Hundreds Gather to Pay Respects as Coffins Arrive in Srebrenica

Hundreds lined the Bosnian capital’s main street Sunday as a truck carrying 30 coffins passed on its way to Srebrenica, where newly identified victims of Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II will be buried on the 28th anniversary of the massacre.

As the truck, covered with a huge Bosnian flag, briefly stopped in front of the country’s presidential building, members of the crowd tucked flowers into the canvas hiding the remains of victims found in mass graves and identified through DNA analysis.

Remembering the Unfound Victims

“It is devastatingly sad that hundreds of victims still have not been found and that some people still deny the genocide (in Srebrenica),” said Ramiza Gandic, who came to pay her respects.

Newly identified Srebrenica massacre victims are reburied annually on July 11, the day the killing began in 1995, at a vast and ever-expanding memorial cemetery outside the eastern town.

The Horrors of the Srebrenica Genocide

So far, the remains of more than 6,600 people have been found and reburied there.

The Srebrenica genocide was the bloody crescendo of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which came after the breakup of Yugoslavia unleashed nationalistic passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations – Croats and Bosniaks.

Srebrenica Genocide

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces in a raid on Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch peacekeeping troops.

The Serb forces were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form a state.

The Role of Dutch Peacekeeping Troops

In the spring of 1993, the U.N. Security Council declared Srebrenica a “safe area.” The U.N. zone, however, was overrun by troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was eventually found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Dutch peacekeeping troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing some 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone.

About 15,000 unarmed residents of Srebrenica fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted them down and mercilessly killed 6,000 more people.

Skeletal remains of victims have been discovered at 570 locations across the country.

Recognition of Genocide

In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica.

On June 8, 2021, U.N. tribunal judges upheld Mladic’s life sentence for genocide, persecution, crimes against humanity, extermination, and other war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina.