Bosnia and Herzegovina’s SREBRENICA — They were the ones who had to deal with the murders of their husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, and nephews. They were the ones who fought to ensure that the truth of what happened in Srebrenica would not be denied or forgotten by the world.
As tens of thousands gather in the town in eastern Bosnia on Monday to mark the 27th anniversary of the only recognized genocide in Europe since World War II, the crucial role women have played in fostering a universal understanding of the 1995 massacre is also coming to light.
In a memorial center for the more than 8,000 victims of the massacre, a permanent photo exhibition featuring portraits of the Srebrenica women opened on Saturday. An international conference of women discussing how they found the courage to fight for justice after being driven from their homes and seeing their loved ones being taken away to be killed will take place at the center in Potocari, which is close to the town.
Munira Subasic stated, “It was the injustice of their killers, their refusal to acknowledge what they did and to repent, that pushed me to fight for truth and justice after I survived the genocide in which my most beloved child and my husband were killed.
When Bosnian Serb forces took control of the town in the final months of the fratricidal war in Bosnia in 1992–1995, more than 8,000 men and boys from the predominantly Muslim Bosniak ethnic group died in 10 days of carnage.
To conceal the evidence of their crimes, Bosnian Serb soldiers dug hastily constructed mass graves, removed the bodies from them later with bulldozers, and scattered the remains throughout other graveyards.
Bosnian mothers with young children were crammed onto buses and driven out of the town.
Subasic and other women who had suffered similar fates to hers made a promise to locate the remains of their loved ones, return them to their town, and bury them there as soon as the war was over.
To achieve this, they founded a group called Mothers of Srebrenica, which participated in public demonstrations and other activities. They demanded that the mass graves be located, the bodies be identified, and the murderers be brought to justice. Nearly 90% of those reported missing after the fall of Srebrenica have been located as of this point.
“People frequently ask us who helped us and who stood by us in the beginning. But nobody did it; we did it all by ourselves, according to Sehida Abdurahmanovic.
She continued, “Pain is the best and most challenging education, but it’s also the most honest because it comes from the heart.
Many of Srebrenica’s pre-war residents now reside in the Bosnian country’s other entity, the Bosniak-Croat Federation, while Srebrenica has been in the Serb-run Republika Srpska since the war’s end.
In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, mobs of enraged Bosnian Serbs made every effort to stop women who had witnessed the carnage from visiting the recently discovered mass graves to look for items that had once belonged to their loved ones. Crowds would form lines along the streets, yell at the buses carrying the women, and pelt them with stones in an effort to intimidate them.
But the women kept coming back. They had to be escorted for a while by the NATO-led peacekeepers, but they insisted on only interring their identified dead in Srebrenica.
Finally, under pressure in 2003, Bosnian Serb authorities gave in and allowed the survivors to dedicate the town’s memorial cemetery for the victims.
More than 6,600 people’s remains have been discovered and interred at the cemetery so far. On Monday, there will be a memorial service for the 50 additional victims whose remains were recently discovered in mass graves and identified through DNA testing.
Numerous Srebrenica women testified before the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, aiding in the imprisonment of nearly 50 Bosnian Serb wartime leaders who were ultimately given sentences totaling more than 700 years in prison.
“I thought I wouldn’t be able to function after my husband was killed and I was left with our two children, but the pain kept us going,” Abdurahmanovic said.
Women in Srebrenica were expected to endure their suffering in silence because they were raised in a patriarchal society and because Serb leaders still minimize or outright deny the 1995 massacre. Instead, they made a difference in the lives of others by starting support groups, remembering the victims, and sharing their trauma with anyone who would listen—including kings, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and journalists.
According to Suhra Sinanovic, who lost her husband and 23 other close male relatives in the massacre, “the history of what happened in Srebrenica has been written in white marble headstones in the memorial cemetery, which would not have existed had we not insisted.”
According to her, Bosnian Serb authorities undervalued the Srebrenica women.
She added, “Perhaps (the Serbs) would do things differently by letting the men live and killing the women if, God forbid, a war broke out in Bosnia again.
