BOSNIA: Funeral for Bosnian Muslim victims of Bosnian Serb attacks during the Bosnian war

Record ID: 858269

  • Title: BOSNIA: Funeral for Bosnian Muslim victims of Bosnian Serb attacks during the Bosnian war
  • Date: 13th May 2007
  • Summary: COFFINS AT SITE
  • Embargoed: 28th May 2007 13:00
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  • Topics: War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVACFITWPNGMYSA3V061XAF36DV5
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  • Story Text: Bosnian Muslims attend the burial of almost 100 of their ethnic kin killed by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries at the outbreak of the 1992-95 war. Thousands of Bosnian Muslims on Saturday (May 12) attended the burial of almost 100 of their ethnic kin killed by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries at the outbreak of the 1992-95 war.
    Amid heavy security they gathered in a field at the entrance to Bratunac after Serbs, who now make up the town's overwhelming majority, opposed the burial of the victims near a newly-renovated mosque in the town centre.
    Dozens of Bosnian Serb police stood guard as mourners prayed in rows.
    Family members, relatives, friends and senior Muslim religious and political figures carried 94 coffins draped in green cloth to the final resting places of the victims, whose bodies were found in several mass graves.
    "These people were born here, they lived here and they were killed here and we wanted to bury them in their homeland, on their land," said 50-year-old Hajrudin Memisevic, who buried his brother and nephew.
    The mosque's imam, killed in 1992, will be buried on Sunday in front of the mosque.
    About 600 Bosnian Muslims were killed after Serbs captured the eastern town in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing".
    Before the war, Bratunac was home to about 25,000 Muslims, a two-thirds majority. More than 400 bodies are still missing.
    A further 2,800 were killed in nearby Srebrenica after fleeing to the U.N. "safe area" which was later overrun.
    In Bratunac, Serb forces detained thousands of Muslim males in May 1992 and kept them in a school and at the soccer ground. Memisevic said his brother was executed on May 11 but did not know when his nephew was killed.
    Only one person, Bratunac municipal board president Miroslav Deronjic, has been convicted for the crimes in the area. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced by the U.N. war crimes court to 10 years in prison for the May 8, 1992 attack on neighbouring Glogova village in which 65 civilians were killed.
    The Serbs, backed by the former Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitaries, in 1992 launched an "ethnic cleansing" campaign that captured two-thirds of Bosnia and killed and expelled hundreds of thousands of non-Serbs.
    Bratunac, like Srebrenica and most of eastern Bosnia where Muslims were mainly in a majority before the war, is now in the Serb Republic. Very few Muslims have returned to live there.
    People like Sadija Hasanovic, who lost two sons whose bodies have not been found, are afraid to go back fearing for their security.
    "I came here to attend funeral of my neighbour's son. He was with my two sons. His son was found but my sons' bodies still cannot be found, " Hasanovic said.
    Hundreds of Bratunac's Serbs protested several weeks ago against the original burial plan, which the local council said was against a new zoning plan.
    The row had threatened to escalate but was defused after an intervention by Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik and the Muslims' acceptance of the new location.
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