Bosnia Marks Srebrenica Massacre

UPDATED ON: Sunday, July 11, 2010

11:50 Mecca time, 08:50 GMT

Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Bosnians are marking 15 years since the massacre at Srebrenica, when Bosnian Serbs slaughtered almost 8,000 Muslims in Europe's worst mass killings since the Second World War.

A special ceremony is to be held at the Potocari ceremony outside the town on Sunday as the recently identified remains of 775 victims are laid to rest with the 3,749 already buried there.

The massacre occurred when Bosnian Serb troops advanced on Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave supposedly under the protection of United Nations forces.

The towns' men and boys fled into the surrounding hills, but were hunted down by the troops, who shot and buried them in mass graves.

They were then dug up and reburied in more than 70 sites in an effort to cover up the extent of the killings.

The massacre has been designated an act of genocide by the UN's war crimes court and the international court of justice. It is remembered as the darkest day in the bloody break-up of the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s.

Struggling To Recover

Sunday's memorial will be an emotional occasion for Srebrenica, which has struggled to recover from losing two generations of men and boys in the incident.
in depth

Hasan and Suhra Mahic, both in their eighties, will see their two sons Fuad and Suad buried during the service.

"I would have preferred that all of us have been killed together then we would not have had to live through this," Hasan said ahead of the ceremony.

Nearly 6,500 victims have been identified, but relatives of those still missing are hopeful that more bodies will be found in the dense woodland surrounding the town.

In a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, Boris Tadic, the Serbian president, will attend the ceremony, along with thousands of relatives of those who died.

Tadic said he hoped "to build bridges of friendship and understanding among nations in the region" by attending the ceremony.

Serbian Apology

Serbia has for years denied the scale of the crime and many Serbs, led by nationalist politicians, believe that allegations of genocide have been exaggerated as part of an international political conspiracy against the country.

But in March the country's parliament passed a declaration condemning the massacre and apologised to the victims and their families.
In VIDEO

Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips reports on a Greek journalist who is being sued after claiming that Greeks were involved in the Srebrenica massacre.

General Ratko Mladic, the alleged mastermind of the killings, is still on the run and believed to be hiding in Serbia, where many see him as a heroic figure.

The other alleged architect of the massacre, Radovan Karadzic, was arrested in Belgrade in 2008, and is currently fighting charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The political party that he founded, the Serbian Democratic Party, chose to honour him on Saturday with a medal, saying it was not ashamed of the past.

UN peacekeepers were heavily criticised for allowing the massacre.

The Dutch troops tasked with protecting the town did not have the equipment or mandate to do so and allowed Bosnian Serb soldiers to take Muslim men and boys away after being assured they would not be harmed.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies.

Safe Haven

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Never Forget Srebrenica

The murder of nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslims was carried out by Bosnian Serb forces [EPA] In March 2010, Serbia's parliament adopted a resolution apologising for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since the second world war. The resolution, approved by a slim majority, and seen by some observers as an attempt to clear a path to membership of the European Union, admits that Serbia should have done more to prevent the killings.   It stops short of describing the atrocity as genocide even though it has been recognised as such by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Several Bosnian Serbs have been convicted by the tribunal and their former leader Radovan Karadzic is currently on trial. The truth about the massacres, and their horrific scale and intent was uncovered by a dedicated French policeman named Jean Rene Ruez, who was working for the tribunal. In July 1995, at the height of the Bosnian war, Jean-René Ruez arrived in Sarajevo tasked with hunting down snipers. After hearing rumours that thousands of Muslim men were being tortured and executed, he quickly abandoned his original mission. Appointed chief investigator by The Hague, Ruez has spent the past 13 years working tirelessly to prove the massacres were planned in advance. Haunted by all he has learnt and worn down by the weight of his responsibility, Ruez has sacrificed everything to try and hold the guilty to account. Through his eyes, we gain a moving perspective into what happened at Srebrenica. Everywhere Jean-René goes, his computer goes with him never leaving his hand. The computer contains hundreds of documents and photos. But its most valuable contents are a few minutes of blurry footage, a film Ruez spent years trying to hunt down. The images speak for themselves. One by one, hands tied behind their back, the prisoners step forward. Slowly, methodically, soldiers open fire. The awful truth is that no matter how shocking these scenes are, they do not reflect how bad other executions were. Ruez's work has proved that the Balkans worst atrocities were masterminded and ordered by Radovan Karadzic and Radko Mladic. With the handover of Karadzic to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal, finally the families may begin their mourning. This episode of People & Power airs from Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at the following times GMT: Wednesday: 0600, 1230; Thursday: 0130, 1400, 1930; Friday: 0630, 1630; Saturday: 0330, 2030; Sunday: 0030, 0530; Monday: 0830. The programme originally aired on Friday, August 2, 2008.