Srebrenica

The last weekend of the trip, I went to Srebrenica, the site of a major mass murder. The estimated number of victims at Srebrenica is around 8,000 Bosniaks. The tragedy of Srebrenica is that the UN deemed it a neutral town where Bosniaks would be able to find refuge. Prior to the massacre at Srebrenica, there were about 40,000-50,000 Bosniaks staying in the town before Serb forces forced them out and slaughtered 8,000 people right outside of Srebrenica in Potocari, on July 11-13, 1995.

Once a year, on July 11, Srebrenica hosts a memorial service where all victims identified in the past year are buried. This year, they buried 613 victims (sixteen years later). It was estimated that about 70,000-80,000 people migrated to Srebrenica this year for the memorial service that lasts only a few hours. To put it in perspective, Srebrenica is a relatively small village with no more than a couple thousand residents, if even that. Unfortunately, my camera battery completely died a few days before arriving (I left my charger in the United States even though I planned to do a photoblog). I have a few pictures of the town that I took from my cell phone. However, I did not feel comfortable photographing the memorial and the mass caskets waiting to be buried.

If you would like to see pictures of the memorial, you can visit the wikipedia page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre.

Here are some phone pictures from Srebrenica:

Peace marchers walking from Tuzla arrive in Srebrenica.

More from the peace march.

European Union sign in the center of town.

Keep checking back as I will be putting up to more posts-the last pictures from my camera in Sarajevo and a final reflection.