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Thousands Mourn on 15th Anniversary of Srebrenica Massacre

   VOA News 11 July 2010
   A  pile  of more than 16,000 shoes, each pair representing a victim of
   the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are placed with a UN sign in front of the
   Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Sunday July 11, 2010

Photo: AP

   A  pile  of more than 16,000 shoes, each pair representing a victim of
   the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are placed with a UN sign in front of the
   Brandenburg  Gate  in  Berlin,  Sunday  July  11, 2010. The shoes were
   collected  to  make  'The  Pillar of Shame', German activist's Phillip
   Ruch's  monument  to  Srebrenica.  On  July  11, 1995, more than 8,000
   Bosnian  Muslim men and youths were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb troops
   in an enclave supposedly protected by U.N. peacekeepers.

   Tens  of  thousands of mourners gathered Sunday in the eastern Bosnian
   town of Srebrenica to re-bury hundreds of massacre victims on the 15th
   anniversary of the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.
   Relatives  gathered  in bright sunshine on the edges of a field filled
   with  775  shrouded  coffins, as senior clerics intoned Muslim prayers
   for the dead.  Freshly dug graves waited nearby.
   Srebrenica  had been declared a safe zone by the United Nations as the
   Bosnian war raged in the early 1990s, and thousands of Bosnian Muslims
   sought protection from Bosnian Serb forces.
   However, the U.N. resolution creating the safe zones was unclear about
   protection  provisions, and in July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overran a
   token Dutch force and captured the enclave.
   Experts  say  up  to  8,000  Muslim men and boys were executed by Serb
   forces at several locations near Srebrenica in July 1995. Â
   Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan later called the massacre the
   darkest day in United Nations' history.
   The  bodies buried Sunday are the result of a slow forensic process of
   identification  begun in the aftermath of the 1991-1995 war, as bodies
   were  exhumed  from mass graves in the area.  Some 3,000 victims have
   so far been identified and re-buried.
   The  International  Court of Justice has officially ruled that Bosnian
   Serb  troops,  led  by  General  Ratko  Mladic,  committed genocide at
   Srebrenica.
   Mladic remains a fugitive from justice and is believed to be in hiding
   somewhere on the Bosnian-Serbian frontier.

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