Thousands march in Bosnia for the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre

NEZUK, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) – Nearly 7,000 people embarked on a three-day peace march Tuesday through the forests of eastern Bosnia in memory of the thousands of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II.

The annual 100-kilometer (60-mile) march retraces in reverse a route taken by men and boys from the Bosniak ethnic group, made up primarily of Muslims, who were massacred as they tried to flee Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb forces captured it in the closing months of the country’s 1992-95 interethnic war.

“I am here today to support my son, Sultan, as he sets off on the march,” said Amir Kulagic, who was among those who took the route in 1995 and recalled that his “ordeal lasted for seven days and eight nights.”

Kulagic said he was proud that his son and his nephew decided to retrace the path but also sad because he could not accompany them due to poor health.

Also joining the march was Nirha Music, now a U.S. citizen, born after the war to a mother who survived Srebrenica.

“We are walking to see what our people went through,” Music said.

“It is not easy; all I can think about is, this is how it was when they were killing us and when they were getting us together to kill us,” she added.

Most of the massacre victims were hunted down and summarily executed as they tried to flee through forests. Their bodies were plowed into hastily dug mass graves and later excavated with bulldozers and scattered among other burial sites to hide evidence of the crime.

Newly identified victims are reburied each year on July 11 – the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995 – in the vast and still expanding memorial cemetery outside Srebrenica.

So far, the remains of more than 6,700 people have been found and buried there. The remains of seven more victims, recently identified through DNA analysis, will be buried there on Friday.

The Srebrenica massacre has been declared a genocide by international and national courts, but Serb leaders in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia continue to downplay or even deny it despite the irrefutable evidence of what happened.