Hundreds of victims of the Srebrenica massacre were reburied on Monday as more than 40,000 mourners looked on — solemnly paying their respects on the 16th anniversary of the worst crime in Europe since the Nazi era.
After a ceremony and collective prayer at the memorial center in the eastern Bosnian town that already contains more than 4,500 graves, survivors and volunteers hoisted 613 coffins wrapped in green cloth into the air and carried them to a field of freshly dug graves.
The youngest laid to rest was 11 years old and the oldest 82. Several people fainted as the names of the victims were read.
Among the dead was Nezira Ibisevic — just 20-years-old and freshly married when she fled murderous Serb forces with her husband, Hazim Smajlovic, and her brother.
As her coffin was lowered into the earth, her brother — Jusuf Ibisevic, who survived — leapt into her grave.
“May this earth not be too heavy for you sister,” he said, tears pouring down his cheeks as he began shoveling earth onto her coffin. Meanwhile, the sound of dirt from hundreds of shovels hitting wooden coffins echoed around the swelteringly hot valley.
Nezira’s husband’s body, along with about 3,000 others, is yet to be found, however a plot remains next to her grave for them one day to be reunited in death.
In July 1995, about 30,000 residents of mainly Muslim Srebrenica flocked to the UN military base in the suburb of Potocari. However, when Serb forces — led by recently arrested genocide suspect Ratko Mladic — arrived, the outnumbered Dutch troops simply opened the gate.
Serb soldiers then separated the crowd by gender and drove the men and boys to the fields. More than 8,000 men and boys were butchered over the following few days.
Fifteen thousand others — almost all men, as women were bussed by the Serbs to government territory — tried to escape, fleeing through the mountains in a desperate attempt to reach Bosnian government-held territory. Many were hunted down and executed — their bodies later found in mass graves.
During the ceremony, officials called on Serbs both in Bosnia and in neighboring Serbia to face the past and realize what was done in their name.
“A great number of Serb people refuse to face the truth,” said Bakir Izetbegovic, the Muslim Bosnian member of the country’s three-member presidency.
Izetbegovic attended the ceremony with his Bosnian Croat colleague, Zeljko Komsic.
The Bosnian Serb member failed to attend on Monday, as has been the case for 16 years, reflecting the deep division that still remains among Muslim Bosnians, Croats and Serbs who fought each other at various points of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war that cost 100,000 lives and culminated in the Srebrenica massacre.
“Those who deny this genocide, or attempt to minimize it, add immensely to the grief of those gathered here today,” US Ambassador to Bosnia Patrick Moon said.
This year’s commemoration has particular resonance as it follows the recent capture of Ratko Mladic, the commander accused of orchestrating the execution and now standing trial in The Hague.
Serbian President Boris Tadic attended last year’s commemoration, where he promised to do everything he could to arrest Mladic.
“He kept his promise,” Izetbegiovic, the son of late wartime Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic, said. “We finally have leaders in the region who are ready to face the past and build a better future.”
Izetbegiovic thanked Croatian President Ivo Josipovic for coming and telling the victims’ families they are not alone in their sorrow.
“However, there are parts of Bosnia and Serbia where Mladic is still celebrated as a hero,” he added.
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