Thousands gather in Bosnia to mark anniversary of 1995 Srebrenica massacre

“Very few of his bones were recovered because he was found (in a mass grave) near the Drina river,” she said, sitting next to a coffin wrapped in a green burial cloth. “Perhaps the river carried him away.”

Selma Ramik re-buried a handful of her father’s bones years ago, but is returning to town for the anniversary to honor others who shared his fate.

Ramik said, “I only have a picture of my father left, but I have love for him in my heart.” He further said, “He still lives in us, as long as we live, he will live.”

The Srebrenica killings were the bloody climax of Bosnia’s 1992–95 war, which sparked nationalist passions and territorial ambitions following the breakup of Yugoslavia, pitting Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations – Croats and Bosniaks.

On 11 July 1995, Bosnian Serbs captured a UN-protected safe haven in Srebrenica. They separated at least 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters, chased them into the woods around the unfortunate city, and slaughtered them.

The perpetrators then dumped their victims’ bodies in hastily constructed mass graves, which they later dug with bulldozers, and scattered the remains at other burial sites to hide evidence of their war crimes.

Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladić were both convicted of the massacre at Srebrenica by a special United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

In total, tribunals and courts in the Balkans have sentenced some 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officers to more than 700 years in prison for the Srebrenica killings.