After victims’ associations announced that the fence and belt around the Budak mass grave near Potočari had been devastated, the Srebrenica Police Station confirmed to Detektor that the case had been reported, and that the police had gone to the scene.
A statement from the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide and the Association of the Movement of the Mothers of the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa states that the fence and belt around the Budak mass grave had been destroyed, and that the site itself had been disturbed again.
“Even after 30 years, they are not giving the dead peace,” the statement reads.
Munira Subasic, president of the Association of the Movement of the Mothers of the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa, tells Detektor that she received information that the destruction had occurred last night, after which the case was reported to the police today.
She explains that it was a secondary mass grave in which, among other things, she found one of her son’s bones, while she found another in Jadra.
“They don’t give peace to the dead either. Shame on them. When they told me, I cried for two hours. I feel sad, I’ve been asking myself the question for two or three hours: ‘Why, how, why?'” she says, adding that she thinks the goal is to insult and intimidate the returnees.
Subasic also confirmed that the case of damage to the Budak tomb was reported to the police.
The Srebrenica Police Station confirmed to Detektor that the police went to the scene.
“The report was made about an hour ago, and the police are still on the ground and working on documentation,” said the Srebrenica Police Station.
They also clarified that the case will be forwarded to the competent prosecutor’s office.
The victims’ association stated that they hope that the authorities will conduct an investigation. Subasic stated that families do not trust the work of the police and the court.
Detektor previously wrote that graves in BiH are mostly unmarked, and that the first request of the mothers of Srebrenica was to mark the Zeleni Jadar mass graves, as this is allowed by the Law on Missing Persons.
The request was submitted in April to the Municipality of Srebrenica for the construction of memorials at five locations of mass graves.
According to the “Database of Judicially Determined Facts on the War in BiH” in which Detektor analyzed the verdicts of the Hague Tribunal, the chambers determined, among other things, that the bodies of those killed in Kravica were buried in Glogova and Ravnice, at a location that was assessed as a primary grave.
The bodies from Glogova were then transferred to secondary graves in Zeleni Jadar, Blječeva, Budak and Zalazje, BIRN reports.
