Marching toward Srebrenica to remember a massacre
By Suzana Vukic, Special to The Gazette July 24, 2012 9:44 AM
The three-day trek through heavily forested mountainous terrain recalls the route taken by people who tried to escape Srebrenica and certain death at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.
Photograph by: Courtesy of Suzana Vukic
SREBRENICA, Bosnia – When the Bosnian war began 20 years ago, I followed events very closely. Being of Croatian descent, I had already been keeping track of the war that had begun in Croatia the previous year, after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
What happened in Bosnia – the ethnic cleansing, the concentration camps, the rape camps – affected me profoundly. The worst was what happened in Srebrenica 17 years ago this month – July 11, 1995 – when Bosnian Serb forces overtook the town and slaughtered 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
Through the years it has been a dream of mine to be in Srebrenica on a July 11, joining the three-day peace march to that town that begins July 8 in a town called Nezuk. This three-day trek through heavily forested mountainous terrain marks, in reverse, the path taken by a group of Bosniak males who tried to escape Srebrenica and certain death at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces, and find refuge in safe, Bosnian-held territory.
This year I finally made it to Srebrenica for July 11. Over those three days, 5,500 people from Bosnia and other countries around the world joined in the peace march, an event that included the ritual annual burial of newly found remains of people killed in the massacre. I found it to be a gruelling trek – not for the faint of heart or those not physically and mentally prepared for it.
All of us who marched did so primarily to pay tribute to the people killed in Srebrenica, an event that has been ruled a genocide by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
For Muhamed Omerovic, one of my fellow trekkers, it was his eighth time participating. He is a survivor of the original march in 1995, when men fled Srebrenica on foot to escape death. I listened closely as Omerovic described how he had made his way through this merciless terrain, barely escaping death while Serb forces shot at and lobbed shells toward him and the others with him.
I met other death-march survivors, like Suljo Cakanovic, who lost his brother and nearly 50 relatives, and Mevludin Hrnjic, who lost his father, three brothers and a brother-in-law.
“We’re people who take our yearly vacations during the period of the peace march and burial,” Omerovic told me. “This means that we don’t take annual seaside vacations for recreational purposes. We dedicate our vacation time toward the burial and paying our respects to our people.”
I felt overwhelmed meeting so many people who had lost so much and endured such great evil. Even though I knew ahead of time what to expect, it was still difficult to confront this phenomenon in person. Especially poignant was meeting Srebrenica matriarchs, one after another, who counted off all of their male family members who had been killed. These women lost husbands and sons, fathers, brothers and uncles in July 1995.
The world should never forget what happened in Srebrenica 17 years ago. The fact that 5,500 of us gathered for this year’s peace march shows a determination to honour the memory of those who were slaughtered.
Suzana Vukic is a columnist with the Hudson/St. Lazare Gazette. She is currently in Bosnia collecting material for her biography of Bakira Hasecic, president of the Association of Women Victims of War.
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