On July 11, a funeral will be held in Potočari for 28 victims of the genocide in Srebrenica, including 4 minors. 28 years after the genocide, many families still have not found the remains of their loved ones, and many do not want to bury the parts of skeletons. In addition to the memories of the horrors of the genocide that they have to live with, the survivors have been struggling for years with the lack of information about their loved ones, but also with constant denial despite the verdicts and changes to the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“I, with my father and brother, set out on that path of salvation, where we had never gone that way before, or anything similar. We were aware that within that column that was moving towards Tuzla there were a lot of Serbian soldiers who had infiltrated and most of them presented themselves as guides who knew the way to Tuzla. They took people away posing as guides to guide them towards Tuzla. My assumption is that my brother and father left in one such group”.
This is how Enver Lemeš remembers the last meeting with his father and 18-year-old brother, whom he thinks were shot in Kravica. He buried his brother in 2008, and only a few bones of his father, found in 2008 in 3 graves – Blječeva, Zeleni jadar and Zalazje, will be buried at the commemoration this year.
This July 11, funeral services will be held for 28 victims of the genocide, among whom the youngest victim is a 15-year-old along with 3 other minors.
Sadik Selimović, an investigator at the Institute for the Missing Persons of BiH, will also put his third brother, Sabahudin, in the grave. He buried his father, two brothers and a cousin. He had the last meeting with his loved ones on July 10, 1995 in the hospital, because he was wounded. He tells how his wounding at Bibići with 6 other guys marked the entry of Ratko Mladić and his army into Srebrenica.
“The Dutch UNPROFOR handed me over to the Chetniks, I was in the camp and they all stayed behind me healthy. And now, as fate would have it, I was the only one who survived, none of them did. Somehow I always put some guilt on my back. Right in Bratunac, I’m sitting on my terrace of my house and I’m looking at where his house used to be and it’s all mixed up for a man. He has 2 daughters, one was born in Živinice after the fall of Srebrenica – so she never saw him.”
He says that he is calmed by the fact that he found his brother’s complete remains, because as he has worked with the families of the missing for years, he knows how difficult and painful the reexhumation process is.
It is also difficult and painful for those who have not yet found the bones of their loved ones, and according to the Institute, there are almost a thousand of them. The sub-identification center of the Institute contains the remains of 55 victims of genocide, whose families do not give their consent for burial due to the small number of remains.
“We appeal to the families of those victims who were identified with the help of the DNA method to approach that identification, to give consent for the burial, and we are certainly here to continue our work, continue to search for missing persons and guarantee that all those remains of those victims that they find later to be added in the reexhumation processes”, says Emza Fazlić, spokeswoman for the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The number of remains is terrifying, and the reasons are numerous. Insufficient funds and a lack of equipment such as georadar and drones create problems for the Institute for the Search for Missing Persons. The main reason is certainly the lack of information. The Institute says that those who know where the potential graves are do not say so – some for fear of sanctions, although they can send the report anonymously, and some because they do not want to betray certain ideologies.
Lemeš, from the beginning of the story, states that he was ready to forgive and move on, but he is dissatisfied with the lack of repentance of the perpetrators.
“However, criminals and perpetrators did not need it, they never asked for substantial forgiveness from the victims,” adds Lemeš.
Assistant to the Minister for Human Rights and Refugees of BiH Saliha Đuderija points out that, nevertheless, the key problem is the lack of information, facts that are verifiable and accurate: “You have to understand that in the past, with a lot of unverified information, we searched and dug up various places, which did not yield any results. It is obvious that we did not work enough on the process of reconciliation, on our culture of memory and remembrance”.
The fact that not enough has been done on the culture of memory and remembrance is evidenced by the daily denials of genocide and other serious crimes during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina states that about 70 cases related to inciting national, racial and religious hatred have been filed and that most of the reports were filed by citizens, not police authorities.
However, they state that after the introduction of changes to the Criminal Code, which made denial of genocide punishable, such rhetoric was reduced.
Victims and witnesses need security or at least to know where the remains of their loved ones are, and this requires the involvement of all authorities and participants in the genocide.