Bosnian Muslims Commemorate 25 Years After Sebrenica Massacre

Srebrenica, MINA – Bosnian Muslims held a ceremony on Saturday (July 21) to mark the 25th of the Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed.

The number of people attending the ceremony in Srebrenica usually reaches tens of thousands of mourners, but this year’s event was smaller because of the regional quarantine policy due to the increasing Covid-19 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thus quoted from BBC.

On the warning, there will be funeral services for the seven victims of the massacre that were recently identified.

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces units captured the city of Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In less than two weeks, their troops systematically killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, and were the worst mass killings on European soil since the end of the Second World War.

Former Secretary General Kofi Annan stated, “The Srebrenica tragedy will forever haunt UN history.”

The massacre was part of the genocide carried out against Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War, one of several conflicts that occurred in the 1990s when Yugoslavia broke up.

The Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina which at that time was part of Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic Bosniak Muslim region, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatia.

Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence in 1992 after the referendum, and was recognized shortly after by the US and European governments.

But Bosnian Serb groups boycotted the referendum. Soon, afterwards Bosnian Serb forces supported by the Serbian government attacked the newly formed country.

They began removing Muslim Bosniaks from the region to create a “Greater Serbia”, a policy known as ethnic cleansing.

The Bosniaks who are predominantly Muslim, are descendants of Bosnian Slavs who adopted Islam under the Ottoman Turks in the Middle Ages.

The effects of the massacre still echo to this day. New mass graves and bodies of victims are still found, 25 years after genocide.

In the end, Srebrenica’s territory was controlled by Serbian forces. Then about 25 thousand Bosnian Muslims must leave their own homes to be saved.

Serbia has already apologized for the crime but still refuses to accept that it is genocide.

While the war crimes court in the Hague, the Netherlands ruled that the incident was classified as genocide. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)