SREBRENICA - The remains of seven people have been buried at a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the only acknowledged act of genocide in Europe since World War II.
Almedina Kadasevic came to bury her brother, Senajid, who was 19 when he was killed. His incomplete remains were found in 2010.
"Since then, we have been waiting for the rest to be found, but no one contacted us. And then, they contacted our parents. Our parents agreed to bury one bone, just one," she told RFE/RL.
"Wish there were more. But, there is a bone, a bone, so we can come and say our prayers."
In June 1995, Bosnian Serb forces massacred some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, in what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said was “among the darkest chapters in Europe’s collective memory.”
Also buried on July 11 were Hariz Mujic, Rifet Gabeljic, Hasib Omerovic, Sejdalija Alic, Amir Mujcic, and Fata Bektic.
Bektic, who was 67 years old at the time of her death, and is the only woman to be buried this year.
“All of it is permanently etched into memory,” Adem Mehmedovic told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.
Mehmedovic was just eight years old in July 1995, when Srebrenica was an enclave under Bosnian Muslim control amid the bitter wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.
The area was a UN-designated “safe area” but Dutch peacekeeping troops stood by and allowed Bosnian Serb forces to overrun the area.
Men and boys were separated from women, who were bussed out to areas under Bosnian Muslim control. Mehmedovic said his mother resisted when a Bosnian Serb soldier tried to separate them.
“It all lasted maybe 30, 40, 50 seconds — it's hard to say now, from this perspective. Then another soldier came and said, ‘Let the child go.’ And without another word, he did. He just, literally, ‘pushed’ me back to my mother — and then we got on the bus,” he said.
"I am ashamed because the Netherlands bears moral and political responsibility for not preventing it,” Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said after arriving for memorial ceremonies on July 11, the day 30 years earlier that Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces.
The mass killings were recognized as a genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2001.
But amid growing genocide denial among Serbs and Bosnian Serbs, it was notable that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic did not use the term in a social media posting to mark the anniversary, describing instead as a “terrible crime.”
“I express my condolences to the families of the Bosniak victims, confident that a similar crime will never happen again,” he wrote.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned on July 11 that "there is no place for revisionism and denial in a region that wants to join the European Union."
Speaking at the United Nations on July 8, the Bosnian Muslim member of the country’s tripartite presidency, Denis Becirovic, said genocide denial in Serbia was “illogical, immoral, and unacceptable.”
“We are not seeking revenge. We are seeking truth and justice,” he added.
