SREBRENICA (Bosnia-Hercegovina) - TENS of thousands of Muslims gathered in Srebrenica Saturday for the burial of 534 newly identified victims on the 14th anniversary of the wartime massacre in the Bosnian town.
IN ANOTHER act of defiance on Wednesday, Serb deputies in the Bosnian parliament blocked an initiative to declare July 11 the Srebrenica genocide remembrance day in the former Yugoslav republic.
Bosnia's inter-ethnic war cost 100,000 lives and left the country split into two highly autonomous entities - the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika Srpska.
Mourners wept over the victims' caskets, which were wrapped in a green cloth and brought to a memorial cemetery just outside the eastern town to be buried during a religious ceremony. Others walked between freshly dug up graves where their loved ones will be laid to rest.
The 534 victims were among some 8,000 Muslim men and boys who were killed by Serb forces after they captured the UN-protected enclave on July 11, 1995, committing Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
'Although we were desperately searching for his remains for years it was so hard to receive a telephone call telling us that my father had been identified,' said Nurveta Guster, a 27-year-old technician.
'I saw him for the last time at our house in Srebrenica. He left with other men through the woods trying to escape. It is just like it is happening now, I'm going through it again,' said Guster, whose uncle and a 18-year-old nephew were also to be buried.
The remains of the victims, aged between 14 and 72, were in most cases found in secondary mass graves where they had been moved from initial burial sites in a bid by Serbs to cover up war crimes.
Hatidza Mehmedovic, who is in her 60s, is still searching for her son's remains.
'Victims' families are still suffering as mass graves are still hidden,' Mehmedovic said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a statement, voiced sympathy with the survivors of the 'darkest day in European history since the Second World War.' The atrocity is to be commemorated for the first time across Europe, but not in ethnically divided Bosnia itself amid growing tensions with Serbs.
The European Parliament in January proclaimed the date a day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, calling on countries across the continent to support the move. While they admitted in 2004 that their forces killed 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims, Bosnian Serb authorities condemned the resolution, reflecting the revival of nationalist rhetoric that triggered the 1992-1995 war. -- AFP
