'Failure our greatest shame'
2005-07-11 12:21
Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Some 50 000 survivors, guests and dignitaries gathered on Monday at the site of Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II to mark the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica slaughter and to bury the newly identified bodies of 610 victims.
The sound of Muslim prayer echoed through a loudspeaker across the valley as family members wandered between the 610 caskets laid on the ground of the memorial centre ready to be buried.
"They killed my entire life and the only thing I want now is to see the guilty ones pay for it," said Fatima Budic, 60, as she wept next to the coffin of her son Velija, who was only 14 when he became one of the nearly 8 000 victims of the slaughter. Her husband Ohran and another son, who was 16, have never been found.
Shortly before the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, the town's population fled to the UN compound in nearby Potocari after Bosnian Serb soldiers overran Srebrenica - a UN-protected zone.
Slaughter
However, the Serb soldiers entered the camp and began a slaughter that left 8 000 Muslims dead, most of them men and boys. Their bodies were dumped in mass graves throughout eastern Bosnia. Dutch UN troops did nothing to prevent the massacre.
"The worst crime to take place in Europe in the latter part of the twentieth century took place here. The world's failure to protect the people of this country and the people in Potocari in particular is our greatest shame," said Bosnia's top international official, Paddy Ashdown.
Forensics experts so far have exhumed more than 5 000 bodies, 2 032 of which have been identified through DNA analysis and other techniques. More than 1 300 Srebrenica victims are already buried at the cemetery which is part of the memorial centre.
Apart from the survivors and local guests, the anniversary is being attended by presidents of countries in the region and by foreign ambassadors - including the architect of the peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke.
Bones of victims
The dignitaries visited a recently opened mass grave near Srebrenica, where they saw a mixture of bones of some 30 victims who were buried there after being shot at a nearby warehouse.
"That's where between 1 000 and 1 200 Bosnian Muslims were shot in two or three hours. We are talking about a mass execution with automatic weapons," said Amor Masovic, head of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons.
Afterward, one of Bosnia's leading intellectuals, Muhamed Filipovic, opened an international scientific conference about Srebrenica and called on the participants to "pay respect to the victims of this massacre as well as to the victims of the latest bombing in London".
Understand
"Terror is what threatens us all. We have experienced it and that's why we can understand it," he said.
Outside, families of the dead posted a huge banner that read: "Europe's shame - genocide. 8 106 murdered in Srebrenica."
The alleged masterminds of the July 11, 1995, massacre - Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic - have been indicted by the UN tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for genocide and crimes against humanity at Srebrenica and elsewhere. Both are still at large.
- AP