SREBRENICA GENOCIDE MEMORIAL

This is the main memorial site of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) and the place where some of the victims of the largest massacre in Europe since the end of World War II are buried. The site is officially called "Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center and Cemetery of the Victims of the 1995 Genocide" (Memorijalnom Centru Srebrenica-Potočari Spomen Obilježje i Mezarje za Žrtve Genocida iz 1995. Godine/Меморијалном Центру Сребреница-Поточари Спомен Обиљежје и Мезарје за Жртве Геноцида из 1995. Године). It is located in the industrial zone of Srebrenica, Potočari, which housed the base of Dutch UN soldiers from 1994 to 1995. It was here that the massacre of 8,372 people by Bosnian Serb forces began, starting on July 11, 1995 and continuing until the following November¹. The vast majority of the victims were Bosnian men from Srebrenica. The center was inaugurated on September 20, 2003 by Bill Clinton, President of the United States at the time of the events (1993-2001). It is managed by a small team of curator-translators, some of whom are survivors of the 1995 massacres, and who provide free guided tours upon request. Because of several desecrations committed by Serb nationalists, the site is under police surveillance. It consists of monuments, a large cemetery, a museum and a documentation center. In front of the entrance to the cemetery, a small store sells the "Srebrenica Flower" with eleven white petals and a green heart: the number 11 in memory of July 11, the date of the beginning of the massacre, the white as a symbol of the innocence of the victims, and the green as a sign of hope and justice.

Monuments. The entrance to the memorial is marked by a white marble wall with a semicircular shape that bears the first name, surname and date of birth of the 8,372 missing persons from the massacres counted at the end of the war. In the center is a pavilion. It is a musalla, a covered oratory for Muslim worship intended for meditation and prayer. This large green dome houses a mihrab that indicates the qibla (the direction of Mecca) and a large stone slab on which are engraved, in Arabic and Bosnian-Croatian, the verses 154-156 of the^2nd Sura of the Koran: " And do not say of those who are killed in the path of Allah that they are dead. On the contrary, they are alive, but you are unaware of it. We shall certainly test you with a little fear, hunger and depletion of goods, people and fruits. And give glad tidings to those who endure, who say, when a misfortune befalls them, 'Surely we are Allah's, and to Him we shall return.'" On either side of the circular wall are two steles. The larger one is engraved with the number 8,372 followed by suspension points, the sentence " The number of victims of the genocide is not definitive" and thirteen martyred municipalities of the Bosnian conflict such as Sarajevo, Višegrad or the neighboring town of Bratunac (4 km to the north). On the second stele is inscribed the "Srebrenica prayer": " In the name of the God of mercy, almighty God, may sadness be transformed into hope! May vengeance become justice! May the mother's tear become a prayer! May Srebrenica never be repeated again!"

Cemetery. It is very impressive with its huge rows of white nişans, Ottoman-style grave markers numbering about 6,700 currently. Established in 2003, it now extends 350 m northward, progressing as the victims hidden in about 100 mass graves are found in the valley and throughout the upper Drina. Every July 11, on the anniversary of the beginning of the 1995 massacre, the new bodies discovered and identified during the year are buried in a large ceremony attended by about 30,000 people, including national and international political figures. On July 11, 2022, fifty new coffins covered with a green sheet were laid to rest. Fifty new nişans were erected, bringing the number of victims resting here to 6,721 that year. Of the dead from the 1995 massacres, the largest portion were men and teenagers from the age of 16. The oldest, Šaha Izmirlić, was 94, and the youngest victim was a girl, Fatima Muhić, a baby born on the night of July 12-13, and executed in front of her mother the very next day by Bosnian Serb soldiers. About 140 other coffins are waiting in Tuzla, at the forensic medicine center of the International Commission for Missing Persons. They contain incomplete bodies: families prefer to wait in the hope that other body parts will be found before burial. With an estimated total of 8,372 victims, more than 1,000 bodies are still to be discovered in the "valley of death" along the Drina River. It should be noted that among all the Muslim graves, one is Catholic. Placed slightly apart, a stele bears a Christian cross and the name of Rudolf Hern, a Bosnian-Croat from Srebrenica killed at the age of 35 with his Bosnian friends between July 11 and 16, 1995.

Museum. Called the "monument room" (Spomen Soba), it is dedicated to the 1995 massacre and the failure of the international community to prevent the bloodbath. Very educational and partially designed with the Imperial War Museum in London, it is located across the road, 400 meters on foot from the memorial, but 1 km by car. It is located in the former Fabrika Akumulatora, the battery factory in Potočari. The 120,000^{square meter} factory served as the barracks ("Charlie base") for the Dutchbat at the time of the massacres, and it was here that the massacre of July 11, 1995 began. The drawings and graffiti of the UN soldiers, sometimes considered obscene, have been deliberately preserved to better understand the context. Twenty-six rooms display objects found in mass graves alongside identified victims (lighters, photo albums, keys, cigarette cases, etc.), testimonies of survivors and relatives of victims, numerous photos, including those of Bosnian photographer Tarik Samarah, who has received several awards for his work on the Srebrenica massacres in 2002, and also a screening room where Cry from theGrave is shown. This 1999 documentary by British director Leslie Woodhead remains the reference on the subject. It reconstructs in 2h30 the course of events based on the testimonies of survivors and Dutch peacekeepers, a sequence filmed at the time of the events in 1995, then images of the exhumation of bodies from mass graves.

Documentation Center. Since 2014, the former Fabrika Akumulatora houses the Srebrenica Documentation Center. This was created by the news agency Sense (South East News Service Europe), which followed all the activities of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2017. It hosts part of the Tribunal's archives and shows how it investigated the events that took place from July 1995, how it reconstructed the sequence of events, investigated the cases, based on the testimony of witnesses and the evidence presented during the trials. At the end of the tour, a 30-minute film is shown. Beware, some images are very harsh (execution scene).

Peace march. This march (Marš Mira) is organized every year by relatives of the victims since 2005. It is about 100 km long and follows the reverse route of the "death march" in which most of the victims of 1995 were killed. It starts on July 8 from Nezuk (37 km south-east of Tuzla) and arrives at the memorial on the day of the big ceremony, July 11. More than 10,000 people from different countries participate in the event (information: www.marsmira.net).