SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Thousands of people from around Bosnia and abroad gathered in Srebrenica on Tuesday for the annual ritual of commemorating the 1995 massacre in the eastern town and to give a dignified burial to the victims unearthed from mass graves and only recently identified through DNA analysis.
Twenty-eight years after they were brutally murdered in Europe‘s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, 27 men and three teenage boys will be laid to rest Tuesday at a vast and ever-expanding memorial cemetery just outside Srebrenica, joining more than 6,600 massacre victims already reburied there.
Relatives of the victims can bury only partial remains of their loved ones as they are typically found scattered over several different mass graves, sometimes miles (kilometers) apart. Such was the case of Mirsda Merdzic, who will bury her father on Tuesday.
“Only a very few bones of his were retrieved because he had been found (in a mass grave) near the Drina River,” she said while huddling next to a casket shrouded in the green burial cloth. “Maybe the river washed him away.”
Selma Ramic reburied a handful of bones of her father’s several years ago, but continues returning to the town for the anniversary to honor others who had shared his fate.
“One photo is the only thing I have left of my father, but I have love for him in my heart,” said Ramic, adding: “He still lives in us, he will…
