Thousands of people from Bosnia and from around the world gathered in Srebrenica to commemorate the 30th anniversary of a 1995 massacre there of more than 8,000 Muslim children and men in Bosniak, which has been recognized as the only genocide in Europe after the Holocaust.
Seven recently identified victims of such funerals are carried out annually for victims who are still being discovered from dozens of massive tombs around the city.
The relatives of the victims, however, can often bury only partial remains of their loved ones, since they are generally found in several different masses graves, sometimes miles away. Such was the case of Mirzeta Karic, who was waiting to bury his father.
“Thirty years of search and we are burying a bone,” he said, crying for his father’s coffin who was wrapped in green fabric according to the Islamic tradition.
“I think it would be easier if I could bury it all. What can I tell you? My father is one of the 50 (killed) of my whole family.”
July 11, 1995 is the day when the murders began after the Serbian combatants of Bosnia invade the East Bosnian enclave in the last months of the inter -ethnic war in the country of the Balkans.
After taking control of the city that was a safe area of the UN protected during the war, the Bosnian Serbian combatants separated Bosniak Muslims men and children from their families and brutally executed them in just several days. Then, the bodies were thrown into massive tombs around Srebrenica, which then dug with excavators, dispersing the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes.
Last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to commemorate Srebrenica’s genocide on the anniversary of July 11. Dozens of international officials and dignitaries are expected to attend commemoration ceremonies and funeral on Friday.
On the eve of the anniversary, an exhibition was inaugurated that exhibited personal items belonging to the victims who found themselves in the massive tombs over the years.
The conflict in Bosnia broke out in 1992, when the Bosnian Serbs took arms in a rebellion against the independence of the country of ancient Yugoslavia and with the aim of creating their own state and finally joining with Serbia neighboring. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced before reaching a negotiated peace agreement in the United States in 1995.
Bosnia remains ethnically divided, while both the Bosnian Serbs and neighboring Serbia refuse to recognize that the massacre in Srebrenica was a genocide despite the decisions of two UN courts. The Serbian political and military leaders Bosnios Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, along with many others, have been convicted and condemned by genocide.
The populist president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, expressed his condolence in X while calling a “terrible crime.” Vucic added that “we cannot change the past but we must change the future.”
