Thousands march to remember Bosnia Muslims massacre in Srebrenica

Several thousand of activists from all over the world have begun a three-day long peace march in Bosnia to commemorate the victims of the Srebrenica massacre, in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the killings.

The march, which started on Wednesday in Nezuk town near the Bosnian city of Tuzla, covers a total distance of approximately 100 kilometers. 

Organizers say the march is expected to conclude at a cemetery in Potocari, a village in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, just northwest to Srebrenica town.

The participants will also attend a mass funeral and burial ceremony there for 136 genocide victims, whose remains were recently discovered.

Hamdi Fejzic, the chairman of the organizing committee, has said that the main objective of the march was to send a message of coexistence, tolerance and peace.

Meanwhile, a three-day cycling marathon has also begun in the northern city of Bihac. Hundreds of cyclists from nine countries will cover a distance of 500 kilometers to reach Potocari.

Thousands of activists each year attend massive marches to remember the genocide victims.

In July 1995, Serb death squads butchered over 8,000 Muslim Bosnian boys and men in Srebrenica over the course of four days.

Russia on Wednesday vetoed a draft UN resolution recognizing the Srebrenica massacre as genocide, blocking a measure that had angered Serbia and Bosnian Serbs.

Four other countries at the Security Council - Angola, China, Nigeria and Venezuela - abstained from the vote condemning the mass killing 20 years ago as an act of genocide.

The carnage took place after Bosnian Serbs ran over the Bosnian town, even though it was formally declared a UN-protected area. Serb troops overran the zone despite the presence of hundreds of Western troops tasked with protecting innocent civilians.

US, UK, French complicity

According to recently declassified US cables, cited in a Saturday report by the UK-based daily The Guardian, British, American and French governments were prepared to cede UN-protected safe areas to armed Serb militias during the war in Bosnia.

A former Dutch Defense Ministry official has also said that the UN facilitated the takeover of Srebrenica and the brutal carnage there by providing 30,000 liters of fuel gas to Serbs.

The new revelations pose a serious challenge to the official Western version of events.

Massoud  Shadjareh, a member of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London, emphasized in a recent interview with Press TV that the US, Britain and France were behind the 1995 massacre of Srebrenica Muslims in eastern Bosnia during the Balkans War.  

“The reality is that the whole issue of Srebrenica has got a tremendous impact on the psyche of not just Muslims in Bosnia but Muslims in Europe because although we were told that never again people are going to be left to Fascists to die in slaughter and commit genocide, Europe actually ... turned its face against the Bosnians and denied them weapons to defend themselves. Again we need to remind ourselves that there was a sanction against Bosnians to defending themselves while they were being slaughtered and raped on a systematic basis,”  Shadjareh said on Sunday.

JR/KA/HMV

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