesday at the Memorial Centre in Potocari near Srebrenica for the burial of 35 victims of the Srebrenica genocide who are being laid to rest at a ceremony to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the massacres.
Among the victims being buried was a pregnant woman who was killed in the massacres, Remzija Dudic, along with her husband Nijazija. Their remains were found in a mass grave in the Vlasenica area in 2016.
Two teenagers who were 16 and 17 years old at the time of their deaths were also being buried at the Memorial Centre.
One of the mothers of the victims, Hajra Alic, said she will bury just one bone of her son Muhamed – all that has been found of the teenager’s remains so far.
“His grave and nisan [Muslim headstone] should be marked, so that I at least know where that one bone is,” Alic said.
Nermin Alivukovic from the Srebrenica municipality, one of the organisers of the commemoration, said that some of the perpetrators of the massacres have yet to be brought to justice.
“We have been saying for 23 years now that we will not stop looking for the remains of those who were killed, and we will not stop asking for those responsible to be prosecuted,” Alivukovic said.
Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak member of the country’s tripartite presidency, urged anyone with information about the whereabouts of the graves of Srebrenica victims who are still missing to speak out.
“Ease your burden, and our burden, and come forward. Tell us where to find the mortal remains,” said Izetbegovic.
Among those attending Wednesday’s commemoration were participants in the annual Peace March from Nezuk near Tuzla to Srebrenica, which retraces the route used by Srebrenica men and boys to flee the enclave in July 1995 as Bosnian Serb forces moved in.
Among the participants of this year’s Peace March was the US ambassador to Sarajevo, Maureen Cormack.
Politicians from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the former Yugoslav region, as well as officials from the international community, attended the commemoration.
Theodor Meron, the president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, said that it is important to maintain remembrance of the victims of Srebrenica.
“We are all keepers of a vital, if fragile flame: responsible today, and for all the days to come, for ensuring that the memories of the fathers and brothers, the husbands and sons, and all the other victims of those terrible events live on, that the lessons of Srebrenica are never forgotten, and that we each do our part to spread the light of truth and to push back against the darkness of indifference and denial,” Meron said in a statement.
On Tuesday evening, Serbia’s Women in Black peace group staged a commemoration entitled ‘Srebrenica 8,372’ on Belgrade’s Republic Square to mark the anniversary.
…
Women in Black activists held up a long black banner and read out the names of the victims, then displayed separate banners emblazoned with the words “Srebrenica”, “Responsibility” and “Solidarity”.
Stasa Zajovic, the head of Women in Black, explained that Serbian courts do not recognise the massacres in July 1995 as genocide, and that both the state and Serbian society still deny that genocide was committed, despite the verdicts of international courts.
“It is necessary to respect the facts established by international courts, to acknowledge the dignity and the suffering of the victims, and to assign to civil society organisations a permanent location [in Serbia] for the construction of a monument to the victims of Srebrenica,” Zajovic said.
So far a total of 6,575 genocide victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre in Potocari.
According to verdicts handed down by the Hague Tribunal and the Bosnian state court, more than 7,000 men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995.
A baby and a woman in her nineties are the youngest and oldest victims of Srebrenica to have been buried so far.
The mass killings were followed by an operation by Bosnian Serb forces aimed at concealing the crimes in secondary and tertiary mass graves.
The Hague Tribunal and domestic courts have sentenced 45 people to 699 years in prison – plus three life sentences – for genocide, crimes against humanity and other offences against Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995.
There are still several ongoing cases, as well as cases which are not being prosecuted.
At least nine Serbs suspected of genocide and other crimes in Srebrenica have fled Bosnia to enjoy refuge from prosecution in Serbia, where they remain free despite alleged involvement in the massacres.
This website was created and maintained with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of BIRN and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
