Bosnians mark 25 years of massacre
SREBRENICA: Dozens of world leaders on Saturday joined survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia to remember the victims of the only crime in Europe since World War II that has been declared a genocide.
Most international speakers urged tolerance and reconciliation in Bosnia, still ethnically divided 25 years since the brutal execution in July 1995 of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
But the Bosniak Muslim member of the country’s tripartite presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic - one of a few officials atending in person - went further, urging the world to demand Serb leaders finally accept responsibility and open the way for true reconciliation.
“I am calling on our friends from around the world to show not just with words but also with actions that they will not accept the denial of genocide and celebration of its perpetrators,” he said.
“The Srebrenica genocide is being denied (by Serb leaders) just as systematically and meticulously as it was executed in 1995. We owe it not just to Srebrenica, but to humanity, to oppose that,” he added.
On Saturday, the recently identified remains of nine victims were reburied in a memorial cemetery and centre just outside the town in eastern Bosnia.
Dozens of world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Britain’s Prince Charles, addressed the commemoration ceremony held on Saturday, before the funeral, via prerecorded video messages.
Judge Carmel Agius, President of the UN court that is currently completing war crimes trials stemming from the breakup of Yugoslavia, warned in his video message that the victims of the Srebrenica massacre “continue to be tormented by those who atempt to deny their lived experiences, and, thereby, their very existence.”
Agius voiced hope that the new generations in the Balkans will reject the narratives of their political leaders and “champion the truth and justice in honour of the victims we are commemorating today.”
Typically, thousands of visitors atend the commemoration service and funeral, but this year only a relatively small number of survivors were allowed at the cemetery due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, were both convicted of and sentenced for genocide in Srebrenica by a special UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.