20,000 remember Srebrenica massacre victims
In an emotional ceremony at the site of the Bosnian slaughter, the crowd, including relatives of the 338 victims being reburied, fell on its knees in front of the caskets containing remains exhumed from mass graves.
Most of the mass of people at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre mourned silently. But some women sobbed and wailed as the green coffins were lowered into graves freshly dug next to mounds containing the remains of 998 previously identified victims.
Mustafa Ceric, the head of Bosnia’s Muslim community, asked God to bring healing to the hearts of those who lost husbands, sons and brothers.
The youngest identified Srebrenica victim was 15-years-old and the oldest 77. The victims were separated from the town’s women and children by Bosnian Serb troops who hauled them away, shot them and buried them in mass graves.
Dressed in black, more than a dozen Serbian women from the peace association Women in Black stood next to the graves offering support to the widows.
The deaths have come to symbolise Bosnia’s devastating 1992-95 war, which took some 260,000 lives and left half of the country’s population homeless. UN and Muslim experts have so far discovered remains of about 5,000 victims in mass graves. Bosnia’s president, Sulejman Tihic, reminded the crowd that many of the perpetrators are still at large. “The most important thing is the establishment of trust among the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina and we can build trust only on the basis of truth and justice,” Mr Tihic said.
Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs remains at large, along with his top general Ratko Mladic. Both are wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague for their alleged roles in the massacre and other war crimes.
While Bosnia’s Croats and Muslims have handed over all major suspects to the tribunal, the government of the Serb half of Bosnia has not followed suit.
