Emotional scenes mark Srebrenica burials in Bosnia

By Talha Ozturk

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AA) - Thousands of people are beginning to gather at a memorial center and cemetery in Potocari, eastern Bosnia, to mark the 22nd anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

The memorial center -- just north of Srebrenica -- is the focal point of remembrance for a large number of friends and relatives of the more than 8,000 people, mostly men and boys, murdered by Bosnian Serb militias.

Among this year's guests will be Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey Numan Kurtulmus plus Serbian politicians Cedomir Jovanovic and Sasa Jankovic.

Seventy-one recently identified victims were buried in a collective funeral. Tears and silence accompanied the scene as the green coffins were lined up side-by-side.

There were emotional scenes as relatives of the victims prepared to bid their last farewells to their beloved ones.

Mothers, wives, sisters and other relatives, with tears in their eyes, opened their hands in prayer, touching the flower-laden coffins.

Amid intense suffering, many were burying their loved ones after long years of waiting for their remains to be located and identified.

Meanwhile, relatives of previously buried victims were also gathering at the memorial to visit graves, to pray and to console the others.

"Never Forget" -- a slogan born out of the Srebrenica genocide -- could be read everywhere, the words borne on people's clothes, vehicles and displayed on posters.

The youngest victim among the 71 dead to be buried on Tuesday is Damir Suljic, a 15-year-old boy. Suljic was buried next to his father (buried in 2009), his grandfather and uncle.

- Failure of 'safe area'

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces attacked the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops tasked with acting as international peacekeepers.

Srebrenica was besieged by Serb forces who were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form their own state.

The UN Security Council had declared Srebrenica a "safe area" in the spring of 1993. However, Serb troops led by General Ratko Mladic -- who now faces genocide charges at The Hague -- overran the UN zone.

The Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing about 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone. Some 15,000 Srebrenica people fled into the surrounding mountains but Serb troops hunted down and killed 6,000 of them in the forests.

So far 6,575 victims have been buried at the Potocari Memorial Centre. At last year's commemoration, 127 Srebrenica victims were interred at the site.

Every year, the remains of more victims are identified and buried in Potocari on the anniversary of the genocide.

However, hundreds of Bosniak families are still searching for missing people as a large number of victims were thrown into mass graves around the country during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

A total of 8,400 people remain missing since the war’s end, according to the Institute for Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina.