Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ors still don't know exactly what happened to their relatives; they simply never came
back. In some cases, troops walked through the throngs of refugees, murdering Bos-
niak men right out in the open, then tossing their bodies into a pile. Bosniak women
were forcibly raped in front of dozens of witnesses. Crying children who couldn't be
silenced were slaughtered. Two days later, the Dutch forces evicted the rest of the
refugees from inside their camp, including more than 200 men who they were doom-
ing to certain death. (The Dutch role in Srebrenica remains a matter of deep guilt in
the Netherlands.)
Late in the evening of July 11, approximately 12,000 Bosniak men—about half
of them military, and half civilian—headed into the hills surrounding town, with the
intention of hiking through the mountains to the free city of Tuzla, 35 miles away.
A human chain eight miles long trudged slowly across the difficult terrain. Mladi
ć
shelled the hillsides, killing many. Others died of malnutrition or exhaustion from
hiking through sweltering summer heat. Some committed suicide. The next day, the
columnwassplitinhalf,andonelargegroupwassurroundedbyBosnianSerbforces,
bombardedwithartillery(and,someallege,chemicalweapons),andtoldtosurrender.
Thousands did...and were executed. After five days, survivors finally stumbled into
safety in the town of Tuzla. Others wandered in the mountains for months.
While captured Bosniak men were sometimes killed on the spot, more typically
theyweretakentoholdingareas(typicallyschools,warehouses,orsoccerfields)until
they could be moved to remote areas for a systematic, mass execution—often by lin-
ing them up, blindfolding them, shooting them or slitting their throats, and then bull-
dozing them into mass graves.
All told, at least 8,000 people, mostly men, were murdered by the forces of
Karadži
ć
and Mladi
ć
over the course of just a few days. Mass graves are continually
being discovered. The remains of people who once called Srebrenica home are du-
tifully pulled out of the ground, identified through DNA testing, and given a proper
burial in a collective funeral each year on July 11.
There's no silver lining, no happy ending to the tale of Srebrenica. The best that
victims' families can hopeforisthat their loved ones'remains will someday beiden-
tified sotheycanburythem properly.TheWorldWarIIconcentration camp memori-
als, museums, and documentation centers around Europe all share the same message:
Never again. Srebrenica tells us that, despite the best efforts of civilized people, that
message still falls on deaf ears. Appallingly, many people in the former Yugoslavia
still try to deny or justify the events at Srebrenica. Visiting the Srebrenica Exhibition
in Sarajevo helps deflect that bogus propaganda with facts. And various companies
in Sarajevo (including Sarajevo Insider) run educational tours to Srebrenica.
