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Al Jazeera
6 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Across 100 kilometres, they walk where Srebrenica's dead once ran
Thirty years later, one man joins thousands on a three-day journey along the once-deadly path of remembrance in Bosnia. More than 7,000 people arrived in a tiny village in Bosnia to commemorate victims [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] More than 7,000 people arrived in a tiny village in Bosnia to commemorate victims [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] Nezuk and Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina – Thirty years ago, thousands of Bosniak men and boys emerged emaciated from the forests surrounding the quiet Bosnian village of Nezuk. Their gaunt faces and skeletal frames told only part of the story – visible hints of a far deeper horror that would fully emerge only after the mass graves of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide were found. Today, Sejfudin Dizdarevic, 48, lives a life worlds apart from the desperate men who once fled through these woods. But he and thousands of others have just spent three days walking the same path. 'Knowing this history, it makes you humble,' Dizdarevic said about his participation in the annual remembrance walk called the Peace March. 'Knowing that you are going [on] the path [where] not only people were killed, but also [that those] who survived ... were hiding exactly in the spot [in] which you are marching now.' A banner flies in the village of Nezuk, where the march began on July 8 [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] In July 1995, the town of Srebrenica and surrounding villages fell to Bosnian Serb forces, whose nationalist and territorial ambitions were emboldened by the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Bosniak males, who were being hunted, fled the area, crossing the thickly forested slopes of eastern Bosnia for days and even weeks on end in a journey now referred to as 'the death march'. During their trek, they evaded deceptive calls by Bosnian Serb forces, who tried to lure them to surrender with false promises of safety. Many of the Bosniak men and boys saw their counterparts slaughtered en masse and were forced to wade through the pungent odour of their corpses stiffening under the blazing July heat. Since 2005, Bosnians and people from around the world have been embarking on the three-day, 100-kilometre (62-mile) walk from Nezuk to the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Potocari, where newly identified victims are still laid to rest each year. Dizdarevic, a Bosnian war refugee who fled to Germany in 1992, has been returning to take part in the march for the last four years and organising groups of nationals from other countries to join him. While Dizdarevic, who is Bosniak, was not personally affected by the Srebrenica genocide, some of his family members were killed during Bosnia's three-year war from 1992 to 1995. 'My intention is to show respect for those who were killed in the genocide,' he explained. The marchers walked along rolling green hills and stony slopes [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] The marchers walked along rolling green hills and stony slopes [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] The first day of the march this year, July 8, was unbearably hot, the sun beating down on the nearly 7,000 people beginning their days-long journey. Spectators lined the march's path, stepping out into their front yards to offer quiet acts of solidarity – holding signs commemorating the genocide, handing out food, and passing bottles of water to the participants. People wore coordinated outfits, many featuring slogans in remembrance of the genocide. Dizdarevic's group of 40 included Bosniaks, Germans, Turks, Americans and a Dutch nurse who had first come to Srebrenica during the war with Doctors Without Borders. Dizdarevic, centre, and his group during the march [Courtesy of Sejfudin Dizdarevic] As a veteran of the march, Dizdarevic advised his group to begin physically training as early as February, but he struggled to prepare them emotionally. 'When you talk to some people who survived genocide and they tell you your story ... there is no way to prepare for that,' he explained. The scars of his country's past still resonate deeply with Dizdarevic, and he feels a duty to raise awareness about it. It's what drives him to organise others to take part. On that first day, Dizdarevic heard a swirl of languages being spoken around him, which underscored just how far people had come to show their solidarity. 'It's very important to me that the people will learn the lessons of this genocide because if we don't draw the right lessons from this genocide, [the victims] were killed in vain,' he said. As the day stretched into late afternoon, and the marchers continued across rolling green hills and stony slopes, the sweltering heat suddenly gave way to unexpected showers and powerful gusts of wind. But Dizdarevic and his team were prepared for all weather conditions. Eventually, night fell, and the group arrived in the village of Josanica, where they camped for their first overnight stop. As is common among marchers, Dizdarevic arranged for his group to stay at the home of Srebrenica genocide survivors – some slept inside, while others pitched tents in a yard wet from the rain. Their bellies full from food handed out by strangers and charities supporting the marchers, they had only one resolve: to complete the walk. Dizdarevic met two survivors who had hidden from Bosnian Serb forces in the forests [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] Dizdarevic met two survivors who had hidden from Bosnian Serb forces in the forests [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] After a night of rain, the trail was slick with mud. As the group traversed the mountain of Udrc in the Dinaric Alps, Dizdarevic explained, through shallow breaths, that the muddy conditions were slowing them down. It was there, on the mountain, that he met two survivors of the genocide - men who had hidden in the forests from Bosnian Serb forces in the summer of 1995. Hasan Hasanovic and Mevludin Hrnjic, both young men at the time, spent 80 days in hiding. Hasanovic was just 19 and lost his father and twin brother in the killings. Years later, they were found in mass graves. Hrnjic, then 24, lost his father and four of his brothers. He was the only male in his family to emerge from the woods to safety and to his mother. He later told his story in a book he authored, Witness to the Srebrenica Genocide. 'That was a very emotional moment for me,' Dizdarevic said, about walking with the two survivors where they had run for their lives three decades earlier. As they walked together, he tried to put himself in their shoes, but Dizdarevic was sure it was just a glimpse of the hardships they went through. 'Look, we have all [the] logistical support. There are people from the Red Cross helping us to get up the mountain [with ropes],' he said. It's already 'very, very hard', without having to worry about being killed, or having no food or shelter, he added. The marchers walked mostly in silence, their heads bowed. Then, Dizdarevic encountered his most difficult moment of the day: walking through the so-called 'death valley' in Kamenica, where smaller mass graves had been found along the Drina River basin. 'You cannot comprehend how massive this was and what destruction [it caused] not only for the people killed, but also for their families,' he reflected. The gravesites there were found near the homes of Bosniaks, in their yards or in nearby meadows. Now, memorial plaques honour the Srebrenica victims at several of the sepulchres. At the end of the second day, Dizdarevic and his group once again camped at a genocide survivor's home, this time in the village of Pubode. People pray among the gravestones of Srebrenica victims [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] People pray among the gravestones of Srebrenica victims [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] On the third and final day, Dizdarevic and most of those around him could not contain their emotions as they reached Potocari, the site of the memorial to Srebrenica victims. In the grassy valley dotted with row upon row of white marble tombstones, are the remnants of the gray slab concrete buildings where the UN Dutch battalion had been stationed to protect Bosniaks during the war. But in July 1995, the battalion was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces, leading to the bloodshed that ensued. Reaching the site where thousands were brutally killed brought 'overwhelming sadness' to Dizdarevic. 'It was very emotional,' he said. But Dizdarevic was also awash with relief – not only from the physical toll of the march being over, but also from the emotional weight of having walked in the footsteps of victims who never made it to safety. 'It was very important for every one of us to finish this march,' he said. 'This remembrance should lead to a prevention of potential future genocide.' As he and his companions set up one final camp in Potocari, before the memorial event there the next day on the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Dizdarevic pondered what justice for its victims looks like. 'The search for justice ... is a very difficult process ... Even more difficult is that the Serbian society ... [is] very in favour of this genocide,' he said. 'I am afraid that Serbian society – they did not undergo this catharsis [of] saying, 'Yes, we did this and we are guilty, sorry.' [On the] contrary, they are very proud of it ... or they deny it.' In the years since, the International Court of Justice and courts in the Balkans have sentenced almost 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials collectively to more than 700 years in prison for the genocide. But many of the accused remain unpunished, and genocide denial is rampant, especially among political leaders in Serbia and the Serb-majority entity of Republika Srpska. Milorad Dodik, the entity's current leader, whose image appears on billboards flashing the three-finger salute, a symbol of Serb nationalism, has dismissed the Srebrenica genocide as a 'fabricated myth'. The group arrived in Potocari a day before the 30th anniversary event [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] Still, Dizdarevic has held on to hope, a feeling renewed during the march as he watched countless young people take part, many of them born after the Bosnian war. 'What is, for me, very important, [is] that the young men and women who participate in this march understand ... they should play an active role in the prevention of future genocide by creating a positive environment in their societies,' he said. On July 11, the day after the march ended, Dizdarevic and his group joined thousands in Potocari to mark the sombre anniversary, where the remains of seven newly identified victims were laid to rest. There, they stood in solemn silence as the coffins were lowered into freshly dug graves, soon to be marked with new marble headstones, joining the more than 6,000 others already laid to rest. Reporting for this article was made possible by the NGO Islamic Relief. A woman sits next to the gravestone of a relative at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Potocari [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera] A woman sits next to the gravestone of a relative at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Potocari [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera]
Daily Mail
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Sophie reveals her emotions on taking Duchess of Edinburgh title, as she pays tribute to late Queen Elizabeth II - and opens up on being seen as Royal Family's 'secret weapon'
Sophie has revealed it was 'emotional' taking on the Duchess of Edinburgh title as it was previously held by her beloved mother-in-law the late Queen Elizabeth II. Speaking during her visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina this week, the duchess said her change in title in 2023 'felt like quite a big moment'. Sophie was formerly the Countess of Wessex, but became the Duchess of Edinburgh after the King handed her husband Edward, Charles' youngest brother, their late father's title on his 59th birthday. This was in keeping with his parents' wishes and in recognition of Edward's commitment to the Duke of Edinburgh 's Award youth scheme. Sophie said in an interview with The Mirror: 'First of all it was quite large shoes to fill because not as many of the population alive today will remember but the Queen was Duchess of Edinburgh for the first few years when she and my father-in-law first married. 'For me, it was quite an emotional thing to sort of step into her shoes [as being Duchess of Edinburgh], it felt like quite a big moment.' She explained, however, that in practical terms her and her husband's role is to support the King as it was to support the Queen. In her interview, Sophie also opened up on what it is like being seen as the Royal Family's 'secret weapon'. She explained that she doesn't see herself as being in a 'front and centre' role, which allows her more time to pursue her own interests. Sophie said: 'I like to fly under the radar. It's all very well being a secret weapon but if no one knows, maybe it's too secret.' 'I suppose I should take it as a backhanded compliment,' she added. Sophie has this week been in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a three-day trip to mark the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide. During the visit, Sophie has met mothers of victims of the genocide and delivered a message from the King. King Charles said he was 'greatly saddened' not to be there in person, adding that he is 'most touched and grateful to be able to share these words as we pay our respects'. He said: 'I have spoken before about the terrible events of thirty years ago, confirmed as genocide by international courts. 'Many of the individuals responsible are now rightly facing justice, but this does not absolve the rest of us of our duties: both to acknowledge the international community's failure to prevent the horror, and to do all we can to ensure it never happens again. 'I humbly salute the Mothers of Srebrenica, and all who do so much, despite their continuing anguish, to preserve the memory of those who died. 'It has meant a very great deal to me, in past years, to have met survivors, mothers and family members of the missing, for whom I have such admiration. 'Their extraordinary courage, compassion and dignity are a lesson to us all, and it is my hope that we may all take inspiration from their incredible resilience under such unbearable circumstances.' Charles also spoke of taking inspiration from 'those who bravely speak out in pursuit of justice and those who dedicate their lives to rebuilding trust between communities for the sake of a better, shared future'. He said: 'These praiseworthy individuals can be found from all walks of life, and from across all ethnic groups, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and around the world. 'But there can be no shared future when the events of the past are denied or forgotten. 'Only by learning from the past does it become possible to share in each other's loss and look together to the future. 'Only by working together to find the missing can there be closure for those still seeking answers. 'Three decades on, it is ever more important to remember all those who suffered, and to redouble our efforts to ensure a peaceful, stable future for all the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.' He concluded his message by saying: 'Today, as we remember the victims, those who so tragically died and those who were left behind, let us honour their memory by standing alongside each and every one of those who work so tirelessly to promote understanding and tolerance between all peoples, of all faiths, nationalities and ethnicities, in the ongoing pursuit of a just and brighter future.' More than 8,000 men and boys were killed on July 11, 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces amid the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. It was Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War.
SBS Australia
12-07-2025
- Politics
- SBS Australia
'My heart is wounded': Rukija's husband was killed in the Srebrenica genocide 30 years ago
Rukija Avdić cries as she recalls the night 30 years ago when her family and home were torn apart. It began with shouts. Run, run! The Serbian army has entered! Srebrenica is falling! Run! Avdić calls it "that catastrophe" — the massacre of around 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces in the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the largest mass killing in Europe since World War Two. Among the dead was Avdić's husband and twin brother. "I don't know which was worse, losing my brother or my husband," she tells SBS News. "My heart is wounded." Rukija Avdić cries as she looks at photos of husband and brother who were killed in Srebrenica. She says around 40 members of her extended family were killed during the war. Source: SBS News She last saw them on 11 July 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić entered the small mountain town, which was then a United Nations safe zone. Mladić's soldiers were later found by a UN war crimes tribunal to have carried out the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims — known as Bosniaks — who were the majority ethnic group in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time. In 2017, Mladić was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The fall of Srebrenica Recalling the moment the town came under attack, Avdić says, "there were screams and cries". "My husband wasn't with me at that moment. I was alone with my four children and my mother. "When I saw and heard the screams, I ran down the stairs and quickly grabbed the children. I thought they were going to burn us alive." Avdić says she heard Mladić shouting and telling people to leave for nearby Potočari. On her way there with her children, she stopped near her uncle's home. "When night fell, my husband appeared. He wanted to see where I was, to see the children, to say goodbye. My brother was there too," Avdić says. My husband said: 'Rukija, please, take care of yourself. Here, take this ring from my finger. Take care of the children. We may never see each other again. May Allah help you.' "My brother said too: 'Dear sister, I know you're my twin, I can't live without you, but I have to. "He gave me his prayer beads and his prayer mat. He was very religious." Avdić says her husband and brother then fled to hide from Mladić's troops. "The kids screamed and cried: 'Daddy, daddy, come back!' He turned and walked into the forest. But they were ambushed there. The army was waiting for them. They were prepared." Along with tens of thousands of other Bosniak women and children who lost husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, Avdić was put on an evacuation bus and forcibly displaced. After a night in Potočari, she recalls the chilling words of the man who to this day remains in prison in the Hague as a war criminal. Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic on the second day of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands in 2012. Source: SBS News / AP "Mladić came and spoke. I saw him, heard his voice," Avdić says. "He said… 'Kill, kill, only if it's a male child, kill him.' "I panicked. I took my headscarf and wrapped it around my son Jusuf, put him in girls' clothes. I did the same with Halid, dressed him in traditional girls' pants, so they would think they were girls. "Halid was two; Jusuf around five years old. They were all so little." Avdić remembers witnessing massacres with her own eyes. "When I passed through Potočari, I saw our men. They were all bound, naked. And I heard the gunshots. I witnessed a huge number of our men killed. But I still had hope that [my husband] would return. That he would come back and bring joy to his children." For five years, Avdić and her four young children lived in tents. They moved into an abandoned home in central Bosnia before coming to Australia in 2000. Refugees in the Tuzla camp, after being displaced from Srebrenica and surrounding Bosniak villages. Source: Getty / Patrick Robert - Corbis/Sygma via Getty Images Remains found decades later Like many of the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of Srebrenica, it wasn't until decades after the "catastrophe" that Avdić found out what happened to the men in her family. In 2012, she received confirmation that her husband's remains had been found. "It was terrible. We were heartbroken," she says. "My father-in-law told me I had to come to bury him. That was the hardest part." Two years earlier, she had also buried her twin brother. Every year, more and more bodies are found. Even after 30 years, many haven't been identified. It was also difficult for children left fatherless by the genocide to bury fathers they hardly remembered. Avdić says her son broke down seeing his father's coffin, though he was only six when he last saw him. "When he lowered it, he screamed. He pulled his own hair out. In that moment, he nearly went mad," she says. "He wanted to gather four stones to bring them back to Australia for his sisters, his brother, and himself to have something to remember that day by. To never forget it. It was very hard for them." Victims of the Srebrenica genocide are buried at the Memorial Center in Potocari, Bosnia. Source: AAP / Darko Bandic/AP War and the collapse of Yugoslavia The armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina broke out three years before the genocide, in 1992, amid the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Bosnia and Herzegovina were one of six social republics that made up the former Yugoslavia. In 1991, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia declared independence from the bloc. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence the following year, not wanting to remain in a country that would thereafter be run by Serbia, the largest of the republics, and its nationalist leader Slobodan Milošević. For centuries, Serbs, Croats and Muslims across the socialist bloc lived together but when Yugoslavia collapsed, fighting broke out between the ethnic groups. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian-aligned armed forces launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the majority Muslim population, with the aim of establishing the Bosnian Serb Republic. What became known as the Yugoslav Wars resulted in an estimated 140,000 deaths, according to the International Center for Transitional Justice. An estimated 100,000 people were killed in the Bosnian War alone — most were Bosnian Muslims. The Bosnian capital Sarajevo was under siege for nearly four years, while Bosniak villages in the east, near the border with Serbia, came under attack and mass killings of Muslims were reported from 1993. Thousands were sent to concentration camps, where there were reports of killing, torture and starvation. Malnourished Croatian and Bosnian Muslim prisoners of war in Manjaca, the largest Serbian concentration camp, 1992. Source: Getty / Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Avdić says she had been living "a good life" in the town of Osat, about 20km east of Srebrenica, until war came to her doorstep. She was pregnant with her fourth child at the time. "There were barricades, we couldn't get to town," she says. "I went into labour alone at home. I gave birth by myself. It was very hard." The years of conflict leading up to the genocide were traumatic for Avdić. "I remember the grenades the most, the fear. Then my husband went to the front line, because he had to protect Srebrenica, to defend the town. I was always afraid that someone would come to the door to take the children. "In 1993, when I was at home, a grenade fell close to me, maybe five metres away. I was holding my child in my arms. And then I lost my hearing. The grenade damaged my left ear." Avdić was among the tens of thousands of people who left their homes for Srebrenica believing it to be safer. But the enclave was frequently shelled. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serb forces controlled the access roads and impeded the supply of international humanitarian aid, such as food and medicine, into the town. The UN declared Srebrenica a safe zone in April 1993 and days later called for a total ceasefire in the town, deploying United Nations Protection Forces. Troops rotated and Dutch peacekeepers were on duty when the Srebrenica genocide began to unfold. They were not permitted to use force except in self defence and were later found to have been partly responsible for some of the deaths in Srebrenica. 'No peace without justice': The war crimes tribunal Atrocities were reported from the start of the collapse of the Yugoslav Republic in 1991, and in response, the UN Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993. The tribunal's task was to prosecute those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law. Australian lawyer Graham Blewitt AM, who had in the early 1990s prosecuted Australians believed to have participated in Nazi war crimes, went to the Hague in 1994 to become the deputy prosecutor for the ICTY, a post he held for a decade. "There were reports coming in daily of massacres and atrocities being committed throughout the Balkans," Blewitt tells SBS News. When he arrived, the ICTY had barely started its work and he was responsible for setting up the tribunal. "It was left to me to start recruiting and to set up the office," he says. "I relied on my experience both doing the Nazi war crimes work and my work at the National Crime Authority to design the prosecutor's office." Graham Blewitt (front right), with the judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 1994. Credit: Supplied Once set up, Blewitt says they started investigating and prosecuting war crimes. "It was a lot of pressure … the tribunal could not fail because if it did, it would set back the initiatives that were taking place then to establish a permanent international criminal court. "By November [1994], we had already issued our first indictment, which kept the judges very happy." Blewitt says while his team were "up to [their] necks" investigating many other atrocities that had already occurred, he distinctly remembers hearing reports that "something terrible" had occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995. "Within a few days, the reports started to gather momentum and it became very clear that there was something very serious happening in Srebrenica," he says. At that stage, we had no idea that it was going to turn into a genocide. But we realised it was serious enough that we needed to get a team on it straight away. Blewitt says he pulled people from other teams and formed a special investigation unit, which began gathering evidence. With assistance from the US, the team sourced aerial imagery of mass grave sites, determining the location of victims who had been executed. "Once the Serbs found out that we were aware of the grave sites … they started to remove the bodies from those graves, took them to more remote locations and buried the bodies in secondary graves," Blewitt says. "We were able to identify both the primary grave sites and the secondary sites, and we decided to carry out exhumations of the bodies in those grave sites." LISTEN TO SBS English 05/08/2024 07:19 English The ICTY's investigations quickly established that Mladić and the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić were primarily responsible for the killings and took steps to indict them. "Towards the end of 1995 after Srebrenica happened, it was quite clear there was a genocide, and the international community set up peace talks in Dayton [Ohio]," Blewitt says. But there was concern a peace treaty might see Karadžić and Mladić evade accountability, so the ICTY issued their indictments in November. "Our view was that you can't have peace without justice and they were the primary persons responsible for the genocide, so they had to be prosecuted." Defining genocide Both Karadžić and Mladić were found guilty of war crimes and genocide in 2016 and 2017 respectively and handed life sentences. They remain in prison in the Hague. In 1999, then Serbian president Slobodan Milošević was charged with a total of 66 counts of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes across Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, becoming the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes by an international tribunal. Milošević was found dead in his cell in the Hague while on trial in 2006. Graham Blewitt holding the indictment for the Slobodan Milošević, then the Serbian President, in 1999. Credit: Supplied The ICTY determined the mass killings of Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica constituted the crime of genocide. "Just looking at the definition of genocide, that there has to be the intent to destroy in whole or in part a political, ethnic, or religious group," Blewitt says. "Looking at Srebrenica, what the Bosnian Serbs were trying to do and in fact did do, was to kill all the men and boys from Srebrenica, and there were thousands of them. In our view that met the criteria for the definition of genocide and that then led to the charge genocide being brought. The tribunal ultimately indicted a total of 161 individuals. "[All of them were] either arrested, stood trial, some were convicted, some were acquitted, some died. But at the end and certainly in my point of view it was a complete and utter success," Blewitt says. "Something I'm very proud of being able to have been involved in." Remembering the victims Commemorations are being held around the world this week, including in Potočari, Bosnia, and by Australia's Bosniak community. Kissing the photos of her husband and brother, Avdić says it's important to tell their stories, so future generations know what happened in Srebrenica. "It's for my children, and my grandchildren," she says. "Because my heart, it can never be young again. It destroyed my best years, my youth. I was only 29 years old." This story was produced in collaboration with SBS Bosnian.
Al Jazeera
11-07-2025
- Al Jazeera
‘Just a few bones': 30 years on, Srebrenica still buries its dead
Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina – In a grassy valley dotted with white gravestones, thousands of people gathered to mark 30 years since the Srebrenica massacre on Friday. Seven victims of the 1995 genocide, some of whose remains were only discovered and exhumed in the past year from mass graves uncovered in Liplje, Baljkovica, Suljici and Kamenicko Brdo, were buried during the sombre anniversary on Friday. Limited remains of one of the victims, Hasib Omerovic, who was 34 when he was killed, were found and exhumed from a mass grave in 1998, but his family delayed his burial until now, hoping to recover more. Zejad Avdic, 46, is the brother of another of the victims being buried. Senajid Avdic was just 19 when he was killed on July 11, 1995. His remains were discovered in October 2010 at a site in Suljici, one of the villages attacked that day by Bosnian Serb forces. 'When the news came, at first, I couldn't – I didn't – dare tell my mother, my father. It was too hard,' Avdic told Al Jazeera, referring to the moment he learned that some of his brother's remains had been found. 'What was found wasn't complete, just a few bones from the skull.' Families like Avdic's have waited decades for even a fragment of bone to confirm their loved one's death. Many have buried their loved ones with only partial remains. The Srebrenica massacre was the crescendo of Bosnia's three-year war from 1992 to 1995, which flared up in the aftermath of Yugoslava's dissolution, pitting Bosnian Serbs against the country's two other main ethnic populations – Croats and Muslim Bosniaks. On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces stormed the enclave of Srebrenica, a designated United Nations-protected safe zone, overrunning the Dutch UN battalion stationed there. They separated at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters, slaughtering them en masse. Thousands of men and boys attempted to escape through the surrounding woods, but Serb forces chased them through the mountainous terrain, killing and capturing as many as they could. Women and children were expelled from the city and neighbouring villages by bus. Thousands of people attended the commemoration for victims of the massacre on Friday, which began with a congregational Islamic prayer – men, women and children prostrating in unison among the rows of gravestones. After the prayer, the remains of the victims, who have been identified using extensive DNA analysis, were carried in green coffins draped with the Bosnian flag. The coffins were lowered into newly prepared graves. At each site, groups of men stepped forward to take turns covering the caskets with soil, shovelling from nearby mounds in a solemn conclusion to the proceedings. After the remains had been buried, the victims' families crowded around the sites, wiping away their tears as an imam recited verses over the caskets. 'I will keep coming as long as I'm alive' Fikrera Tuhljakovic, 66, attends the memorial here each year, but this year her cousin was among the victims being buried. She said she is determined to ensure he is remembered and that all of the victims are never forgotten. 'I will keep coming as long as I'm alive,' Tuhljakovic told Al Jazeera. Forensic scientists and the International Commission on Missing Persons have, in the decades since the mass killings, worked to locate the remains of those killed. More than 6,000 victims have been buried at the memorial site in Potocari, but more than 1,000 remain missing. In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the events in Srebrenica and the surrounding area a genocide. Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were both convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. In total, the tribunal and courts in the Balkans have sentenced almost 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the genocide. But many accused remain unpunished. Denial of the genocide also continues – especially among political leaders in Serbia and the Serb-majority entity of Republika Srpska, which was established in the northeast of the country at the start of the war in 1992 with the stated aim of protecting the interests of the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to Emir Cica, Islamic Relief's Bosnia country director, international institutions have not done enough to prevent events like Srebrenica from happening again, with similar atrocities happening in Gaza at the moment. 'When we see what has happened, for example, in Gaza, it is very painful for us because we understand this [experience],' Cica told Al Jazeera. For Avdic, Gaza is indeed a painful reminder of history repeating itself. 'Today we are burying our victims of genocide, and today in Gaza, genocide is happening, too,' he said solemnly. 'I don't know what kind of message to send; there's no effect on those in power who could actually do something.'
Arab News
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Thousands gather in Srebrenica to mark 30years since genocide against Bosniak Muslims
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Thousands of people from Bosnia and around the world gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 30th anniversary of a massacre there of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim boys and men — an atrocity that has been acknowledged as Europe's only genocide after the Holocaust. Seven newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre, including two 19-year-old men, were laid to rest in a collective funeral at a vast cemetery near Srebrenica Friday, next to more than 6,000 victims already buried there. Such funerals are held annually for the victims who are still being unearthed from dozens of mass graves around the town. Relatives of the victims, however, often can bury only partial remains of their loved ones as they are typically found in several different mass graves, sometimes kilometers (miles) apart. Such was the case of Mirzeta Karic, who was waiting to bury her father. 'Thirty years of search and we are burying a bone,' she said, crying by her father's coffin which was wrapped in green cloth in accordance with Islamic tradition. 'I think it would be easier if I could bury all of him. What can I tell you, my father is one of the 50 (killed) from my entire family,' she added. July 11, 1995, is the day when the killings started after Bosnian Serb fighters overran the eastern Bosnian enclave in the final months of the interethnic war in the Balkan country. After taking control of the town that was a protected UN safe zone during the war, Bosnian Serb fighters separated Bosniak Muslim men and boys from their families and brutally executed them in just several days. The bodies were then dumped in mass graves around Srebrenica which they later dug up with bulldozers, scattering the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes. The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide on the July 11 anniversary. Scores of international officials and dignitaries attended the commemoration ceremonies and the funeral. Among them were European Council President Antonio Costa and Britain's Duchess of Edinburgh, Sophie, who said that 'our duty must be to remember all those lost so tragically and to never let these things happen again.' Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said he felt 'humbled' because UN troops from the Netherlands were based in Srebrenica when Bosnian Serbs stormed the town. 'I see to what extent commemorating Srebrenica genocide is important,' he said. In an emotional speech, Munira Subasic, who heads the Mothers of Srebrenica association, urged Europe and the world to 'help us fight against hatred, against injustice and against killings.' Subasic, who lost her husband and youngest son in Srebrenica along with more than 20 relatives, told Europe to 'wake up.' 'As I stand here many mothers in Ukraine and Palestine are going through what we went through in 1995,' Subasic said, referring to ongoing conflicts. 'It's the 21st century but instead of justice, fascism has woken up.' On the eve of the anniversary, an exhibition was inaugurated displaying personal items belonging to the victims that were found in the mass graves over the years. The conflict in Bosnia erupted in 1992, when Bosnian Serbs took up arms in a rebellion against the country's independence from the former Yugoslavia and with an aim to create their own state and eventually unite with neighboring Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced before a US-brokered peace agreement was reached in 1995. Bosnia remains ethnically split while both Bosnian Serbs and neighboring Serbia refuse to acknowledge that the massacre in Srebrenica was a genocide despite rulings by two UN courts. Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, along with many others, were convicted and sentenced for genocide. Serbia's populist President Aleksandar Vucic expressed condolences on X while calling the Srebrenica massacre a 'terrible crime.' 'There is no room in Europe — or anywhere else — for genocide denial, revisionism, or the glorification of those responsible,' European Council President Costa said in his speech. 'Denying such horrors only poisons our future.'
