Srebrenica remembered

DISTRAUGHT and exhausted crowds offered prayers and laid flowers at a common grave in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica yesterday, marking the worst civilian massacre in Europe since the Second World War.

Amid temperatures hitting 36C (97F), widows and children mobbed tanker trucks, throwing water on their faces to wash away the sweat and tears.

Dozens sought help from medical teams after the ceremony to remember the 8,000 people killed when Bosnian Serb forces overran the so-called UN safe zone during the 1992-1995 war.

The mourners came from all over Bosnia to the former silver mining town northeast of the capital, Sarajevo, travelling on 112 buses while the helicopters of Nato-led peacekeepers hovered overhead. The Muslims have been unable to return home pawns of the failed political efforts to restore Bosnia to its pre-war state.

Alija Camdzic, 75, had to sit down on the grass to rest, shielding himself and his 70-year-old wife, Hava, from the sun with a black umbrella. The couple lost two sons, a pregnant daughter-in-law and a five-year-old granddaughter in the 1995 massacre.

"I have lost everything a man can lose," Camdzic said, misty eyes gazing past mourners in front of him. "And that's not the biggest tragedy. The biggest tragedy is that I'm still alive."

The mourners gathered at the former UN compound in Potocari, a one-time battery factory in Srebrenica's industrial zone. Some 40,000 Muslim residents of the community fled to the factory, seeking help from the UN peacekeepers when Serb forces swept into town on July 11, 1995.

While overwhelmed Dutch UN forces watched, Bosnian Serb soldiers entered the compound and separated men from women and children. The women were bused out of town while the men were systematically executed.

The survivors and families of the victims returned to dedicate a memorial composed of a single white marble pillar, similar to those used on Muslims graves here. Among them was 42-year-old Mujo Berberovic.

The former soldier and his family were fleeing advancing Serb forces through the forest when he decided to separate - since the army was hunting men of fighting age. He lost his wife, Mina, and their son, Aldin, aged 5.

"What a mistake that was," he said as his voice broke with emotion.

"I keep cursing the day we separated. I can still hear Aldin's words: 'Be careful, Dad.' If I could have just a cup of coffee with my Mina," he sobbed. "Just once."

Fed up with politicians who have often promised that refugees will be able to return to Srebrenica, yesterday's mourners insisted that memorial organisers leave out the speeches.

Only the head of the Muslim Community in Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric, led a prayer and offered a few words.

"We did not come here for revenge," Ceric said, arguing that the survivors merely want to learn what happened to their loved ones - and see that the perpetrators face justice.

"Justice is our destiny," he said.

About 2,000 Bosnian Serb policemen guarded the ceremony, but the survivors often glanced behind the police cordon, checking to make sure that US peacekeepers were still positioned on the hills surrounding the town.

Bosnia's Muslims retain a great deal of faith in the United States, in gratitude for initiating the Nato-led air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs in 1995.

The air strikes stopped the war and forced leaders to take part in talks that led to the Dayton peace deal.

In a nod to the gratitude of the Muslims, Ceric included the American victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in his prayer.