Former football player who fought Serb forces recalls Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia

By Kadir Yildiz

KOCAELI, Turkey (AA) - Senad Ibric Yuksel, who played for the Kocaelispor football club in Turkey and fought Serban forces on the frontlines, recalled to Anadolu Agency his experience and his pain on the 26th anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

After coming to Turkey in 1981, Yuksel played for Kocaelispor until the 1988-1989 season, and then returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He remained there and fought the Serbs during the war that started shortly after his return.

Yuksel, who fought on the frontlines for about a year, returned to Turkey.

He lived in the Karamursel district of the northwestern Kocaeli province but said he can not forget the pain he experienced during the war.

He became a Turkish citizen in 1994. Years later, Yuksel's eyes fill with tears and he has difficulty speaking about the massacre.

- 'How does one do such a thing?'

Yuksel said he fought Serb forces in Tuzla, the city where he was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He said general conditions at the time were "very bad" for the nation and there were attempts to establish a military organization.

But he remained and fought even though he was given an opportunity to leave.

"We fought in difficult conditions. Under normal circumstances, a soldier fights a soldier in a war. Unfortunately, the rape cases and the massacres of young children are the most painful for us. The massacres of mothers who took their children have worn us out," he said.

"We were thinking about these [things] when we were on the mountain. How does one do such a thing? At that time, they destroyed the artifacts from the Ottoman period," he said.

- 'Haven't eaten for days'

Noting that they were concentrating on gaining victory, Yuksel said: "We hadn't eaten for days. Sometimes we ate fruit regardless of whether it was ripe or not,” he said. “You forget the food after a while anyway."

"We were constantly looking around. We were doing assessments. Of my 21 soldiers, six were Serbs and five were Croats. These friends said 'Bosnia and Herzegovina is my homeland, I voted in the referendum, we have been together for years.'"

They wanted to help those in Srebrenica, Yuksel said, but the Chetniks, or guerrilla force, had superior weapons

Yuksel said they also tried to save villages on the front in Tuzla, where he served.

Pointing out that the region they were fighting in was in a central location, Yuksel said despite difficulties, they did not hold back from the fight.

- 'Reliving those sufferings'

"In Srebrenica, they massacred eight to 10 people from a family," he said.

"They murdered small children, our mothers, our grandfathers, people who could not bear arms. We commemorate Srebrenica with sadness, tears and reliving those pains," the former football player added.

- 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.

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 overran the UN zone. Mladic was later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing 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 areas in the country.

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

On June 8, 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.

*Writing by Jeyhun Aliyev from Ankara