Weeping among endless rows of coffins, tens of thousands of people gathered today in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica to bury hundreds of massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the greatest crime in Europe since the Nazi era.
A whole hillside was dug out with graves waiting for 775 coffins to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far. Still, that was less than a 10th of the total number of Muslim men and boys murdered after Serb forces overran the UN-protected town on 11 July, 1995, during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Some 30,000 Bosnian Muslims had flocked to the UN military base in the town's suburb of Potocari for refuge, when Serb forces came and the outnumbered Dutch troops opened the gates. The Serbs separated out men and boys, putting them on trucks and carting them away, the vast majority never to be seen again.
The Srebrenica memorial centre stands across the road from that former UN base. The bodies being buried were previously excavated from mass graves and identified through DNA tests.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the memorial today . Relatives of the victims mingled among the pits on one side and rows of green coffins on the other, looking for the names of loved ones. Muslim prayers and weeping mixed with the speeches condemning the crimes and calling for the perpetrators to be punished.
Fifteen years later, no one represented the UN at the ceremony. Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, was the first dignitary to arrive, saying he was coming in an "act of reconciliation". "[I want to] build bridges of trust and understanding among the nations in the region," he said earlier in Belgrade.
In Srebrenica, some in the crowd yelled: "Bravo, Boris!" Others asked "Where is Mladic?" – a reference to former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who led the Serb troops into Srebrenica.
"I wish to welcome you, we are receiving you in peace," said Kada Hotic, a representative of the Srebrenica widows, while Tadic held both of her hands.
Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic were indicted with genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995. Karadzic is on trial in The Hague, while Mladic remains at large, presumably hiding in Serbia. Tadic said in a statement that he "will do everything" to apprehend all war crimes suspects in Serbia.
The US ambassador to Bosnia, Charles English, read a message from Barack Obama that urged "governments to redouble their efforts" and arrest those responsible for the war crimes at Srebrenica. The US president called the genocide a "stain on our collective consciousness" that occurred even after decades of pledges of "never again" after Nazi atrocities during the second world war.
Bosnian Serbs sent no representatives. In a deliberate snub, Karadzic's Serb Democratic party honoured him yesterday at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the party's founding.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
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