Bosnians yesterday buried 520 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, with the two alleged masterminds of the slaughter finally on trial for genocide.
It is the pain, an endless pain, and when July 11 arrives, every year, this pain becomes unbearable
About 30,000 people were gathered at a special memorial centre in Potocari, just outside Srebrenica, for the mass funeral on the 17th anniversary of the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
After speeches and the Muslim prayer for the dead, people began hoisting the simple coffins covered in green cloth to carry them to the freshly dug graves. Clouds of red dust rose over the vast cemetery as relatives covered the caskets with earth under the sweltering afternoon sun.
“It is the pain, an endless pain, and when July 11 arrives, every year, this pain becomes unbearable,” said Sevdija Halilovic, a woman in her 50s whose father was laid to rest yesterday alongside the 5,137 victims already buried there.
Mujo Salihovic, 30, had come to bury his father and one of his brothers; his other brother was already laid to rest in Potocari last year.
“I haven’t told my mother that they will be buried today. She is sick and still believes they will return,” he said tearfully.
“If I tell her, it would kill her. I cannot lose her; she is all that I have left.”
It is the first anniversary being commemorated since the massacre’s alleged architects, Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic, went on trial before the UN war crimes court.
In all, around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in the eastern enclave, then under the protection of lightly-armed Dutch UN peacekeepers, in the only episode of the 1992-95 Bosnian war to have been ruled a genocide by international courts.
World leaders rejected any moves to downplay the scale of the massacre.
“The US rejects efforts to distort the scope of this atrocity, rationalise the motivations behind it, blame the victims, and deny the indisputable fact that it was genocide,” US President Barack Obama said in statement.
His remarks were a clear swipe at Serbia’s new President Tomislav Nikolic, who said that the killings in Srebrenica constituted “grave war crimes” but not genocide.
“We must never forget the act of genocide that was committed in Srebrenica, nor should it ever be denied,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement.
But for many survivors and relatives in Srebrenica, the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague are too little, too late.
They fear Mr Karadzic, 67, and Mr Mladic, 70, could die before any verdict is delivered.
“They will drag the trials out for years. In the end, those two savages will die, like Slobodan Milosevic, and the Serbs will keep saying there was no genocide in Srebrenica,” said Fatima Mujic, referring to the Serb strongman.
“It should be enough to come here and see the thousands of graves. If that is not proof, we should give up,” 63-year-old Muniba Cakar who came to bury her husband said bitterly, gesturing at the thousands of simple white headstones around her.
The trial of Mr Mladic, who led the attack on Srebrenica, resumed in The Hague this week with the first prosecution witnesses testifying, a little over a year since his arrest in Serbia after nearly 16 years on the run.
Mr Karadzic is due to start presenting his defence in October. His trial opened in 2009 after he evaded justice for 13 years.
Both men have pleaded not guilty to genocide charges for masterminding the massacre and all other charges against them over the Bosnian war that left around 100,000 people dead.