Numerous international and regional media outlets reported on the Srebrenica genocide anniversary, which was marked on Thursday with a commemoration and burial of 33 more victims of the 1995 mass killing.
Italian Corriere della Serra said that several thousand persons, Bosnian Muslims, mostly men from the town of Srebrenica and other nearby places were killed in July 1995, in the heart of Europe. It all happened in a UN-protected zone.
Deutschlandfunk, German public broadcaster, mentioned in its report the traditional Peace March and carried words of some of its participants. One of the marchers, Muhamed Alic, was quoted as saying that he had to cry for thousands who were killed only because they were Muslims.
Dutch media outlets reported on the Potocari commemoration and an 11-kilometre long peace march that was organised in the Netherlands.
Open Democracy, independent global media platform, said that the genocide in Srebrenica happened due to the international community's passiveness and that the international community knew what was happening but “chose to look away.”
Euronews carried an interview with former NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea, who said that life imprisonment for wartime Serb forces commander Ratko Mladic was significant progress in the international law. He stressed that he had felt back at that time the genocide could have been prevented because the UN forces were there to protect civilians.
BBC in Serbian wrote that the anniversary divided the Serbs and the Bosniaks for the 24th time, reminding that the International Court of Justice acquitted Serbia of direct responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide but that the same judgement said Serbia was guilty of not preventing it and not punishing the perpetrators.
Serbian daily Blic reported on the marking of “crime anniversary” in Srebrenica and carried Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic as saying she would not attend the commemoration in Bosnia.
Croatia's news website Dnevnik.hr recalled that some politicians still deny the genocide in Srebrenica.
33 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica mass killing, which two international courts ruled was an act of genocide, were buried on Thursday at the Potocari Memorial Centre.
Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-protected eastern Bosnian enclave on July 11, 1995, separated men from women and little children and executed some 8,000 men and boys over three days.
The bodies of the victims were buried in a large number of mass graves in the area.
The remains of 140 victims are stored in the DNA identification centre in Tuzla. Some of them have been identified, but their families do not want to bury them until more of their remains are found.
More than 1,000 Srebrenica genocide victims are still missing.
Among the 6,610 victims buried at the Potocari Memorial Centre, 26 are women. The oldest of all victims is 94-year-old Saha Izmirlic. The youngest is Fata Muhic, not even a day old.
The first such mass funeral took place in 2003, when about 1,000 victims were laid to rest.
