It’s vital to keep telling my story – war survivor

NEDžAD Avdic was 17 when he survived the Srebenica massacre in July 1995 after being wounded and left for dead by Serb killers under the command of General Ratko Mladic.

He told his story on a visit to Wales to launch the Welsh language version of educational materials for schools on the massacres in which 8,000 Muslim Bosnians, mainly men and boys, were slaughtered.

The father of three, who returned to live in Srebenica in 2007, said it was important to tell his story because of the rise of nationalism and division across the world.

Taken prisoner by units of the Bosnian Serb Army, along with thousands of other Muslim men and boys, Nedžad was told “you will have treatment according to the Geneva Convention” before being held in a school building from where he was taken to a field to be shot.

“They put us in lines and began to fire. I heard shooting and fell down and lost consciousness. Everywhere there were bullets. I saw people fall down and felt pain in my arm and stomach where I had been shot.

“I saw a soldier’s boot in front of my face and thought he would kill me but he shot the man near me, then they left. It was dark but there was moonlight. I saw lines and lines of dead bodies in front of me.”

Fearing he would die without his mother ever knowing what had happened to him, the teenager saw an injured man moving. They crawled towards each other and bit through the ropes tying their hands before stumbling to a nearby trench.

“We heard trucks coming for the next killings. I was in a very bad condition and fell asleep on his knees.”

For the next four days and nights the men staggered through forests, sleeping in bushes and eating mushrooms.

Badly injured, Nedžad could not walk so the older man carried him as they dodged Serb soldiers and landmines.

Eventually they stumbled into a Bosnian Muslim village where frightened inhabitants helped them.

Taken to hospital, Nedžad was eventually reunited with his mother and three younger sisters.

Later he found out that he and the man who helped him, who left Bosnia after the war, were the only survivors of the Srebrenica massacre on July 14, 1995 – just one of the mass killings carried out by the Bosnian Serb Army between July 11 and 22, 1995.

Nedžad’s father, uncles and cousins were also slain in the war as well as neighbours and school friends.

The Srebenica massacres alone, just one part of that war, was the worst genocide in Europe since World War II.

Nedžad says it is vital to keep telling his story, not just for the city whose new mayor Mladen Grujicic denies the genocide took place, but as a warning to the world.

“Srebenica is a problem for the world. This happened under the UN flag. We thought this would never happen.

“It is important to talk about it because of the rise in nationalism and racism in Europe and things are getting worse in Bosnia.”

He said he feels no hate towards those who tried to kill him that night.

“Hate is destructive but we need to talk about what happened.”

With him launching Welsh language educational materials compiled by charity Remembering Srebenica at Cardiff and Vale College was Reshav Trbonja who was a teenager living in Sarajevo when it was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces for four years from 1992 to 1996 and former South Wales Police officer Howard Tucker who became a UN war crimes investigator in Bosnia.