: Eight Years Later, The Srebrenica Death Toll Continues To Rise

It was the defining moment of the war in Bosnia – 8000 Muslim men and boys who were supposed to be under UN protection in Srebrenica, a town surrounded by Serbian forces, were massacred and tossed into mass graves in what war crimes prosecutors call Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. Today, eight years after the massacre, 282 more bodies (out of the total 6000 recovered from Srebrenica’s earth) have been identified, bringing closure to thousands of Bosnian Muslims who gathered in a cemetery just outside the eastern Bosnian town to re-bury their dead with a proper Muslim funeral. “The grave in Srebrenica will be the only thing I have left from my son,” said Husein Pitarevic as he buried his son Adnan, a 14-year old whose remains were identified by DNA analysis. Making the anniversary a bitter one was the fact that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, both charged with genocide for leading the massacre, are still at large are the most wanted fugitives of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague (where former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is on trial). “The two top fugitives are still laughing in the face of the world,” said Bosnian Muslim leader Mustafa Ceric at the funeral prayer, “while at the same time the mothers of Srebrenica are still screaming for their sons.” Last year, the entire Dutch government was forced to resign after a report laid some blame for the deaths on Dutch authorities. In a bid to further heal the rift that exists between the two halves of Bosnia (the Croat-Muslim half and the Serb half), Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Dragan Mikerevic will be the first Serb representative to the annual commemoration of the massacre, which is significant because to this day many ethnic Serbs deny that it even happened.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.