SARAJEVO: Three decades after the Srebrenica genocide, relatives are still looking for and burying the remains of more than 8,000 men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb forces, revealing the painful scars cut deep into the country.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces stormed the Muslim enclave of more than 40,000 people in eastern Bosnia.
At the time, it was a “UN protected zone” — an ultimately hollow phrase meant to shield the many displaced people who had fled the 1992-1995 war.
General Ratko Mladic’s forces executed thousands of men and boys before burying them in mass graves.
BACKGROUND
An international criminal court has sentenced Gen. Ratko Mladic, and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to life jail terms for war crimes and genocide during the conflict
After decades of painstaking work, about 7,000 victims have been identified and properly buried, but about 1,000 remain missing.
Mass grave discoveries are now rare. The last was uncovered in 2021, when the remains of 10 victims were exhumed 180 kilometers (112 miles) southwest of Srebrenica.
This year, the remains of seven victims will be buried during the July 11 commemorations at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center, including two 19-year-old men and a 67-year-old woman.
“This year, I’m having my father buried. But only one bone, his lower jaw,” Mirzeta Karic told AFP.
The 50-year-old said her mother was very ill, and so she decided to go ahead with the burial without waiting for more remains to be found.
Her father, Sejdalija Alic, joined several thousand men and teenagers who tried to flee Mladic’s troops through the dense forests.
He failed.
His 22-year-old son, Sejdin, was also killed, as were Alic’s three brothers and their four sons.
He will be Karic’s 50th immediate family member laid to rest at Potocari cemetery.
The ceremony for her brother, Sejdin, was in 2003.
“I’ve been able to endure everything, but I think this funeral will be the worst. We’re having a bone buried. I can’t describe the pain.”
An international criminal court sentenced Mladic, now 83, and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, now 80, to life jail terms for war crimes and genocide during the conflict that left nearly 100,000 dead. Both are still incarcerated, but a proper reckoning inside the splintered Bosnian states remains overdue.
Political leaders in the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, reject the term genocide and regularly downplay the massacre.
“This denial is trivialized,” Neira Sabanovic, a researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, said.
“It is very rare to find someone in Republika Srpska who acknowledges that there was genocide,” she said.
Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik remains one of the most heard voices of genocide-denial in the statelet and Serbia.
Of 305 instances of denial or downplaying in Serbian and the Bosnian Serb media during 2024, he leads the way, appearing 42 times, according to an annual study published by the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
Last year, an international day of remembrance was established by the United Nations to mark the Srebrenica genocide, despite protests from Belgrade and Republika Srpska.
On Saturday, political leaders from the Bosnian Serb entity and Serbia, along with dignitaries from the Serbian Orthodox Church, will gather in Bratunac, near Srebrenica, for a commemoration of more than 3,200 eastern Bosnian Serb soldiers and civilians killed during the war.
Portraits of some 600 of these dead were hung along the road this week near the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
“These people are not participating in the same debate. They are having a conversation with themselves, and they are still in 1995,” the director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, Emir Suljagic, told local television on Thursday.
“We have won a very important battle, the battle for international recognition,” he added, referring to the UN resolution.
