Bosnian families’ circle of torment burying Srebrenica victims

Hundreds of Bosnian mothers are caught in a never-ending cycle of constantly having to rebury their children as researchers identify remains at mass graves from the Srebrenica massacre. Many decide to bury whatever parts turn up first. Then another bone surfaces and they have to reopen the grave. Months later researchers find more fragments, and then another. Every time, the women say, it feels like another funeral, the women say.

On Saturday, the 14th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, families laid to rest the remains of 534 victims, next to the existing 3,297graves at the memorial centre. Every year, on the 11th July anniversary, newly identified remains are buried in the same spot. During the 1992-95 Bosnian War, the United Nations declared Srebrenica – which was besieged by Serbian forces throughout the war – a United Nations-protected safe. Bosnians flocked there for protection. But in July 1995, Serbian troops led by Gen Ratko Mladic overran the enclave, rounded up the population of Srebrenica and took the men away for execution. Some were just 14 years old. Troops scattered the bodies in dozens of mass graves that are still being found. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan describes it as the darkest page in UN history and the act was classed as genocide.

Identifying the remains is a huge task. Ten years after a DNA lab took a drop of blood from Habiba Masic, researchers called her to say they had made a positive identification. The man at the lab said they had found 90 per cent of her husband's body. His bones had been scattered among four different mass graves. "And the children?" she recalled asking. "The man went silent, and I knew something was wrong," she told The Independent on Sunday newspaper. There was no trace of one of her boys but a small part of the other had been found. DNA analysis could not determine which one he was. "I couldn't breathe," she said. "I couldn't speak."

Kadrija Muminagic arrived from Germany to bury his nephew Saidin, who was 14 when he and his father ended up at the execution field. A shell that landed close to their home a week before Srebrenica fell killed Saidin’s 16-year-old brother, Sulejman. Only the mother survived the massacre. She died three years later."She died of sorrow," Muminagic, who escaped the killing by hiding in the forest, told a US news service.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children