Didim Today

Although 15 years have passed since the Srebrenica massacre, the pain and suffering it led to are still fresh in the minds and hearts of everyone who has a conscience. The Srebrenica massacre, later recognized as genocide by the UN, stands out as Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. At the time, some 30,000 Bosnian Muslims had flocked to the UN military base in Srebrenica’s suburb of Potocari for refuge.

But when Serb forces came, outnumbered Dutch troops opened the gates. The Serbs took men and boys, put them in trucks and carted them away, the vast majority never to be seen again. On Sunday, leaders of Balkan nations, including Serbian President Boris Tadic, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan joined some 50,000 grieving Bosnians as they gathered at a ceremony to bury the remains of 755 newly identified Srebrenica victims.

The 15th anniversary of the massacre led everyone to reflect on the tragedy and feel shame once again in the name of humanity. Bugün’s Adem Yavuz Arslan, who was among the attendees at Sunday’s ceremony, says the pain Bosnians feel over the Srebrenica massacre has seemed to last for centuries and that by looking at the picture of Sunday’s ceremony, it seems as though the massacre took place just the day before yesterday. “Bosnians underwent the biggest tragedy in the history of humanity.

More than 8,000 men were massacred within several days and before the very eyes of the world. Women and little girls were exposed to the massacre. Thousands of them are still missing. There are still mass graves whose traces have not been found despite the 15 years that have passed. We write these things so easily, but the massacre that took place defies definition,” says Arslan.

With regard to the attendance of Serbia at the memorial ceremonies for the first time and offering an apology to the Bosnians over what happened in Srebrenica, Arslan says even though their apology did not fully satisfy Bosnians, it can be seen as a positive step. “A war broke out in the center of Europe in 1991. A country known as Yugoslavia turned into a lake of blood within four years.

Different ethnic and religious groups that lived side by side in peace for centuries strangled each other to death. The biggest genocide that has been committed since World War II took place in Srebrenica,” says Akşam’s Serdar Akinan. He thinks the provocateur of this massacre is certainly the West, which has remained silent in the wake of the massacre, although it always talks about human rights and freedoms.

Sabah’s Erdal Şafak, who was overwhelmed by the tragedy he saw at the memorial ceremony in Srebrenica on Sunday, says his life will never be the same following his visit to Srebrenica. “Srebrenica is a place where the dead live in dreams and the living live in memories.

It is a place where the dead are more alive than the living and where the living are more dead than the dead. It is a place where the dead live in the houses during the night and where the living live in the graveyards during the day. It is a place where the line between life and death has disappeared,” says Şafak.

F Disli Zibak reported for Todays Zaman www.todayszaman.com