Srebrenica Buries More Victims

Taken from Al-Jezeera News Agency, WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2007

The families of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims have gathered to bury the remains of 465 newly-identified victims.

For the first time, the anniversary commemoration took place in an atmosphere of raised hopes that justice will be done.

There are signs that many of those responsible for the massacre may finally be prosecuted.

On Tuesday, Miroslav Lajcak, the new Bosnian peace overseer, moved to sack a senior Bosnian Serb police official and suspend 35 policemen believed to have taken part.


Muslims want self-rule for Srebrenica but the Serbs are opposed [EPA]

War crime
Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb army general, seized the former UN "safe zone" of Srebrenica in July 1995 and in the following days carried out what is considered Europe's worst war crime since World War Two.

Elmana Mehic, a Srebrenican who came to bury the remains of her uncle, said: "God grant that what was done yesterday bears fruit. Twelve years have passed and nobody has done anything for us. They are only playing with us."

Mehic's uncle's remains were collected from three different mass graves. She also lost her father, husband and many relatives in the massacre.

Several senior Bosnian Serb army officers have been sentenced by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for the massacre, and others are bring tried in Bosnia.

Self-rule
However, top genocide suspects Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic are still at large.
The Dayton peace accords, which ended the 1992-95 war, split Bosnia into two parts, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb republic.

Srebrenica, 70 per cent Muslim before the war, went to the Serb republic. Muslims want self-rule for the town but the Serbs are opposed.

In his last act before handing over to Lajcak this month, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, a former peace envoy, issued a ruling that the memorial complex in Potocari near Srebrenica should be under the protection of the Bosnian state.

'No return'
Srebrenica families welcomed the news, but complained that the same people who killed their relatives were still wearing the uniforms of the Bosnian Serb police and guarding the tombs of the victims.

But Mirnesa Sinanovic, 21, who came to bury the remains of her father, said: "Lajcak did a fair thing for us, the victims, because we deserved it after all these years."

Sinanovic said her family had repaired their old house in a village near Srebrenica but were still not living there.

"Until we feel safe and secure, we will not return," she said.