Earlier than the struggle 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 might clarify the distinction between clustered and dispersed settlements. He discovered how one might inform north from south by noticing which aspect of a tree the moss grew on, and found learn how 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 stay within the geography of japanese Bosnia, trudging by means of forests alongside 8,000 different Bosniak males and boys, attempting 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 domestically identified for its historical silver deposits, from which it took its identify – the Bosnian phrase for silver is srebro.
The Slapovici refugee camp, situated in Srebrenica municipality, sheltered a minimum of 3,000 Bosniak refugees over the last two years of the Bosnian Struggle (Photograph courtesy of Nedzad Avdic)
The UN camp, constructed on beforehand uninhabited land, was dwelling to greater than 3,000 displaced Bosniaks, South Slavic Muslims native to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who lived in rows of Swedish-donated wood 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 various – roughly 44 % Bosniak, 31 % Serb and 17 % Croat – making it some of the multiethnic republics of the previous Yugoslavia.
By then, Bosnian Serbs had proclaimed what they might name Republika Srpska, a notional quasi-state that the group’s political leaders wished 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 struggle to grab territory and expel non-Serbs in the direction of that aim. Cities near the border have been shelled, civilians compelled out, and households like Avdic’s needed to flee.
His household – father Alija, mom Tima, and three youthful sisters – could be uprooted a number of instances all through the struggle: first from their dwelling 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, a lot of them youngsters, and wounded greater than 70, Srebrenica and its surrounding villages have been declared a UN “secure space,” by the UN Safety Council together with 5 different cities and cities in Bosnia. The declaration demanded an “rapid cessation of armed assaults by Bosnian Serb paramilitary items 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.
A photograph of the Slapovici refugee camp in 1994. Advic lived there together with his household, however he isn’t among the many youngsters on this photograph (Courtesy of Nedzad Avdic)
On the time, Avdic advised Al Jazeera, “We believed the struggle would finally finish – that it needed to.”
“The United Nations was there, the Blue Helmets, and we advised 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 could possibly be killed,” he mentioned.
“However the scale of what would occur subsequent was past something we might 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 mentioned. “It was clear it had turn out to be 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 mentioned.
Contained in the city of Srebrenica, Hajrudin Mesic, 21, heard the identical explosions from his household’s residence. He had already misplaced two of his 4 brothers to the struggle – 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), every part shook,” he mentioned.
The military of Republika Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica – a part of the nation’s major army power, fashioned 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 assets with which to battle again. Dutch peacekeepers have 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 coming 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 bear in mind my mom screaming. They (the Bosnian Serb Military) have been already within the city.”
He grabbed a makeshift bag and slipped out together with his aged dad and mom, mom Zaha and father Selim, and his two remaining brothers, Hasan and Safet, darting by means 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 dwelling in Srebrenica lined 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 useless and wounded. “Srebrenica is not any extra,” he mentioned. “We have now to depart.”
After years of surviving shelling, hunger and isolation, the enclave had collapsed. At about 4pm on July 11, Common Ratko Mladic, chief of the Bosnian Serb forces, entered the UN-declared secure space. They began separating Bosniak ladies, younger youngsters and the aged from males and boys, promising that the primary group could 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 remaining individuals who had been pushed out of neighbouring areas by the Bosnian Serb forces.
Bosniaks fled in two instructions: ladies and youngsters 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, certain for Tuzla, the closest metropolis past Bosnian Serb attain, practically 100 kilometres to the north. It was a “free zone” that may 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 mentioned. “Will we ever see one another once more?”
In the meantime, Mesic and his household additionally selected to separate – his aged dad and mom 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 have been below bombardment. The horses and cattle that individuals have been utilizing to ferry the useless and wounded panicked, operating helter-skelter. “In that chaos, I misplaced my father,” Avdic mentioned.
He all of a sudden discovered himself engulfed in a crowd of strangers. “I didn’t recognise a single face round me,” he mentioned. In a panic, he started shouting for his father, pushing by means of the mass of individuals, calling his identify again and again.
“However I by no means noticed him once more,” he recalled. “Surrounded by hundreds of individuals, I nonetheless felt completely alone.”
He joined them on the lengthy stroll by means 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 struggle, was thick with oak, beech and pine, but additionally scattered with a dry, brittle fern native to Bosnia’s forests in summer season. Temperatures have been punishing, climbing as excessive as 34 to 36 levels Celsius (93–97 levels Fahrenheit) within the July warmth. Each step by means of the dry undergrowth risked publicity. The crack of a department or the rustle of dried ferns might give away their place to close by Serb forces.
“We walked in silence,” recalled Bektic. “Not out of self-discipline, due to concern. Nobody wished to draw dying.”
“I used to be exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. We’d solely managed to seize no matter meals we might discover in the home earlier than marching by means of the woods. There was no time to arrange. That journey … all of it … was nearly 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 have 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 mentioned.
Nonetheless, that single mouthful was all he had. Moments later, chaos erupted. Serb troopers reduce by means of the column, pulling out 15 to twenty individuals who had crossed the stream. They have been ordered to climb a small hill and sit. Then got here the phrases that modified every part: “You’re prisoners.”
“At that second, they (the Bosnian Serb troopers) have been solely debating one factor – learn how to kill us,” he mentioned. “A few of them mentioned, ‘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 mentioned.
However Bektic did go to sleep and awoke solely the subsequent afternoon to seek out that he was leaning in opposition to a beech tree, alone.
Emir Bektic (proper), age 10, together with his father Rezdep (Photograph courtesy of Emir Bektic)
“My first intuition was to seek for my father,” Bektic mentioned.
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 midnight to cover him from the Bosnian Serb Military? How had he slept by means of all of it?
“The very last thing I bear 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 have been shot. As they have been marching down the highway, Bektic handed “lots of of murdered folks” within the warmth, and he needed to be cautious to not “step on a physique”.
They have been taken to a hill and ordered to take a seat in rows. A Serb commander introduced that some boys could be launched, and that any boy who wished to go ought to get up. A number of boys about Bektic’s age stood up.
“At that second, none of us actually understood what was taking place”, Bektic mentioned.
“My uncle insisted that I rise up and go, and we quietly argued,” he mentioned. “I simply wished to stick with my uncle. I had began to really feel secure once more, and it doesn’t matter what occurred, I wished 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 somewhat extra secure.”
However finally, he caved to his uncle’s pleas.
“Go,” the commander mentioned. 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 have been closing. The bus was filled with ladies and youngsters coming from the UN base in Potocari, going in the direction of Tuzla. “Don’t ask something,” one girl advised him as they lined 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 reduce off by troopers. “They (the Bosnian Serb army) threatened us over megaphones, saying they’d bomb us if we didn’t give up,” he mentioned. “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 advised them to depart their belongings, that every part could be returned. He left his bag, with household images inside, subsequent to a tank. Standing there on the highway, he nonetheless remembers that tank in entrance of him, and the automobiles close by. On certainly one of them, written in Cyrillic, have been the phrases: The Queen of Loss of life.
Different automobiles started to reach – civilian Volkswagen Golfs, filled with troopers sitting on the hoods, roofs, and inside. Extra troopers adopted. Then got here blue and white police automobiles, 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 highway, buses crammed with refugees from Potocari pulled up and have been compelled to cease. The captured males have been now blocking the highway.
“Amongst them, I recognise a lady I went to high school with,” mentioned 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 most likely recognised their relations amongst us – sons, brothers, fathers.”
Finally, the lads and boys have been ordered to proceed operating 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. They usually had already been taken away.”
Solely later, whereas testifying earlier than the Worldwide Prison Tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, would Avdic study 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 have been later executed.
That night time, a Serb soldier advised Avdic and others, “You’ll be returned to your households. The whole lot can 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, arms behind heads – and applaud. “All of us, collectively, as exhausting as we might,” Avdic mentioned. “We spent two to a few hours doing that.” By the point the clapping stopped, the wounded have been gone. “That they had been taken into close by homes and killed,” he mentioned. “Gunfire echoed throughout us.”
Then got here the shouting: “Lengthy stay the king! Lengthy stay Serbia!” The troopers compelled them to chant with them in unison, like a choir.
Packed into vehicles, Avdic and others have been then pushed by means of Bratunac city close to Srebrenica and past. “Serbs cursed us from the sidewalks, threw stones,” he mentioned.
The July warmth, he remembers, was “insufferable” contained in the truck. “I bear in mind peering by means of a gap within the tarpaulin (on the aspect of the truck). In actual fact, that gap is what helped me breathe, so I wouldn’t suffocate. Folks round me have been dropping consciousness. They couldn’t breathe,” he mentioned. “A real hell.”
With no water and unable to bear the thirst, folks began consuming their very own urine, he mentioned.
“They have been screaming, shouting, asking for water, saying: ‘Open the tailgates, or kill us already. We will’t take it any longer.’”
Avdic tried to maintain monitor of time, however after hours with out meals or water, he might now 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 have been sustaining a focus camp.
A Bosnian girl stands close to the tombstone of a relative, forward of a mass funeral marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, on the Srebrenica Memorial Heart in Potocari, close to Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on July 10, 2025 (Amel Emric/Reuters)
They drove like that for about 50km, till they arrived at a faculty in Petkovici, about 70km from Srebrenica. By that point, it was already the morning of the subsequent day, July 14.
As the lads have been offloaded from the vehicles and compelled into the varsity, troopers started beating these within the entrance with rifles and pipes.
“It was chaos,” Avdic mentioned. “They couldn’t strike everybody quick sufficient.”
Inside the varsity, extra Serb troopers have been ready. One shouted, “Whose land is that this?” One other answered, “That is Serb land – at all times has been, at all times can be.” The boys have been compelled to repeat the phrase in unison.
The bottom-floor lecture rooms have been already packed. Screams echoed from behind closed doorways. Avdic and the others have been taken upstairs to the second-last classroom on the primary flooring. Inside, he recognised his uncle. He discovered 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 must always attempt leaping out the home windows … or making a run for the doorways,” somebody mentioned. “Perhaps somebody would survive that approach, 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 Pink 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 mentioned.
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 Pink Cross was coming, and I felt embarrassed to be seen like that, all soaked. I used to be shy,” he mentioned.
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 come back with him. “However he refused. He stayed behind.”
As soon as out within the hallway, troopers ordered him and others to undress, tied their arms 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 major 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 a couple of bullets by means of the tarp to scare these inside. Screams stuffed the air as some folks have 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 trainer.”
The truck began shifting. When it lastly stopped, it was about midnight. The boys and boys have been once more ordered to get out.
Troopers started pulling folks out once more. By now, Avdic was positive that they have been to be executed. “All of it occurred so quick,” Avdic mentioned. “I attempted to cover behind others, urgent myself into the group – however so was everybody else, every individual attempting to defend themselves behind another person.”
However Avdic had additionally accepted that he was going to die.
“The one factor I wished at that second was to drink some water. I felt devastated that I’d die thirsty.”
As he seemed forward, he noticed what felt like an infinite 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 means of his physique. His proper arm and aspect have been burning; his complete physique trembled. The stench of gunpowder clung to the air. Bullets had been fired at point-blank vary – that they had torn by means of the group with out mercy. Our bodies lay throughout him.
Within the haze, he heard voices, troopers close by. One mentioned, “Examine if anybody’s nonetheless alive.” One other replied coldly, “They’re all useless.”
Then got here silence, adopted by the sound of automobiles 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 pale out and in.
By some means, after what appeared like eternity, he managed to assemble his energy and crawl over to the person, who had survived, nearly 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 means of the ropes that certain the person, slowly and painfully. Thread by thread.
The troopers have 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 means of dense forests, dodging Serb patrols, slipping previous scorched Bosniak houses, and sleeping within the ruins of villages burned years earlier. Every time Avdic might go no farther, the person pointed to the subsequent hill and whispered, “Simply that yet 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 after I knew. I had survived.”
Nedzad Avdic, now (Courtesy Avdic)
A shoelace
After surviving the shelling of his residence in Srebrenica, Mesic joined the column fleeing by means of the forest together with his two brothers, Hasan, 36, and Safet, 34, on July 11, whereas their dad and mom had already taken refuge on the UN base in Srebrenica.
After a day or two of shifting, the column stalled – possible 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 lots of of males by means of a sequence of ambushes as they tried to flee by means 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 mentioned.
He pressed on with a small group of survivors, carrying the wounded by means 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.”
Mesic’s brother Safet is believed to have been executed by Bosnian Serb forces within the Srebrenica genocide. His stays have but to be discovered. He was 34 (Courtesy of Hajrudin Mesic)
Alongside the route, he reunited with a detailed buddy, who shared his brother’s identify, Hasan. “Solely then did I really feel somewhat 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 become seen roads, crushed down by hundreds of determined ft.
Locals referred to as it the trla, a tragic hall etched into the panorama by dying marches. Serb forces have been already there, mendacity in wait.
“They allow us to go, after which opened fireplace,” Mesic mentioned. “Many have been killed.”
He hit the bottom together with Hasan. “I bear in mind the sound of them altering rifle magazines,” he mentioned. Hasan was shot. “Please don’t depart me,” he begged.
“I didn’t, I couldn’t,” Mesic mentioned.
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 ft have 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 mentioned.
“However we have been ravenous. I couldn’t allow them to go.”
They have been near what they believed was free territory when bullets hit the filth round them once more. “We have now made it to this point,” Mesic advised his buddy. “However I don’t know if we’ll make it this time.”
Serb troopers have been positioned on close by homes, so the 2 crawled by means 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 boys died in entrance of them. The boy, 16-year-old Musa, was bleeding closely from his leg.
“He checked out me and mentioned, ‘Do you have got a shoelace? Something I can tie my leg with?’” Mesic recalled. “You suppose 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 would possibly assist,” Mesic mentioned.
However no assist got here. Musa was shot and killed the place he lay.
Mesic’s dad and mom, Selim and Zaha, reached Tuzla with different refugees. They survived (Courtesy of Hajrudin Mesic)
Realising they might be subsequent, Mesic and Hasan ran for his or her lives below fireplace, slowing down solely as soon as the troopers have been out of vary. “I nonetheless had the pears in a single hand.”
It was night time, they usually determined to attend for daybreak earlier than shifting once more.
However all of a sudden, Mesic heard somebody calling out to them.
About 30 metres away, there was a soldier waving, motioning for them to come back over. Mesic mentioned to Hasan, “He’s calling us. Perhaps he’s certainly one 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 mentioned. Hasan nonetheless didn’t need to go.
Mesic was torn. He mentioned once more, “He’s smiling, that’s one thing solely a buddy would do.”
Then, subsequent to the soldier calling out to them, Hasan recognised his buddy Sakib. “It’s our military! It’s Bosniaks!” he advised 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. That they had survived.
Hajrudin Mesic now (Courtesy Mesic)
Those who lived
Days later in Tuzla, Mesic was reunited together with his dad and mom, who had given him up for useless.
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. “Although I used to be a part of an extended column, I nonetheless felt fully alone,” he mentioned. “However I survived. And which means I’ve to talk.”
In 2004, the Worldwide Prison Tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia (ICTY) dominated that the Srebrenica killings have been genocide. Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic have 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 stop it.
In only a few days in July 1995, greater than 8,000 Bosniak males and boys have been murdered. Their stays have been scattered throughout mass graves, a lot of them later disturbed in efforts to cover the crime. No less than 25,000 ladies and youngsters have been expelled from the city. In response to the State Fee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, roughly 25,000 ladies have been raped in the course of the struggle. The precise quantity is believed to be considerably larger, as many survivors possible 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 youngsters born of wartime rape weren’t recognised till 2022.
To this present day, 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, three cousins, and lots of others within the genocide. From his rapid household, his mom Tima and his three sisters had survived. He by no means acquired again the household images he had left in his bag. At this time, he lives in Srebrenica.
Emir Bektic now (Courtesy Bektic)
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 finally killed by stepping on a mine positioned by Bosnian Serb forces. His stays have been discovered and laid to relaxation on the Potocari cemetery, whereas Safet continues to be lacking to this present day. Mesic lives in Sarajevo, the place he teaches historical past and geography. Every year, he takes his college students to Srebrenica and the memorial in Potocari.
Bektic misplaced about 10 of his relations and kinfolk, amongst them his father Redzep, who was present in a mass grave in Kamenica. His uncle and two cousins, who have been with him, have been additionally executed. At this time, Bektic lives in Sarajevo and is the creator of A Daybreak Alone, a private account of his survival in the course of the Srebrenica genocide, translated into English and Turkish.
