Then and now: 1995 Srebrenica genocide
It’s been 25 years since the slaughter of men and boys in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, but every year more bodies are found and reburied, and every year the survivors — mostly women — return to commemorate their fathers and brothers, husbands and sons.
At least 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys were chased through woods in and around Srebrenica by Serb troops in what is considered the worst carnage of civilians in Europe since World War II. The slaughter has been confirmed as an act of genocide.
On Saturday, eight newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre will be laid to rest in the memorial cemetery at Potocari, just outside Srebrenica. Among them will be Bajro Salihovic, whose partial remains were unearthed from a mass grave discovered last November and identified through DNA testing.
Coffins of the victims are placed inside the former UN base in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
“They found just a few of his bones, but my mother and I decided to bury him this year so we will know where his grave is, where to go to say a prayer, to find some peace,” said his son Bahrudin, who himself survived the massacre by fleeing through the woods.
The Bosnian war pitted the country’s three main ethnic factions — Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims — against each other after the break-up of Yugoslavia. More than 100,000 people were killed in the conflict before a peace deal was brokered in 1995.
Refugees and a Bosnian government soldier carry a sick woman on a makeshift stretcher to a hospital inside a U.N. base outside Tuzla, July 13, 1995. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
What took place in Srebrenica was a mark of shame for the international community as the town had been declared a U.N. “safe haven” for civilians in 1993.
When Bosnian Serb forces broke through two years later, about 15,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys fled into the woods. And twice as many terrified residents rushed to the U.N. compound in what was formerly an industrial zone at the entrance to town, in the hope that Dutch U.N. peacekeepers would protect them.
However, the outgunned peacekeepers watched helplessly as Serb troops took around 2,000 men and boys from the compound for execution while bussing the women and girls to Bosnian government-held territory. Meanwhile, in the woods around Srebrenica, Serb soldiers hunted the fleeing Bosniaks, as Bosnian Muslims are otherwise known, killing them one by one.
The remains of two bodies and pieces of clothing lie in a field at a suspected mass grave site in the village of Konjevic Polje, approximately 20km (12 miles), north west of Srebrenica. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
The killers sought to hide evidence of the genocide, piling most of the bodies into hastily made mass graves, which they subsequently dug up with bulldozers and scattered the bodies across numerous burial sites.
In the years since, bodies have been unearthed and the victims identified through DNA testing. About 1,000 victims remain to be found.
A special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague and courts in the Balkans have sentenced close to 50 Bosnian Serbs, including their top civilian war-time leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, to more than 700 years in prison for Srebrenica crimes.
And every year, the women return to mourn their dead.
A woman leans on a grave stone in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
A woman and her mother, refugees from Srebrenica, cry worried about the fate of the rest of their family, after reaching a U.N. base near Tuzla, Bosnia, July 13, 1995. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Gravestones are lined up at the memorial cemetery in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Women watch as one of the massacre victims is buried in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Refugees from Srebrenica who had spent the night in the open air, gather outside the U.N. base at Tuzla airport, July 14th, 1995. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Women, wearing protective gloves and masks for protection against coronavirus, pray as hundreds of people turned out in Sarajevo's main street July 9, 2020, to pay respects to eight victims of the Srebrenica massacre as three white vans carried their coffins to a final resting place. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Evacuees from Srebrenica look out from a U.N. truck in Medgas, north of Sarajevo, as a U.N. truck convoy carrying people from the besieged Bosnian town made its way to Tuzla, March 20, 1993. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
More than 2,000 evacuees from the besieged Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, packed on U.N. trucks en route to Tuzla, halt in Tojsici, March 29, 1993. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Bosnians carry the coffin of a victim outside the former UN base in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
A wounded child form the besieged Bosnian town of Srebrenica is carried off a U.N. truck upon arriving in Tuzla, March 20, 1993, after a tense journey across the most contested battle lines in Bosnia. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
A woman touches a grave stone in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Bosnians carry the coffin of one of nine massacre victims in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Refugees from Srebrenica look through the razor-wire at a UN base, outside Tuzla, July 13, 1995. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Bosnians attend the funerals of nine massacre victims in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, Saturday, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Bosnian refugee women from the area of Srebrenica line up waiting to bathe their babies at the UNICEF baby wash room at the U.N. air base, in Tuzla, Bosnia, July 22, 1995. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Bosnians, some of them survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, walk through a mountain area near Crni Vrh, Bosnia, July 8, 2020, during a Peace March recreating the path taken 25 years ago by people trying to escape the advancing Serb forces. (AP Photo/Kemal Softic)
Text from AP News story, Scenes from hell: 1995 Srebrenica genocide in photos.
Photos by Kemal Softic