More than 3,000 participants in a peace march in Bosnia-Herzegovina arrived on July 10 in Potocari near the town of Srebrenica one day before the commemoration of the 1995 genocide in which more than 8,000 Bosniak boys and men were killed by Bosnian Serb troops.
The marchers started their 100-kilometer trek on July 8 to pay respects to the victims whose relatives are joined annually by other Bosnians for the march that retraces a route taken by the doomed victims 28 years ago.
Participants in the peace march walked along the path through the woods that thousands of men used to try to escape after the Republic of Srpska Army captured Srebrenica in July 1995. It's estimated that 12,000 to 15,000 people set out on the trek when Srebrenica fell.
Another group arrived in Potocari on July 10 -- 300 cyclists who started their traditional trek from Bihac in the west of the country as an act of remembrance. A group of motorcyclists who drove from Sarajevo arrived with the cyclists.
Srebrenica's Muslim population fled when the town fell to Bosnian Serb forces. Srebrenica had been declared a UN safe haven for civilians, and thousands rushed to a UN compound seeking protection.
When forces led by Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic arrived at the compound, Dutch peacekeepers handed over the base. The Bosnian Serb forces then separated men and boys, and thousands were executed in less than two weeks. Those who tried to flee through the woods were hunted down and killed by Bosnian Serb forces. The bodies of the victims were tossed into mass graves.
The UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague established that the killings constituted genocide and convicted Mladic and his political mentor Radovan Karadzic of genocide and other war crimes in Srebrenica.
This year’s commemorations at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center will include the delivery of the remains of 30 victims of the genocide for burial. Among the remains are those of four minors who were 15 and 16 years of age when they were killed.
After a funeral for the 30 victims on July 11 the memorial center will be the final resting place for 6,752 genocide victims. The remainder of the victims are either missing or buried elsewhere.
Many Serbs deny the extent of the killings, adding to the suffering of the survivors. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has previously called the genocide “a fabricated myth.”