Thousands rally on Srebrenica anniversary

There was no visible presence of Bosnian Serbs at Monday’s service, although Bosnian television aired it live.

It was also carried live in Serbia, which confronted the horrors of Srebrenica for the first time only recently when a videotape showing the slaying of six men and boys in Srebrenica shocked residents, who had been largely uninformed about atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb troops.

From a president, an act of remorse
Serbia’s President Boris Tadic attended the service — a significant gesture given Serbia’s political and military backing of the Bosnian Serbs during the war. He did not speak, but said earlier that his gesture should be considered an act of remorse to Srebrenica’s Muslims. He has also pledged to seek Mladic’s arrest.

In the nearby hamlet of Bratunac, Bosnian Serbs defended the actions of their troops and former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic — considered the main strategist of the Serb wartime offensive.

“The lavish Srebrenica commemorations are a major international plot against the Serbs,” said Milan Baljic, a former Bosnian Serb soldier. “Why does no one care about our dead? They killed us, we killed them. So what’s the difference?”

“Mladic and Karadzic are our heroes, and no one can do anything about it,” Baljic said.

International officials said the two most-wanted war crimes fugitives belong at the U.N. tribunal. Milosevic is on trial before the court.

Two at large
“The evil who committed those crimes still lurks here on those hills,” said the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper. “It must be destroyed.”

Richard Holbrooke, architect of Bosnia’s U.S.-sponsored 1995 peace agreement said justice and reconciliation between Serbs and Muslims cannot be complete without Mladic’s and Karadzic’s arrest.

“The Iraqi people helped Americans capture Saddam Hussein,” Holbrooke said. “Serbs are still sheltering Mladic and Karadzic.”

Mladic, who is believed to be hiding in Serbia, personally commanded the Srebrenica onslaught, saying at the time that the town’s capture was “my gift to the Serb nation” and revenge for the 500-year Turkish occupation of Serbia that started in the 14th century.

Some 250,000 people were killed in the war between Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, with the Srebrenica massacre becoming a symbol of the bloodshed’s brutality. About 16,500 bodies have been exhumed from more than 300 mass graves throughout the country.

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