Some 20,000 people yesterday commemorated the 16th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims just weeks after the arrest of its alleged mastermind Ratko Mladic.
A special commemoration service was held at the vast cemetery and memorial centre where over 4,000 of victims of the massacre are buried.
Families prayed over the graves of their loved ones, and some came to bury 613 people whose remains were finally identified just last year.
Standing next to an open grave and a mound of reddish earth, 26-year-old Ahmed Sehic was there to bury his father who was killed along with two of his uncles while trying to flee through the woods to Muslim-held territory.
“Thank God, today his bones will find peace... I will know where he is, where I can come to visit his grave,” he said.
This year’s anniversary of the July 11, 1995, massacre in Srebrenica, the worst mass killing in Europe since the end of the World War II, comes only weeks after the arrest of Bosnian Serb ex-army chief Mladic in Serbia.
Mr Mladic and his political chief Radovan Karadzic, arrested in 2008, are charged by a UN war crimes tribunal with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Srebrenica massacre, the only episode in the bloody Balkans wars to have been ruled genocide by international courts, is a key part of the indictments against them.
“There are no words to explain this inexplicable and irrational evil, a boundless hate against people whose only crime was to be Muslims,” the Muslim member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, said at the ceremony.
“With time other wounds will heal but never Srebrenica”.
He stressed the importance of reconciliation in the war-torn Balkans region and recalled Serbian President Boris Tadic’s role in finally arresting Mr Mladic.
Mr Mladic famously visited Srebrenica right after the UN-protected enclave fell and promised refugees gathered in front of the UN barracks, “No one will harm you.”
His troops had already started separating the men from the women, children and elderly and in the coming days would summarily execute nearly 8,000 men and boys. The victims were buried in mass graves which were later dug up and the remains scattered over different smaller secondary graves to cover up the scale of the slaughter.
Next to a tomb, Ajka Husic, a veil covering her elderly face, shows the three graves that hold her husband and two sons and the spot where her third son will be buried whose remains were only partly recovered.
“I talk to them, they do not answer me but I hope God will find a way to let them hear me and to know that their mother came,” she said.
Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, who has championed reconciliation in the region, made a plea for the future of the region.
“Sixteen years ago a genocide was committed in Srebrenica, an unthinkable crime against thousands of victims ... We must teach our children to love and protect others regardless of their nationality or religion,” Josipovic said.
The United States ambassador to Bosnia Patrick Moon lashed out at attempts to deny the genocide. Bosnian Serb hardline President Milorad Dodik has repeatedly said the massacre is not a genocide and has tried to minimize the scale of the killings.
“Each time they deny the undeniable, they are obstructing the path to justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation,” Mr Moon said.