More than 300 bodies have been identified and burried in the Potocari
memorial cemetery, from the thousands pulled from mass graves and
currently being held in morgues, this year alone.
It's a well-documented process.
1. Exhuming the bodies from the mass graves.
2. Inviting families for clothing, following by DNA identification.
3. Sorting the bodies for burials, held typical 50-bodies at a time.
4. Burials at the Potocari memorial cemetery.
5. Praying for justice.
"By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian
Serb forces committed genocide. The Appeals Chamber states
unequivocally that the law condemns, in appropriate terms, the deep and
lasting injury inflicted, and calls the massacre at Srebrenica by its
proper name: genocide." (ICTY 2004, para. 37)
The Commission for the Investigation of the Events in and around Srebrenica between 10
th and 19
th July 1995, published 2004.
The Events in and around Srebrenica between 10th and 19th July 1995.
There are similar resolutions from every European Union country
except Greece and most United Nations countries, including the United
States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
These are some of the more recent burials. You can count them yourself if you like, there's well over 300.
As for 10,000 Serbs killed in Sarajevo, I'll copy this directly:
Among the more controversial topics regarding the siege of Sarajevo is
the alleged ethnic cleansing that took place at the time. Namely, after
several years in the
1990s characterised by denial of the widely held view of the
Serb role in the
Yugoslav wars, a trend has developed in the
2000s where
Serb nationalists have attempted to draw
Bosniak and
Croat parallels to such infamous examples of attrocities as
Srebrenica. Regarding Sarajevo, the typical claim is that between
1992 and
1995,
150,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Sarajevo, with several
thousand killed. The allegations were brought to the media forefront in
early
2005 when the premier of
Republika Srpska,
Pero Bukejlović, claimed that genocide was committed against Serbs during the siege of Sarajevo that exceeded that of the
Srebrenica massacre.
Such claims are, upon careful analysis, fairly easy to refute. First
of all, the often cited number of 150,000 ethnically cleansed Serbs is impossible, considering that there were only around 150,000 Serbs in Sarajevo. For such claims to be true, every single Serb
in the entire Sarajevo region would had to have been ethnically
cleansed. Furthermore, the number of killed and wounded in the siege of
Sarajevo has been carefully documented. Out of 12,000 people killed,
around one fourth were ethnic Serbs or people of Serbian ancestry.
Taking into account civilian and military deaths, the number of Serbs
killed is relatively proportional to the percent of the Sarajevo
population they made up at the time.
Aside from these documented victims there were, according to the International Red Cross[2], there were only 242 ethnically Serb
missing persons in the Sarajevo area. When it's taken into account that
the number of missing persons for various towns in eastern Bosnia is in
the thousands, the Serbian claims are proven baseless. Furthermore, the
ability of the Bosnian government to stage a genocide of such a
magnitude while under siege and being perpetually bombarded is highly
questionable. The Hague has yet to make any accusations for individuals
that had a role in the alleged Sarajevo genocide, which cannot be said
of most major centers of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Commander Muan Topalović Cace did commit crimes against Sarajevo
citizens in 1993, but he was quickly liquidated by the government.
Certainly it is plausible that some Serbs were ethnically cleansed, but
more than likely these were isolated incidents and not a consequence of
direct government action or strategy. Tellingly, though hundreds of
mosques in Republika Srpska were demolished, no orthodox church was
harmed during, or following, the siege of Sarajevo.
Of course the question remains; what happened to the 100,000+ Serbs
who are no longer in the city? It must be noted that following the
siege of Sarajevo the population of the city had shrunk by around
250,000 people, meaning that besides Serbs 150,000 former citizens of
Sarajevo of different ethnicities were also no longer there. Ethnic
cleansing had certainly occurred in areas of the city held by Serb
radicals; Ilida,
for example, had nine detention camps for non-Serbs. It is no secret
that Karadić's intention was to split the city into two at a point
that would have required the ethnic cleansing of over 150,000 Bosniaks
and Croats. Once the war was over and Sarajevo firmly in the hands of
the Bosniak-Croat Federation,
it is understandable that many Serbs would not have wanted to stay in a
city where they would have been viewed with suspicion and been a clear
minority. In the communities of Grbavica and Ilida,
seized by Serb radicals during the siege, Serbs looted and destroyed
what was left of the area to make life harsher for returning Bosniak
and Croat refugees. Upon the return of the ethnically cleansed, the
remaining Serb community was harassed and looked upon with suspicion,
pushing many more to leave the city as well[3]. Thousands of the Serbs who had left the city by then went to what is today "East Sarajevo",
a politically distinct Sarajevo suburb that in reality is virtually
indistinguishable from the rest of the city and home to a couple dozen
thousand Serbs. Leading up to the siege itself, the Serb forces
surrounding the city had allowed many Serb citizens to leave while
forcing members of other nationalities to stay behind.
Today, Sarajevo citizens of all nationalities generally take
accusations of ethnic cleansing in Sarajevo during the war as a highly
offensive insult. In response to premier Bukejlović's statement, many
have demanded a public apology to all Sarajevo citizens. The president
of the Serb citizens council/Citizen's movement for equality, Mirko
Pejanović, stated that "Nobody, not even Bukejlović, can change or
cover up the truth for the sake of current political needs. In
Sarajevo, during the four year siege carried out by Karadić's military
forces and the SDS, there were deaths of Sarayliyas of all ethnicities.
The people were both suffering and dying from hunger, cold, they were
being killed by mortar shells... among the 12,000 killed Sarayliyas
recorded in the war, at least one fourth were members of the Serb
nation or had Serb ethnic ancestry. Thus, we can not talk of an
extermination or genocide of Serbs, but of a responsibility of the SDS
and Karadić's military forces for the overall extermination of
Sarajevo and Sarayliyas, and within that of the Serb people".
Edited by Mila