‘A true hell’: How three Srebrenica survivors defied death 30 years ago | Genocide

Earlier than the conflict scattered his household, Nedzad Avdic liked geography.

He had simply entered his teenagers. Rising up within the village of Sebiocina in Srebrenica municipality, near the border with Serbia, Avdic may clarify the distinction between clustered and dispersed settlements. He realized how one may inform north from south by noticing which aspect of a tree the moss grew on, and found methods to discover constellations and navigate by the North Star.

“I didn’t research it for survival,” Avdic, now 47, would later write in his memoir. “I studied it as a result of I liked it.”

However within the spring of 1995, three years right into a battle that also scars the Balkans, he would come to reside within the geography of japanese Bosnia, trudging by way of forests alongside 8,000 other Bosniak men and boys, making an attempt to outlive.

Avdic was 17 by then and dwelling in a United Nations-run refugee camp within the valley of Slapovici, simply south of Srebrenica, a small city in japanese Bosnia nestled in a deep valley close to the Drina River, which has traditionally served as a pure border with Serbia. On the time, Srebrenica had a inhabitants of simply 6,000 and was regionally identified for its historic silver deposits, from which it took its identify – the Bosnian phrase for silver is srebro.

The UN camp, constructed on beforehand uninhabited land, was residence to greater than 3,000 displaced Bosniaks, South Slavic Muslims native to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who lived in rows of Swedish-donated picket cabins. There was no electrical energy, no plumbing and by no means sufficient meals.

Bosnia was a younger nation then, newly unbiased after the collapse of Yugoslavia, having declared independence on March 1, 1992, after a public referendum. On the time, Bosnia’s inhabitants was ethnically numerous – roughly 44 p.c Bosniak, 31 p.c Serb and 17 p.c Croat – making it probably the most multiethnic republics of the previous Yugoslavia.

By then, Bosnian Serbs had proclaimed what they might name Republika Srpska, a notional quasi-state that the neighborhood’s political leaders needed to carve out from Bosnia, ostensibly to defend its pursuits.

Solely a month later, on April 6, Bosnian Serb forces, backed by Serbia, launched a conflict to grab territory and expel non-Serbs in the direction of that objective. Cities near the border had been shelled, civilians pressured out, and households like Avdic’s needed to flee.

His household – father Alija, mom Tima, and three youthful sisters – can be uprooted a number of instances all through the conflict: first from their residence in Sebiocina, then from makeshift shelters in Srebrenica city, earlier than they reached the refugee camp in Slapovici.

In 1993, after a Serb assault on a schoolyard that killed 56, lots of them kids, and wounded greater than 70, Srebrenica and its surrounding villages had been declared a UN “secure space,” by the UN Safety Council together with 5 different cities and cities in Bosnia. The declaration demanded an “fast cessation of armed assaults by Bosnian Serb paramilitary models in opposition to Srebrenica” and that Serbia and Montenegro, then referred to as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, “instantly stop the availability of army arms” to the Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces. However the Serb bombardment of the city and its neighbouring villages by no means stopped.

On the time, Avdic informed Al Jazeera, “We believed the conflict would ultimately finish – that it needed to.”

“The United Nations was there, the Blue Helmets, and we informed ourselves the darkness couldn’t final without end. In fact, all of us feared for our lives – we knew that on any given day we may very well be killed,” he stated.

“However the scale of what would occur subsequent was past something we may have imagined.”

The offensive begins (July 6–10, 1995)

At daybreak on July 6, 1995, the hills round Srebrenica thundered with artillery fireplace. It was the beginning of Operation Krivaja ‘95, an offensive ordered by Radovan Karadzic, then president of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska, geared toward capturing the enclave.

Within the Slapovici refugee camp, Avdic woke to the sound of shelling.

“It simply wouldn’t cease,” Avdic stated. “It was clear it had develop into too harmful to remain.”

As Karadzic’s troops approached, Avdic and his household left on foot – he says on July 8 or July 9 – fleeing into the hilly forests in the direction of villages close to Srebrenica.

“Reaching these villages was our final refuge,” he stated.

Contained in the city of Srebrenica, Hajrudin Mesic, 21, heard the identical explosions from his household’s condominium. He had already misplaced two of his 4 brothers to the conflict – Idriz, 36, on March 3 from a sniper, and Senahid, 23, from shelling within the 1993 schoolyard assault on Srebrenica. Now, in July 1995, it felt just like the city itself was about to fall.

“That morning [July 6], all the things shook,” he stated.

The military of Republika Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica – a part of the nation’s principal army power, shaped in April 1992 to defend in opposition to Serb aggression and made up largely of native defenders – had been disarmed by the United Nations two years earlier in change for peacekeeping, and had few sources with which to struggle again. Dutch peacekeepers had been current, however by then, their positions had already been pushed again a number of instances by the 25,000-soldier sturdy Military of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb army power, leaving the city’s outskirts uncovered.

On July 10, Serb forces began getting into the city. Mesic was within the rest room when his mom started pounding on the door.

“‘Hajrudin, son, get out, the bullets and shrapnel are falling in our lounge,’ I keep in mind my mom screaming. They [the Bosnian Serb Army] had been already within the city.”

He grabbed a makeshift bag and slipped out together with his aged mother and father, mom Zaha and father Selim, and his two remaining brothers, Hasan and Safet, darting by way of aspect streets, utilizing buildings for canopy.

Srebrenica falls

Throughout city, 16-year-old Emir Bektic and his household realised it was time to run on the morning of July 11.

That day, Bektic’s father, Redzep, returned to their residence in Srebrenica coated in blood. A baby had died in his arms after a shell hit a close-by village which was below bombardment and the place Redzep had volunteered to assist carry the lifeless and wounded. “Srebrenica is not any extra,” he stated. “We have now to depart.”

After years of surviving shelling, hunger and isolation, the enclave had collapsed. At about 4pm on July 11, Basic Ratko Mladic, chief of the Bosnian Serb forces, entered the UN-declared secure space. They began separating Bosniak girls, younger kids and the aged from males and boys, promising that the primary group can be allowed UN shelter.

Phrase unfold among the many 60,000 folks within the enclave on the time – Srebrenica municipality’s pre-war inhabitants of 35,000, and the remainder individuals who had been pushed out of neighbouring areas by the Bosnian Serb forces.

Bosniaks fled in two instructions: girls and kids moved in the direction of the UN base within the village of Potocari, whereas between 12,000 and 15,000 unarmed males and boys set off into the hills, sure for Tuzla, the closest metropolis past Bosnian Serb attain, practically 100 kilometres to the north. It was a “free zone” that will assure their security.

Bektic and his father joined the forest-bound column. His mom and sister went to the UN base. “One query hung within the air,” he stated. “Will we ever see one another once more?”

In the meantime, Mesic and his household additionally selected to separate – his aged mother and father went to the UN base in Potocari, whereas he and his two brothers went to the woods.

It was the identical with Avdic, his father and uncle. Avdic’s mom and his sisters headed to the UN base in Potocari, whereas they marched in the direction of Tuzla.

On July 11, at about 6 -7pm native time, after two days of travelling on foot from the refugee camp in Slapovici, they reached the villages of Jaglici and Susnjari, roughly 15 kilometres (9 miles) away, the place they joined hundreds of different males and boys. However the villages had been below bombardment. The horses and cattle that individuals had been utilizing to ferry the lifeless and wounded panicked, working helter-skelter. “In that chaos, I misplaced my father,” Avdic stated.

He all of the sudden discovered himself engulfed in a crowd of strangers. “I didn’t recognise a single face round me,” he stated. In a panic, he started shouting for his father, pushing by way of the mass of individuals, calling his identify time and again.

“However I by no means noticed him once more,” he recalled. “Surrounded by hundreds of individuals, I nonetheless felt totally alone.”

He joined them on the lengthy stroll by way of the darkish forests of japanese Bosnia, hoping to succeed in Tuzla.

The dying march

The path to Tuzla, which remained below Bosnian authorities management all through the conflict, was thick with oak, beech and pine, but additionally scattered with a dry, brittle fern native to Bosnia’s forests in summer time. Temperatures had been punishing, climbing as excessive as 34 to 36 levels Celsius (93–97 levels Fahrenheit) within the July warmth. Each step by way of the dry undergrowth risked publicity. The crack of a department or the rustle of dried ferns may give away their place to close by Serb forces.

“We walked in silence,” recalled Bektic. “Not out of self-discipline, due to concern. Nobody needed to draw dying.”

“I used to be exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. We’d solely managed to seize no matter meals we may discover in the home earlier than marching by way of the woods. There was no time to organize. That journey … all of it … was virtually insufferable for me at 16.”

On the night time of July 12, at Kamenicko Brdo, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Tuzla, the group that Bektic and his father had been a part of reached a stream.

Overwhelmed by thirst, Bektic bent right down to drink, however the water was thick with mud. “It wasn’t actually water. It was extra like muddy sludge. I felt sand in my mouth,” he stated.

Nonetheless, that single mouthful was all he had. Moments later, chaos erupted. Serb troopers minimize by way of the column, pulling out 15 to twenty individuals who had crossed the stream. They had been ordered to climb a small hill and sit. Then got here the phrases that modified all the things: “You might be prisoners.”

“At that second, they [the Bosnian Serb soldiers] had been solely debating one factor – methods to kill us,” he stated. “A few of them stated, ‘Let’s kill them proper right here,’ whereas others instructed, ‘No, let’s take them right down to the stream and slaughter them there.’”

Exhausted and terrified, Bektic laid his head in his father’s lap.

“It doesn’t matter what occurs, we’ll keep collectively. Simply stick with me. Don’t go to sleep,” his father stated.

However Bektic did go to sleep and wakened solely the following afternoon to seek out that he was leaning in opposition to a beech tree, alone.

“My first intuition was to seek for my father,” Bektic stated.

He referred to as out. Waited. Searched. “Perhaps he had gone to get water. Perhaps he would come again.”

He didn’t, leaving Bektic with a lifetime of questions: What had occurred to his father? Had he been marched to his dying by the troopers? Had his father propped him in opposition to the tree at the hours of darkness to cover him from the Bosnian Serb Military? How had he slept by way of all of it?

“The very last thing I keep in mind from that night time is his embrace.”

After days on his personal within the forest, Bektic discovered one other group of Bosniaks, amongst them his uncle and his two cousins. However Serb troopers quickly surrounded them once more, demanding give up. Some tried to flee and had been shot. As they had been marching down the street, Bektic handed “tons of of murdered folks” within the warmth, and he needed to be cautious to not “step on a physique”.

They had been taken to a hill and ordered to sit down in rows. A Serb commander introduced that some boys can be launched, and that any boy who needed to go ought to rise up. A number of boys about Bektic’s age stood up.

“At that second, none of us actually understood what was occurring”, Bektic stated.

“My uncle insisted that I stand up and go, and we quietly argued,” he stated. “I simply needed to stick with my uncle. I had began to really feel secure once more, and it doesn’t matter what occurred, I needed to stay by his aspect.

“My mom and sister had gone to Potocari, and I had no information of them. My father was someplace within the forest – killed or taken, I didn’t know. I used to be fully alone, and simply being with my uncle and amongst different folks I knew made me really feel a bit of extra secure.”

However ultimately, he caved to his uncle’s pleas.

“Go,” the commander stated. As he stood up, he noticed buses lined up within the valley beneath and ran in the direction of them. He caught the final one simply as its doorways had been closing. The bus was full of girls and kids coming from the UN base in Potocari, going in the direction of Tuzla. “Don’t ask something,” one girl informed him as they coated him with a blanket.

‘Clapping for our executioners’

Additional west within the forest, on July 13, close to the village of Kamenice in Bratunac municipality – a former Bosniak village that had been burned and destroyed by Serb forces in 1993 – Avdic’s group was additionally minimize off by troopers. “They [the Bosnian Serb military] threatened us over megaphones, saying they’d bomb us if we didn’t give up,” he stated. “Then they promised to deal with us below the Geneva Conventions.”

“At first, they acted civilly. Then it began. The beatings. The insults. The humiliation.”

Avdic was someplace close to the entrance. The troopers informed them to depart their belongings, that all the things can be returned. He left his bag, with household photographs inside, subsequent to a tank. Standing there on the street, he nonetheless remembers that tank in entrance of him, and the autos close by. On one in every of them, written in Cyrillic, had been the phrases: The Queen of Demise.

Different autos started to reach – civilian Volkswagen Golfs, full of troopers sitting on the hoods, roofs, and inside. Extra troopers adopted. Then got here blue and white police vehicles, nonetheless the pre-war Yugoslav fashions.

The police remained behind as Bosnian Serb troopers ordered males and boys to start out jogging in the direction of a meadow a couple of kilometre from Kamenice. As they crossed the asphalt street, buses crammed with refugees from Potocari pulled up and had been pressured to cease. The captured males had been now blocking the street.

“Amongst them, I recognise a woman I went to high school with,” stated Avdic. “And it’s apparent that among the refugees within the buses recognise among the folks in our column, too. Ladies are crying as they in all probability recognised their members of the family amongst us – sons, brothers, fathers.”

Finally, the lads and boys had been ordered to proceed working in the direction of Kamenice, whereas the buses moved in the other way in the direction of Tuzla.

They reached a meadow within the destroyed Bosniak village of Sandici. “The grass was already trampled, as if somebody had performed soccer there,” Avdic recalled. “Others had been there earlier than us. And so they had already been taken away.”

Solely later, whereas testifying earlier than the Worldwide Legal Tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, would Avdic be taught what had occurred on that very same meadow simply hours earlier: Ramo Salkic, a captured Bosniak refugee, had been filmed calling out to his teenage son Nermin to hitch him the place the Serb troopers stood. That footage, used as key proof within the prosecution of the Srebrenica genocide, confirmed the chilling second of give up. Each father and son had been later executed.

That night time, a Serb soldier informed Avdic and others, “You’ll be returned to your households. Every part shall be advantageous.” However the voice dripped with sarcasm, Avdic recalled.

“They positioned us all in rows and laid the wounded forward of us.” Then got here the order: lie down, fingers behind heads – and applaud. “All of us, collectively, as onerous as we may,” Avdic stated. “We spent two to a few hours doing that.” By the point the clapping stopped, the wounded had been gone. “They’d been taken into close by homes and killed,” he stated. “Gunfire echoed throughout us.”

Then got here the shouting: “Lengthy reside the king! Lengthy reside Serbia!” The troopers pressured them to chant with them in unison, like a choir.

Packed into vans, Avdic and others had been then pushed by way of Bratunac city close to Srebrenica and past. “Serbs cursed us from the sidewalks, threw stones,” he stated.

The July warmth, he remembers, was “insufferable” contained in the truck. “I keep in mind peering by way of a gap within the tarpaulin [on the side of the truck]. In actual fact, that gap is what helped me breathe, so I wouldn’t suffocate. Individuals round me had been dropping consciousness. They couldn’t breathe,” he stated. “A real hell.”

With no water and unable to bear the thirst, folks began consuming their very own urine, he stated.

“They had been screaming, shouting, asking for water, saying: ‘Open the tailgates, or kill us already. We are able to’t take it any longer.’”

Avdic tried to maintain monitor of time, however after hours with out meals or water, he may not focus. Bosniak males on the truck who had earlier seen a UN automobile go by – and had hoped it was coming to rescue them and take them to Tuzla – started to lose hope. Rumours unfold that they weren’t heading to Tuzla in spite of everything, however to Bijeljina, a metropolis northeast of Tuzla close to the border with Serbia, the place Serbian nationalist paramilitary teams had been sustaining a focus camp.

 

They drove like that for about 50km, till they arrived at a college in Petkovici, about 70km from Srebrenica. By that point, it was already the morning of the following day, July 14.

As the lads had been offloaded from the vans and compelled into the varsity, troopers started beating these within the entrance with rifles and pipes.

“It was chaos,” Avdic stated. “They couldn’t strike everybody quick sufficient.”

Inside the varsity, extra Serb troopers had been ready. One shouted, “Whose land is that this?” One other answered, “That is Serb land – all the time has been, all the time shall be.” The lads had been pressured to repeat the phrase in unison.

The bottom-floor lecture rooms had been already packed. Screams echoed from behind closed doorways. Avdic and the others had been taken upstairs to the second-last classroom on the primary ground. Inside, he recognised his uncle. He realized that that they had been collectively earlier within the meadow, however Avdic had not observed him then.

At one level, folks began whispering about escape. “We should always strive leaping out the home windows … or making a run for the doorways,” somebody stated. “Perhaps somebody would survive that means, in any other case, we’re all going to be killed.”

Listening to the commotion, Serb troopers stepped in and tried to calm the group. “The Purple Cross is coming, put together to be exchanged.”

“And all of us believed it. In a scenario like that, you’d consider something for an opportunity to outlive,” Avdic stated.

His shirt was nonetheless soaked with urine from the journey, so he turned to the individual subsequent to him and requested if that they had a spare T-shirt. A person sitting subsequent to him pulled out one and handed it over. “The Purple Cross was coming, and I felt embarrassed to be seen like that, all soaked. I used to be shy,” he stated.

The troopers began taking males out of the classroom, 5 or 6 at a time. When it was his flip to go outdoors, Avdic requested his uncle to return with him. “However he refused. He stayed behind.”

As soon as out within the hallway, troopers ordered him and others to undress, tied their fingers and marched them downstairs. He adopted with others, leaving the clear shirt behind.

There was blood within the hallway, our bodies in entrance of the varsity, and extra on the principal entrance. He anticipated to be shot proper there. However the troopers loaded them again onto a truck.

As soon as the truck was full, the troopers fired just a few bullets by way of the tarp to scare these inside. Screams stuffed the air as some folks had been hit and wounded. Our bodies crushed in opposition to one another, however Avdic, who was not hit, managed to remain on his knees.

Amid cries round him, Avdic recognised a voice behind him: “It was my geography instructor.”

The truck began shifting. When it lastly stopped, it was about midnight. The lads and boys had been once more ordered to get out.

Troopers started pulling folks out once more. By now, Avdic was positive that they had been to be executed. “All of it occurred so quick,” Avdic stated. “I attempted to cover behind others, urgent myself into the group – however so was everybody else, every individual making an attempt to protect themselves behind another person.”

However Avdic had additionally accepted that he was going to die.

“The one factor I needed at that second was to drink some water. I felt devastated that I’d die thirsty.”

As he appeared forward, he noticed what felt like an countless crowd — hundreds of males. Then, the gunfire started, sudden and fierce. He couldn’t recall the precise second he was hit. There was chaos, shouting, our bodies dropping throughout him. Then – blackness.

When he regained consciousness, ache surged by way of his physique. His proper arm and aspect had been burning; his entire physique trembled. The stench of gunpowder clung to the air. Bullets had been fired at point-blank vary – that they had torn by way of the group with out mercy. Our bodies lay throughout him.

Within the haze, he heard voices, troopers close by. One stated, “Verify if anybody’s nonetheless alive.” One other replied coldly, “They’re all lifeless.”

Then got here silence, adopted by the sound of autos pulling away. Someplace close by, he observed a person nonetheless shifting. He referred to as out softly, “Are you all proper?” The person responded, “I’m. Come. Untie me.”

“I can’t … I can’t …” Avdic whispered. His voice light out and in.

In some way, after what appeared like eternity, he managed to assemble his energy and crawl over to the person, who had survived, virtually unhurt, as a result of he had been crushed below the load of the our bodies falling on him, and so, was saved from the bullets.

With nothing else to make use of, Avdic started chewing by way of the ropes that sure the person, slowly and painfully. Thread by thread.

The troopers had been gone, so the person stood up and commenced to stroll. Avdic, nonetheless tied and injured, crawled beside him, over the our bodies of executed males and boys, some nonetheless heat. They stumbled right into a concrete drainage canal hidden within the brush, the place the person untied Avdic’s wrists and commenced to hold him. When the person grew too drained, Avdic would drag himself ahead on his abdomen, inch by inch.

They survived on wild apples plucked from bushes. Weakened and bleeding, Avdic would beg the person, “Please, depart me behind. Save your self.” However the man refused, each time.

For days, they crept by way of dense forests, dodging Serb patrols, slipping previous scorched Bosniak houses, and sleeping within the ruins of villages burned years earlier. Every time Avdic may go no farther, the person pointed to the following hill and whispered, “Simply that another … then we’ll cease.”

Finally, they crossed into Bosnian-held territory in Zvornik close to Tuzla, barely alive.

“Somebody poured water on me,” Avdic later recalled. “And I cried. That’s once I knew. I had survived.”

A shoelace

After surviving the shelling of his condominium in Srebrenica, Mesic joined the column fleeing by way of the forest together with his two brothers, Hasan, 36, and Safet, 34, on July 11, whereas their mother and father had already taken refuge on the UN base in Srebrenica.

After a day or two of shifting, the column stalled – doubtless close to Kamenica, a village within the Zvornik municipality close to the border with Serbia – and was attacked by troopers. Kamenica was one of many deadliest factors alongside the escape route from Srebrenica, the place Bosnian Serbs killed tons of of males by way of a sequence of ambushes as they tried to flee by way of the forest.

A fierce barrage of gunfire rained down on them. Mesic’s brother Hasan was shot in each arms.

Amid the chaos, Mesic and his brothers tried to maintain shifting, however he overpassed each Safet and Hasan.

“I couldn’t see them any extra,” he stated.

He pressed on with a small group of survivors, carrying the wounded by way of the woods.

At one level, rain started to fall, and the survivors welcomed it. “It masked our steps,” he recalled. “Soaking moist, exhausted, we lay down and slept aspect by aspect, within the mud, below the rain.”

Alongside the route, he reunited with a detailed pal, who shared his brother’s identify, Hasan. “Solely then did I really feel a bit of safer once more,” Mesic recalled. “I wasn’t alone any extra.”

However Mesic, Hasan and their group must face extra gunfire. Within the forests above Kamenica, the slim trails had changed into seen roads, overwhelmed down by hundreds of determined toes.

Locals referred to as it the trla, a tragic hall etched into the panorama by dying marches. Serb forces had been already there, mendacity in wait.

“They allow us to go, after which opened fireplace,” Mesic stated. “Many had been killed.”

He hit the bottom together with Hasan. “I keep in mind the sound of them altering rifle magazines,” he stated. Hasan was shot. “Please don’t depart me,” he begged.

“I didn’t, I couldn’t,” Mesic stated.

As soon as once more, Mesic survived, with Hasan.

By the point the 2 reached Brezik village, 50 kilometres (about 30 miles) from Tuzla, Mesic’s footwear had lengthy fallen aside. He was strolling in skinny socks that had torn, and his toes had been blistered. In a single hand, he clutched a number of small, bruised wild pears which he had picked up within the forest – “the sort even livestock wouldn’t eat,” he stated.

“However we had been ravenous. I couldn’t allow them to go.”

They had been near what they believed was free territory when bullets hit the grime round them once more. “We have now made it to date,” Mesic informed his pal. “However I don’t know if we’ll make it this time.”

Serb troopers had been positioned on close by homes, so the 2 crawled by way of excessive, uncut grass to keep away from being observed till they fell into an deserted Serb military trench. Inside, they discovered two wounded Bosniak males and a boy, who had been shot by the troopers. The lads died in entrance of them. The boy, 16-year-old Musa, was bleeding closely from his leg.

“He checked out me and stated, ‘Do you’ve got a shoelace? Something I can tie my leg with?’” Mesic recalled. “You assume I had shoelaces? I didn’t even have footwear.”

In ache and panic, Musa started to cry out: “Serbs! I’m wounded! Come assist me!” From someplace past the ditch, a voice referred to as again: “Drop your weapon first!” Musa answered, “I don’t have a weapon! I’m a child!”

“He nonetheless believed somebody may assist,” Mesic stated.

However no assist got here. Musa was shot and killed the place he lay.

Realising they might be subsequent, Mesic and Hasan ran for his or her lives below fireplace, slowing down solely as soon as the troopers had been out of vary. “I nonetheless had the pears in a single hand.”

It was night time, and so they determined to attend for daybreak earlier than shifting once more.

However all of the sudden, Mesic heard somebody calling out to them.

About 30 metres away, there was a soldier waving, motioning for them to return over. Mesic stated to Hasan, “He’s calling us. Perhaps he’s one in every of ours?” Hasan replied, “Are you kidding? That’s a Chetnik [a Serb nationalist fighter or paramilitary].”

“If it was a Chetnik, he wouldn’t be smiling like that – he’d shoot us from right here,” Mesic stated. Hasan nonetheless didn’t need to go.

Mesic was torn. He stated once more, “He’s smiling, that’s one thing solely a pal would do.”

Then, subsequent to the soldier calling out to them,  Hasan recognised his pal Sakib. “It’s our military! It’s Bosniaks!” he informed Mesic. The terrain of Brezik is rugged and damaged up, and the 2 had crossed into Bosniak-controlled territory with out realising it.

They ran in the direction of the Bosnian troopers, who gave them bread. They’d survived.

Those who lived

Days later in Tuzla, Mesic was reunited together with his mother and father, who had given him up for lifeless.

In the meantime, the bus Bektic had boarded in Potocari took him to Tisca, from the place he walked as a part of a civilian column to Kladanj, close to Tuzla. “Though I used to be a part of a protracted column, I nonetheless felt fully alone,” he stated. “However I survived. And meaning I’ve to talk.”

In 2004, the Worldwide Legal Tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia (ICTY) dominated that the Srebrenica killings had been genocide. Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic had been each convicted of genocide – Karadzic in 2016, Mladic in 2017.

In 2007, the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice recognised Srebrenica as an act of genocide and located that Serbia failed in its obligation to forestall it.

In only a few days in July 1995, greater than 8,000 Bosniak males and boys had been murdered. Their stays had been scattered throughout mass graves, lots of them later disturbed in efforts to cover the crime. At the least 25,000 girls and kids had been expelled from the city. Based on the State Fee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, roughly 25,000 girls had been raped through the conflict. The precise quantity is believed to be considerably greater, as many survivors doubtless have by no means come ahead due to the stigma related to rape. In 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina grew to become one of many first nations to legally recognise survivors of wartime sexual violence, however kids born of wartime rape weren’t recognised until 2022.

To at the present time, greater than 1,000 households are nonetheless ready to seek out and bury their family members killed within the Srebrenica genocide. These discovered are being buried in Potocari.

Within the early 2000s, Avdic testified at The Hague within the trials of these accused of committing genocide in Srebrenica. He later co-wrote a e-book together with his sister, The Hague Witness, now translated into English and being translated into Arabic. He misplaced his father, three uncles – together with the one who was with him within the faculty in Petkovici, an aunt, three cousins, and plenty of others within the genocide. From his fast household, his mom Tima and his three sisters had survived. He by no means received again the household pictures he had left in his bag. At present, he lives in Srebrenica.

Mesic misplaced 4 brothers, together with Hasan and Safet –  the brothers he was fleeing Srebrenica with – and 24 kinfolk on his mom’s aspect. Hasan, who was shot in each his arms, was ultimately killed by stepping on a mine positioned by Bosnian Serb forces. His stays had been discovered and laid to relaxation on the Potocari cemetery, whereas Safet remains to be lacking to at the present time. Mesic lives in Sarajevo, the place he teaches historical past and geography. Annually, he takes his college students to Srebrenica and the memorial in Potocari.

Bektic misplaced about 10 of his members of the family and kinfolk, amongst them his father Redzep, who was present in a mass grave in Kamenica. His uncle and two cousins, who had been with him, had been additionally executed. At present, Bektic lives in Sarajevo and is the creator of A Daybreak Alone, a private account of his survival through the Srebrenica genocide, translated into English and Turkish.