BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: Thousands take part in a march in commemoration of Srebrenica massacre

Record ID: 1533155

  • Title: BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: Thousands take part in a march in commemoration of Srebrenica massacre
  • Date: 9th July 2009
  • Summary: MARCHERS HOLDING FLAGS AND BANNER READING "MARCH FOR PEACE 2009" PEOPLE STARTING TO WALK DOWN ROAD
  • Embargoed: 24th July 2009 05:11
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA33J0PGCH100HMW6HB2UJJ3VGJ
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: More than 4,000 people began a three-day walk on Wednesday (July 8) along the same path that thousands of Muslims walked 14 years ago in their attempt to escape death after Serb forces overran the village of Srebrenica.
    The participants of this annual event organised in commemoration of 1995 Srebrenica massacre came from all parts of Bosnia, many European countries, America and Australia.
    Many of them are survivors of the massacre.
    "In July 1995 I had walked for 32 days and survived, but I have seen terrible things," said Zuko Salihovic who is one of the organisers of the march.
    Among the foreigners who joined the Bosnians on the walk through the hills was a group of six former Dutch soldiers who failed to protect Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica fourteen years ago.
    "Nobody from this organisation did see anything, but that's why we try to do this, the last year and now, to continue with this walk. We hope there'll be more of us who will join this walk in future because I think that people need it. So do we, because we have also pain, what we are feeling about what is happening all those years," said Adje Amakotta.
    Lightly-armed Dutch soldiers of the U.N. Protection Force were guarding Muslim civilians at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 as the Bosnian Serb Army under General Ratko Mladic closed in and took the town.
    Mladic, who is still at large, was indicted for genocide by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the Bosnian Serb Army's execution of some 8,000, whose bodies were bulldozed into the earth over four days.
    Forensic experts started excavation on Wednesday of the thirteenth mass grave discovered in the village of Kamenica. It is the secondary mass grave with Srebrenica massacre victims who were initially killed and buried in the primary mass graves somewhere else. In an effort to hide the crime, bodies were later dug out by bulldozers and re-buried in various mass graves in Eastern Bosnia.
    533 Srebrenica massacre victims unearthed from mass graves in the last year and positively identified by DNA matching will be buried at the cemetery in Potocari on July 11.
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