Peaceful Rally in Ljubljana Commemorates Srebrenica

The participants walked from the Republic Square to the Prešeren Square, where the more than 8,000 victims of the Srebrenica Genocide were remembered with a minute of silence at noon.

The goal of the event was to express support to the survivors of the tragedy and send the message that Srebrenica should never repeat.

According to Ela Porić of the Averroes institute, the problem is that the public is focussed on a tragedy for a day and then it is forgotten again.

But for the relatives of the victims, Srebrenica will never be forgotten and to them it is crucial that the remains of their loved ones are found and that the perpetrators are brought to justice, Porić said.

The walk was organised by the Tuzla-based Women of Srebrenica Association, uniting the mothers and wives of the victims of the genocide.

The association has been organising peaceful rallies on every monthly anniversary of the genocide in Tuzla for the past two decades in which they carry a chain made of pieces of cloth with the names of the victims.

This is the first time in twenty years that the chain was set up outside Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Porić said she was proud that the "multi-ethnic chain" was for the first time formed in Ljubljana, which was echoed by Mayor Zoran Janković, the honorary sponsor of the event.

As part of the event, Amnesty International Slovenia was collecting signatures in support of a petition calling on Bosnia-Herzegovina to double efforts in finding all the victims of the genocide and set up a charity fund for the victims' families.

Today a few hundred signatures were collected and the campaign will continue all summer before the petition is handed to the Bosnian authorities, Metka Naglič of AI Slovenija said.

Over 8,000 Muslims were killed in a few days after the Srebrenica enclave, designated UN safe area, was taken by Bosnian Serbs on 11 July 1995.

The victims, which mostly young boys and men, were shot by troops led by Serb generals Ratko Mladić and Radislav Krstić and thrown in mass graves, but later reburied in over 70 sites to cover up the evidence.