Bosnian Muslims bury victims of 1995 Srebrenica massacre
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Women wept as they finally buried husbands and sons yesterday, 10 years after Europe's worst massacre since World War II -- funerals made possible by the excavation of mass graves of victims killed by Bosnian Serb forces.
An extraordinary gathering of 30,000 people -- including the Serb president -- came to Srebrenica to mark the anniversary and honor the dead.
To the sound of Muslim prayers echoing across a sprawling green valley, family members wandered among 610 caskets of the most recently identified victims of the July 11, 1995, massacre, in which some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed.
After a religious service, the caskets were passed from hand to hand toward the graves and buried. The sound of dirt striking the coffins and the weeping of women competed with a voice reading the names of victims.
They were buried beside 1,330 existing graves at a memorial cemetery across from an abandoned car battery factory that was the wartime base for Dutch UN soldiers.
The Dutch were supposed to protect Srebrenica -- a designated UN safe zone-- from Serb attacks during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. But, outmanned and outgunned, the Dutch mission watched as Srebrenica's men and boys were separated from the women and led away, to be slain and dumped into shallow graves that are still being discovered a decade later.
Fatima Budic huddled yesterday over the coffin of her 14-year-old son Velija before the burial, alone in her grief.
''They killed my entire life and the only thing I want now is to see the guilty ones pay for it," sobbed Budic. Her husband and 16-year-old son have never been found.
World leaders offered apologies yesterday and called for the arrest of top war crimes fugitives, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic, and their extradition to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
''It is the shame of the international community that this evil took place under our noses," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. ''I bitterly regret this and I'm deeply sorry for it."
On a fence, families of the dead hung a huge banner that read: ''Europe's shame -- genocide. 8,106 murdered in Srebrenica."
''The crimes that were committed here were not simply murders," said Theodor Meron, president of the UN war crimes court. ''They were targeted at a particular human group with the intent to destroy it. They were so heinous that they warrant the gravest of labels: Genocide."
There was no visible presence of Bosnian Serbs at yesterday's service, although Bosnian television aired it live.
Serbia's President Boris Tadic attended the service -- a significant gesture given Serbia's political and military backing of the Bosnian Serbs during the war. He did not speak but said earlier that his gesture should be considered an act of remorse to Srebrenica's Muslims. He has also pledged to seek Mladic's arrest.
In the nearby hamlet of Bratunac, Bosnian Serbs defended the actions of their troops and former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic -- considered the main strategist of the Serb wartime offensive.
''The lavish Srebrenica commemorations are a major international plot against the Serbs," said Milan Baljic, a former Bosnian Serb soldier. ''Why does no one care about our dead? They killed us, we killed them. So, what's the difference?"
International officials said Karadzic and Mladic, the two most-wanted war crimes fugitives, belong at the UN tribunal. Milosevic is on trial before the court.
''The evil who committed those crimes still lurks here on those hills," said US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper. ''It must be destroyed."
Mladic, who is believed to be hiding in Serbia, personally commanded the Srebrenica onslaught, saying at the time that the town's capture was ''my gift to the Serb nation" and revenge for the 500-year Turkish occupation of Serbia that started in the 14th century.
Some 250,000 people were killed in the war between Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs.
