Srebrenica Anniversary: Thousands Mark 21 Years Since Massacre

Former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted in March of war crimes for his role in the Srebrenica killings, considered a genocide by the UN-backed criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The Srebrenica funerals are unique among Muslims because they are attended by women which otherwise is not customary.

They were killed in the Serb Republic Army attack on the Srebrenica safe area in July 1995, Beta is reporting, adding that so far, 6,377 Bosniak (Muslim) victims have been buried in the Memorial Center.

“In Srebrenica, there was a crime, but it was not only a crime aimed against Muslim population, it was a crime on Serbian population”.

“If I only would find him and bury him… then I would at least have a pile of dirt to caress”, she said.

The leader of Bosnia’s Serb-led entity Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, said on Monday that he will never accept that the Srebrenica massacres were genocide, arguing that the number of victims has been exaggerated, regional television station N1 reported. He was acquitted of a second count of genocide in various towns across Bosnia during the war of the 1990s. July 11, the start of the five-day massacre, was made a national day of mourning by Bosnia’s weak post-war central government comprised of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.

This year, victims’ families demanded that those who deny the nature of the crime should not come so nobody from official Belgrade or the Serb half of now ethnically divided Bosnia, where Srebrenica is located, came.

Suljic buried her brother after his bones were found in three different mass graves.

“Acceptance and recognition of the truth is the first step toward genuine trust”, he said.

In 2015, the United Kingdom drafted a UN resolution condemning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre as a “crime of genocide”.

Thousands of grieving families stood by green-draped coffins in sweltering mid-summer heat, some kneeling, crying and hugging the caskets before they were lowered into freshly-dug graves.

According to the Telegraaf, there will also be a small ceremony on the Plein in The Hague on Monday afternoon to honor the 120 victims who were only identified this past year.