Coronavirus Curtails Commemorations Of 25th Anniversary Of Srebrenica Massacre

The 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina will be marked on July 11 in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the main memorial ceremony to be scaled back.

In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were rounded up and killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the eastern town of Srebrenica — the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.

The massacre was labeled as genocide by international courts, but Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials refuse to accept that wording.

The episode came at the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian War pitting the Serbs against Bosniaks and Croats that claimed some 100,000 lives.

The anniversary on July 11 will be commemorated in a series of events, including the reburial of the remains of nine recently identified victims in the Potocari memorial cemetery, the final resting place for more than 6,640 victims. About 1,000 are still missing.

Normally, thousands attend the main ceremony in Potocari, but the coronavirus pandemic has made it impossible this year.

Many who planned to attend as part of a big international presence, including Britain’s Prince Charles, canceled. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will speak via a video message.

Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave on Serb territory, fell to Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995.

Its Muslim population fled the town, which had been declared a UN “safe haven” for civilians. They rushed to the UN compound in hopes that the peacekeepers would protect them.

When forces led by Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic arrived at the UN compound, the Dutch peacekeepers handed over the base. The Bosnian Serb forces then separated out men and boys for execution and sent the women and girls elsewhere in territory under their control.

Thousands of men and boys were executed in less than two weeks, and 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 United Nations’ 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.

With reporting by dpa, Reuters, and AP