Thousands mark Srebrenica anniversary as 10 victims are buried
Mourners gathered at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center 31 years after Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
3 min read
Thousands of people gathered in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Saturday to commemorate 31 years since the Srebrenica genocide, Al Jazeera and Anadolu reported. The anniversary again focused attention on the search for victims’ remains and on calls from officials and activists to confront hatred and dehumanisation.
Mourners, survivors, foreign diplomats and religious leaders attended ceremonies at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center, according to Al Jazeera and Anadolu. Participants also joined the annual peace march before the burial of 10 victims whose remains had recently been identified.
Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, and killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys over the following days, Al Jazeera and Anadolu reported. The town had been designated a United Nations Security Council “safe area” two years earlier.
Officials stress memory and education
Denis Becirovic, chairman of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s presidency, said preserving the record of what happened was tied to the country’s stability. “If we fail to preserve the truth about our past, we will have neither a present nor a future,” he said, according to Al Jazeera and Anadolu.
Henk van den Dool, the Dutch ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, said education was one of the main tools for preventing similar crimes. He said the Netherlands shared that goal with the Srebrenica Memorial Center, victims’ mothers and survivors, and called education among the most effective ways to turn remembrance into action.
Each July 11, newly identified victims are laid to rest at the memorial center, Al Jazeera and Anadolu reported. Investigators are still searching areas around Srebrenica for remains from mass graves, and more than 1,000 victims remain missing.
Al Jazeera and Anadolu described Srebrenica as widely recognised as the worst atrocity in Europe since the Holocaust during World War II. The killings took place during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, in which more than 100,000 people died after Yugoslavia’s breakup led to ethnic conflicts and wars of independence among former Yugoslav republics.
International reaction
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the Srebrenica massacre “a crime against humanity,” according to Al Jazeera and Anadolu. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had visited Srebrenica the previous week, wrote on X that he was “deeply moved” by the trip.
Khan said people should remember the victims and their families while also opposing violence, dehumanisation and hatred wherever they appear, according to Al Jazeera and Anadolu.
Al Jazeera and Anadolu also reported that some campaigners had recently drawn comparisons between Srebrenica and Israel’s war in Gaza, which they characterised as genocide. Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on X that the United Nations had remembered the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and said the genocide’s leaders were convicted, while those responsible for what he called Israel’s genocide in Gaza “remain at large.”
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.