Bag with pork waste thrown in front of Srebrenica genocide cemetery

SDA

A bag containing waste from pork meat was found on Sunday in front of the gate of the Potocari Memorial Centre, where the Muslim victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide were laid to rest.

It is a “disgusting attack aimed at vandalising the graves of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, and brutally hurting the feelings of those who survived and the families of those who were killed in Srebrenica,” the main Bosniak party, the Party for Democratic Action (SDA), said in a statement, adding that the deed “has clear political connotations.”

The SDA requested institutions in Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity where the Memorial Centre is located, to find and punish those behind the act as soon as possible.

Something like this is “only possible in an atmosphere in which the most responsible government institutions deny the truth about Srebrenica” and show that “disrespect toward the victims is preferable behaviour,” the SDA said, referring to the continuous denial of the Srebrenica genocide by the RS leadership.

The RS Government is “continuously running a campaign of disrespect of the truth and of offending the victims of genocide,” and as such “is directly politically responsible” for what happened, the SDA said.

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian enclave and rounded up the town’s Muslim Bosniaks, separated men from women and children and systematically executed some 8,000 men and boys.

The bodies of the victims were dumped into numerous mass graves in the area. Forensic experts excavated them and identified the bones through DNA analysis before returning the bodies to the families.

Those rebury them every year on July 11 at the Memorial Centre’s cemetery.

Two international courts, The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.

International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars.