Bosnia Muslims mourn their dead 25 years after Srebrenica
Bosnian Muslims yesterday began marking the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre, the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.
Proceedings started in the morning with the burial at the memorial cemetery in Potocari, a village outside Srebrenica, of the remains of nine victims identified over the past year.
On July 11, 1995, after capturing the town, Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in a few days.
Sehad Hasanovic was two years old when he lost his father in the violence, the same age as his daughter now.
“It’s difficult when you see someone calling their father and you don’t have one,” he said at the funeral ceremony.
His father, Semso, “left to go into the forest and never returned.
“Only a few bones have been found,” Mr Hasanovic said.
Like his brother Sefik and father Sevko, Semso was killed when Bosnian Serb troops led by Ratko Mladic entered the Srebrenica enclave before killing Bosnian men and boys.
“The husbands of my four sisters were killed,” said Ifeta Hasanovic, 48, whose husband Hasib was one of the nine victims whose remains have been identified since July, 2019.
“My brother was killed, so was his son. My mother-in-law lost another son as well as her husband.” The carnage, described as genocide by two international courts, came at the end of the 1992-1995 war between Bosnia’s Croats, Muslims and Serbs that claimed about 100,000 lives.
So far, the remains of nearly 6,900 victims have been found and identified from more than 80 mass graves.
Mladic, a military commander still regarded as a hero by many Serbs, was sentenced to life in prison by a UN court in 2017 over war crimes including the Srebrenica genocide. He is awaiting a decision on his appeal.
Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, was also sentenced to life in prison in The Hague.
The Srebrenica massacre is the only episode of the Bosnian conflict to be described as genocide by the international community.