Ten years late, a mass funeral for Srebrenica victims

By Peter Popham and Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Srebrenica

Published: 12 July 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article298520.ece

Ten years late, a mass funeral for Srebrenica victims
Naza Hasanovic came back to Srebrenica again
yesterday. The last time she saw her brother Hamid
Velic alive was exactly 10 years ago, on this very
spot. Yesterday she buried him here.

It was one of 610 funerals at the Memorial Garden
opposite the former base of the United Nations Dutch
peacekeepers which took place on the 10th anniversary
of Europe's worst genocidal atrocity since the Nazis.
Ten years ago Bosnian Serb soldiers under the command
of General Ratko Mladic set about terminating the
Muslim population of the town. By the time they had
finished, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys
had been killed.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of survivors with stories
like that of Naza Hasanovic streamed into the Memorial
Garden to bury 603 recently identified corpses and to
remember all the rest, both those who have already
been identified and those, like Naza's husband, of
whom there is as yet no trace.

The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, the Bosnian
High Representative, Lord Ashdown, and Paul Wolfowitz,
president of the World Bank, were among dignitaries at
the ceremony, which was held under a fragile wooden
canopy topped by a small silver Islamic crescent.

In a message read out by a spokesman, the United
Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, told the
gathering: "Here we see man's inhumanity to man ...
the United Nations should not evade its share of
responsibility. It was a serious error of judgement
based on principles of impartiality and non-violence
that were not appropriate to the situation. The
tragedy at Srebrenica will always haunt the United
Nations.''

Naza Hasanovic, now 47, listened and kept her thoughts
to herself. Until 1993 she lived with her family a few
kilometres up the road from Srebrenica in the town of
Bratunac. Then that town fell to the Bosnian Serb army
and they were forced to flee south to the so-called
"United Nations Safe Area'' of Srebrenica. After two
years of siege, the Bosnian Serb forces came over the
hill into the town and the Hasanovics were on the road
again, fleeing for the protection of the Dutch United
Nations camp in a disused battery factory. But when
the Serbs told the Dutch to relinquish the refugees,
Naza was put on a bus to safety while her husband, her
14-year-old son and two of her brothers were put in
the lorry that would take them to their deaths.

Her son, Meho, had the wit and luck to escape, fleeing
the crowd of doomed men and rejoining his mother. He
survived: yesterday, with sunglasses clamped on his
brow and wearing jeans rolled up against the mud, he
filmed his uncle's funeral, tears reddening his
cheeks. He is studying political science at Sarajevo
University.

Naza's husband and brothers vanished without trace. It
is supposed that both were executed soon after they
were torn away from her.

Thanks to the work of the International Commission on
Missing Persons, DNA testing identified first the
remains of Mehmed, her elder brother, buried here
three years ago, then those of Hamed. But of her
husband there is still no trace.

In all, 48 members of her extended family died in the
massacre.

The anniversary of the massacre has become the town's
sombre annual reunion. It had a population of more
than 37,000 before the war and was 70 per cent Muslim.
The population of Srebrenica today is only about
10,000, the majority Serbs. Under the 1995 Dayton
Agreement the town was awarded to the Bosnian Serb
entity, Republika Srpska. The town's mayor is a
Muslim, but he lives elsewhere, and his administration
is painfully under-funded.

The ethnic cleansing of Srebrenica, in other words,
was very substantially a success: those Muslim
residents not killed were scattered across the earth.

Naza Hasanovic now lives in Tuzla, a Muslim-ruled
Bosnian town two hours away; two of her other brothers
have emigrated to the United States.

As many speakers pointed out, the architect of the
massacre, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic,
and its executioner, General Ratko Mladic, are still
free. Rumours were circulating yesterday that Mladic
may surrender "within days". But Naza Hasanovic has
heard it all before.

Ten years late, a mass funeral for Srebrenica victims

Naza Hasanovic came back to Srebrenica again
yesterday. The last time she saw her brother Hamid
Velic alive was exactly 10 years ago, on this very
spot. Yesterday she buried him here.

It was one of 610 funerals at the Memorial Garden
opposite the former base of the United Nations Dutch
peacekeepers which took place on the 10th anniversary
of Europe's worst genocidal atrocity since the Nazis.
Ten years ago Bosnian Serb soldiers under the command
of General Ratko Mladic set about terminating the
Muslim population of the town. By the time they had
finished, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys
had been killed.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of survivors with stories
like that of Naza Hasanovic streamed into the Memorial
Garden to bury 603 recently identified corpses and to
remember all the rest, both those who have already
been identified and those, like Naza's husband, of
whom there is as yet no trace.

The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, the Bosnian
High Representative, Lord Ashdown, and Paul Wolfowitz,
president of the World Bank, were among dignitaries at
the ceremony, which was held under a fragile wooden
canopy topped by a small silver Islamic crescent.

In a message read out by a spokesman, the United
Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, told the
gathering: "Here we see man's inhumanity to man ...
the United Nations should not evade its share of
responsibility. It was a serious error of judgement
based on principles of impartiality and non-violence
that were not appropriate to the situation. The
tragedy at Srebrenica will always haunt the United
Nations.''

Naza Hasanovic, now 47, listened and kept her thoughts
to herself. Until 1993 she lived with her family a few
kilometres up the road from Srebrenica in the town of
Bratunac. Then that town fell to the Bosnian Serb army
and they were forced to flee south to the so-called
"United Nations Safe Area'' of Srebrenica. After two
years of siege, the Bosnian Serb forces came over the
hill into the town and the Hasanovics were on the road
again, fleeing for the protection of the Dutch United
Nations camp in a disused battery factory. But when
the Serbs told the Dutch to relinquish the refugees,
Naza was put on a bus to safety while her husband, her
14-year-old son and two of her brothers were put in
the lorry that would take them to their deaths.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interactive report on Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,474564,00.html




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