At the cemetery in Bratunac, the Serbian patriarch Porfirije will hold a memorial service today for 3,267 Serbs from central Podrinje and Birče who died during the last war, among whom 69 were killed, as well as 22 who were captured and executed on St. Peter’s Day in 1992 in the villages of Bratunac and Srebrenica.
The slogan of this year’s commemoration of the Serbian victims from central Podrinje is “31 years, a crime without punishment”.
The highest officials of the Republika Srpska have announced their presence at the memorial service, and guests from the Serbian state leadership are also expected.
The commemoration program will begin in the port of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, then the procession will depart from the Church to the city cemetery.
A memorial service will be held at the city cemetery at 12:00 p.m. and wreaths and flowers will be laid.
In the area of Podrinje, the Serbian population suffered massively in the First and Second World Wars, as well as in the previous war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ten missing people are still being searched for
In addition to the 69 killed in the villages of Sase and Zalazje in Srebrenica and Biljaca and Zagoni in Bratunac, 22 people are missing.
The remains of 10 missing Serbs were accidentally found and exhumed on June 10, 2011, from a mass grave in Zalazje, during the search for Bosniak casualties.
They were identified after more than a year and buried on St. Peter’s Day 2012, while two were exhumed, identified and buried earlier. Ten missing people are still being searched for.
No one has yet been held accountable for these crimes.
Court proceedings
In November 2018, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina legally acquitted Naser Orić, former commander of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Sabahudin Muhić, of the accusations that in 1992 they killed three prisoners of Serbian nationality in the towns of Zalazje, Lolići and Kunjerac (Srebrenica municipality) .
The procedure was initiated after Naser Orić was arrested in Switzerland in 2015 on the warrant of Serbia, which demanded his extradition for the aforementioned crimes.
In 2008, Naser Orić was legally acquitted before the Hague Tribunal, which charged him with crimes against Serbs near Srebrenica committed from 1992-1993. The Council thereby changed the first-instance verdict, pronounced in the summer of 2006, by which Orić was found guilty of not preventing crimes against Serbs, on the basis of which he was sentenced to two years in prison.
The appellate panel concluded that the first-instance judges made a mistake when they found Orić guilty, without first determining who exactly committed the crimes, whether the perpetrators were subordinate to Orić, and whether he knew about the crimes.
Photo: Srna
