SREBRENICA, Bosnia (Reuters) -Thousands of Bosnians gathered at a cemetery near Srebrenica on Friday to mark the 30th anniversary of a massacre in which more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys were executed by Bosnian Serb forces during a 1992-5 war.
About 1,000 victims have yet to be found from Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, which still haunts Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 3 million people decades later.
Families who retrieved victims’ remains have increasingly opted to bury even just a few bones to give them a final resting place.
At a ceremony on Friday, the partial remains of seven victims were to be buried alongside 6,750 already interred.
Survivors, families and dignitaries walked along rows of white gravestones. Some prayed and cried at the gravesides or sat motionless, heads buried in their hands.
“I feel such sadness and pain for all these people and youth,” said a woman called Sabaheta from the eastern town of Gorazde.
The massacre unfolded after Srebrenica – a designated U.N. “safe area” for civilians in Bosnia’s war that followed the disintegration of federal Yugoslavia – was overrun by nationalist Bosnian Serb forces.
While the women opted to go to the U.N. compound, men tried to escape through nearby woods where most of them were caught. Some were shot immediately, and others were driven to schools or warehouses where they were killed in the following days. The bodies were dumped in pits then dug up months later and scattered in smaller graves in an effort to conceal the crime.
General Ratko Mladic, who commanded the forces, was convicted of genocide by a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague along with Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic.
As part of the commemoration, nearly 7,000 people took part in a three-day peace march in reverse of the 100 km route that some Muslim Bosniak men managed to take from Srebrenica to escape the Bosnian Serb death squads.
Two international courts have ruled the massacre was genocide but Serb leaders in Bosnia and Serbia dispute the term, the death toll and the official account of what went on – reflecting conflicting narratives of the Yugoslav wars that still feed political divisions and stifle progress toward integration with Western Europe and the EU.
Last year, the U.N. General Assembly declared July 11 an international day of remembrance of the Srebrenica genocide, with many countries organising commemorations this year.
“This can never be forgotten. Who can say this wasn’t a genocide? Only a person without a soul,” Sabaheta said.
(Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Edward McAllister and Andrew Cawthorne)
