By Zdravko Ljubas Jul 11, 2006, 13:31 GMT
Srebrenica - Mourners gathered Tuesday in the eastern Bosnian village of Potocari, near the town of Srebrenica, for the burial of 505 victims of the 1995 massacre in that town.
During a commemoration titled 'Do Not Forget!' which marked the 11th anniversary of the massacre, 505 caskets wrapped in green were laid in fresh graves next to nearly 2,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre buried in the Potocari Memorial Centre during the last three years.
Bosnian Serb troops massacred up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men after capturing the former eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Less than one third of the missing Srebrenica men have been exhumed and identified from 64 mass graves in eastern Bosnia.
'I finally found him and now I am losing him again,' an old woman cried while embracing the casket containing the bones of her son.
A younger woman caressed a casket as relatives stood next to her.
'This is our father we are burying today. He was an invalid and he could not escape,' Refik Karamehic and his sister Suada said, adding their mother was also executed by a firing squad in Srebrenica.
More than 40,000 people, mostly female survivors of the massacre, prayed amid tears in and around the Potocari Memorial Centre.
The men, following Islamic tradition, passed the caskets from hand to hand to their final destination.
'The time is counted in a different way in Potocari, New York and The Hague since 11 July 1995. Since then, nothing is the same,' Bosnian Muslim religious leader Reisu-l-ulema Mustafa Ceric said after the prayer.
The case of Srebrenica, he said, showed how 'the big ones became little, how the powerful ones became shameful and the powerless became stronger in belief that the justice is reachable and that no- one can escape it.'
Ceric's message was seen as a criticism of the United Nations which failed to protect the civilian population in Srebrenica, which was under UN protection as a safe haven when the massacre occurred in 1995.
The religious leader also protested over the fact that the two alleged masterminds of the massacre, the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander general Ratko Mladic, remain at large.
'Each time I think of Srebrenica, I have to ask myself what more we could and should have done to prevent the slaughter in what was, after all, a UN-declared safe haven,' the international community's High Representative to Bosnia, German diplomat Christian Schwarz- Schilling said in his message to honour the Srebrenica victims.
'Exactly half a century after the end of World War II we allowed genocide to take place under our eyes. We failed the victims of this genocide in life and we will fail them in death unless we ensure that the remains of each and every one of them are buried with dignity, and that the perpetrators - each and every one of them - are brought to justice,' said Schwarz-Schilling.
The Chief Prosecutor of The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte also came to Potocari to pay respect to the victims of the massacre and express her protest because Karadzic and Mladic remain at large more than a decade after the ICTY indicted them for war crimes and genocide.
'I am here to pay tribute to the victims, to support the survivors and to express my frustration over the fact that Karadzic and Mladic are still at large,' said Del Ponte.
Representatives of several non-governmental organizations from neighbouring Serbia also attended the commemoration, while Serbian Deputy Premier Ivana Dulic-Markovic issued a statement in Belgrade.
'Srebrenica remains on the conscience of all humanity, because not enough was done to stop the mass-murder,' Dulic-Markovic said in the statement.
She also said those who committed the massacre must be brought to justice and punished for the sake of 'reconciliation in Bosnia- Herzegovina, the region and Europe.'
'A crime must neither be hidden, nor remain unpunished. It is impossible to erase pain or change the past, but we can and must jointly reach the truth and justice,' said Dulic-Markovic.
After years of denial Serbia last year opened a trial against a group of Serbian soldiers who were video-taped executing a group of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in July 1995.
Believing that Serbia has provided shelter to ICTY fugitive Ratko Mladic, the European Union suspended Stabilization and Association Agreement talks with Serbia in May this year.
The whereabouts of Radovan Karadzic remain unknown.
Your Talkback on this Story