The truth about the genocide that was committed in Srebrenica 15 years ago must be respected and all those responsible for that crime, first and foremost fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Ratko Mladic, must be brought to justice, speakers said at a ceremony held in this eastern Bosnian town on Sunday to mark the 15th anniversary of the single worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.
Tens of thousands of people gathered at the memorial centre in Potocari, just outside Srebrenica, to pay tribute to the victims of the massacre -- an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys summarily executed by Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladic.
The remains of 775 people, who had initially been buried in mass graves and had been identified in the meantime, were given a formal burial at the cemetery within the memorial grounds. Rudolf Hren, a Croat whose family had settled in Srebrenica long before the war, was buried along with the 774 Muslims, but according to Roman Catholic rites.
The religious ceremony for the Bosniak victims was led by the head of the Islamic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mustafa Ceric. He appealed to the European Union and the international community to do all in their power to prevent a possible repetition of genocide of Bosnian Muslims, asking whether they had been sacrificed in the war just because of their religion.
The youngest victims buried on Sunday -- Rijad Gabeljic and Mehmed Varnica -- were only 14 when killed in 1995.
A total of 4,637 victims are now buried in the cemetery of the Potocari memorial centre. The Bosnian Institute for Missing Persons has said that 1,841 more bodies that have been exhumed from mass graves are awaiting identification.
The burial ceremony was preceded by a memorial service that was attended by many state delegations. The Croatian delegation was led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, Gordan Jandrokovic. Serbia was represented by President Boris Tadic, Montenegro by President Filip Vujanovic, and Slovenia by President Danilo Tuerk.
Those in attendance were addressed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and Council of Europe Secretary-General Thornbjorn Jagland. They all offered their sympathies to the families of the victims and called for the arrest of Ratko Mladic, who is wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Justice must be served, and Mladic and all others responsible must be arrested, Kouchner said, conveying the message from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He called for greater tolerance in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the best way for the country's EU integration.
Leterme said it was unacceptable that Mladic, being the most responsible for the genocide in Srebrenica, had not been arrested yet. He welcomed the resolution on Srebrenica which had been adopted by the Serbian parliament earlier this year and the fact that President Tadic had come to personally pay tribute to the genocide victims.
The United States Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Charles English, read out a message from President Barack Obama, who said that the horror of Srebrenica is a stain on our conscience.
Jagland said that saying "never again" was not enough and that efforts should be made to actively promote European values as the best deterrent against new wars.
Erdogan, whom Bosniaks greeted with applause, spoke of Bosnian-Turkish relations and Turkey's friendship with all the countries in the region.
The Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris Silajdzic, said that only bringing those responsible to justice could put the conscience of humanity at peace. He called on the European Union to take action against those denying that genocide was committed in Srebrenica.
None of the senior Bosnian Serb officials attended the ceremony.
