Srebrenica Commemorations Run Short of Cash

The preparations has already started for the Peace March | Photo: marsmira.org

Funding for the annual commemoration day, held every July 11 in Srebrenica, is still in doubt, largely because Bosnia has yet to adopt a state budget.

This is due to the political deadlock that has continued since Bosnia's last general election last October.

Zijada Djapo, from the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees, which is obliged to provide the largest part of the funds for the commemoration, told Balkan Insight that a state budget might be adopted next week. “Until then, I can’t tell you when the funds will be deposited, or exactly how much money will be provided by our ministry,” she said.

The organising committee for marking the Srebrenica massacre, when Bosnian Serbs killed some 8,000 Bosniak [Muslim] men and boys, has sent a request for financial support to all the main institutions in Bosnia: the state Presidency, Council of Ministers, the two entity governments, and the cantonal and municipal authorities.

The subcommittee in charge of organizing the "peace march" has meanwhile already started preparations for marking the 16th anniversary of the genocide.

The march, an international event, follows a mapped route similar to that which the Bosniaks from the UN "safe haven" used in 1995 to try to get to freedom after the fall of Srebrenica to the Bosnian Serb Army under Ratko Mladic.

So far, nearly 6,000 people, including a large number of international guests, have applied to join the march.

Muhamed Durakovic, chairman of the subcommittee, told Balkan Insight that only about 1,800 marks [900 euro] has currently been deposited in the municipal budget for this cause.

When it is recalled that last year's bill for the event totalled 400,000 euro, funding for mass burials not included, the financial shortfall is alarming.

Those interested in participating in the march have been asked to sign an application form on the website www.marsmira.org.

The Organizing Committee has however determined its final programme, which will be titled "Do not forget". It has been decided that a religious service will take place but be separated from the other commemoration events.

Funding shortages will not affect the planned reburial of hundreds of victims of the massacre. The Memorial Centre Potocari provides money for the reburial of Bosniaks killed in July 1995, Mersed Smajlovic, director of the Center, reminded Balkan Insight. 

Until now, 4524 Bosniaks killed in July 1995 have been buried at the Potocari Memorial, while another 188, following requests of their families, were reburied in other locations.

Smajlovic says that so far another 551 bodies have been identified and prepared for reburial, but he expects that number to be around 600 by the day of commemoration.

Inside Potocari memorial in Srebrenica | Photo by Eldin Hadzovic

“According to the list of killed and missing persons from Srebrenica, there are still 3,660 persons from Srebrenica missing or waiting to be identified,” Smajlovic said.

The slaughter of Muslim men and boys began in the days after the Serbs captured the then UN-protected enclave in eastern Bosnia.

The massacre, which took place five months before the end of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, has been qualified as genocide by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, both based in The Hague.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Srebrenica in 2009 calling the massacre “the biggest war crime in Europe since the end of WWII” and “a symbol of the international community’s impotence to intervene and protect civilians”.

Under the 1995 Dayton peace agreement, which ended the Bosnian war, the country was divided into two largely self-governing entities, the Republika Srpska and the Croat-Bosniak Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As a result of the Dayton deal, Srebrenica is today a part of the Republika Srpska and only a handful of massacre survivors have returned to the town since the end of the war.