Bosnia sends off 50 more Srebrenica genocide victims to final rest

By Talha Ozturk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - The remains of 50 more victims of the Srebrenica genocide were sent on Friday for burial in the village of Potocari three days later on the 27th anniversary of the 1995 genocide.

Hundreds of people have arrived in the capital Sarajevo and the nearby town of Visoko to bid a final farewell to the recently identified victims.

Every year on July 11, newly identified victims of the genocide are buried in a memorial cemetery in Potocari in the eastern part of the country.

After passing by Vogosca, a Sarajevo suburb, a truck carrying the coffins draped with a large flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina stopped in front of the presidency near a memorial for children killed in the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995.

Around 1,500 children were massacred during the brutal 1995 siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces.

State officials and Sarajevo residents laid flowers on the vehicles carrying the bodies and held prayers.

Husein Kavazovic, the grand mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, led people in prayers for the departed.

Head of the three-men presidency Sefik Dzaferovic, Croat member of the Council Zeljko Komsic, and Turkish Ambassador Sadik Babur Girgin were present at the ceremony.

Dzaferovic told the media that forgetting this event risks it happening again.

"We will not forget what happened for both the victims and ourselves, we will always remember and respect the victims," said Dzaferovic.

Emotional scenes were witnessed as the truck passed through the streets, with large crowds of people, including women and children, crying and praying for the victims.

The youngest of the victims to be buried this year was Salim Mustafic, who was 16 years old when he was killed, while Husejin Krdzic, 59 when killed, was the oldest genocide victim among this year's identified victims.

After Monday's burials in Potocari, the number of genocide victims laid to rest in the memorial cemetery will rise to 6,721.

- Srebrenica genocide

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch peacekeeping troops.

The Serb forces were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form a state.

The UN Security Council had declared Srebrenica a “safe area” in the spring of 1993. However, troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, overran the UN zone.

Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing some 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone.

About 15,000 residents of Srebrenica fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted down and killed 6,000 more people.

Bodies of victims have been found in 570 different places in the country.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica.

On June 8, 2021, UN tribunal judges upheld in a second-instance trial a verdict sentencing Mladic to life in prison for the genocide, persecution, crimes against humanity, extermination, and other war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.