Thousands of people joined a peace march on Friday through forests in eastern Bosnia in memory of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II.
The 100-kilometre (60-mile) march traces a route taken by men and boys from the Bosniak ethnic group, which is made up primarily of Muslims, as they tried to flee Srebrenica after it was captured by Bosnian Serb forces in the closing days of the country’s interethnic war in the 1990s.
“I came here with my two sons and 50 other people from my hometown to pay respect to the victims, to remember their plight,” said Ademir Mesic from the northwestern Bosnian town of Bosanska Krupa.
In July 1995, at least 8,000 Bosniak males were separated by Serb troops from their wives, mothers and sisters, chased through woods around Srebrenica and killed by those forces.
Bosnian Serb soldiers dumped the victims’ bodies in numerous mass graves scattered around the eastern town in an attempt to hide the evidence of the crime.
Newly identified victims are reburied each year on July 11—the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995—in the vast and still expanding memorial cemetery outside Srebrenica.
Read more here.
