Thousands of Bosnians and Serbians have held pro-Palestine rallies in solidarity with the people of Gaza amid the months-long brutal Israeli attacks on the besieged territory.
On Sunday, pro-Palestine protesters gathered in the center of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo in sub-zero temperatures, holding banners and chanting slogans such as “Stop the genocide” and “Free Palestine”, demonstrating their support for the people of Gaza.
They were carrying banners with the slogan “Yesterday Srebrenica, today Gaza,” referring to the genocidal massacre that occurred 28 years ago and took the lives of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in and around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
Rallies were also held in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade, where demonstrators carried Palestinian and Serbian flags and chanted the same slogans such as “Free Palestine,” gathering in front of the main government building.
The Sunday demonstrations in the Balkan countries were organized on World Human Rights Day, marked annually on December 10. Similar protests were also held in Istanbul, Copenhagen, The Hague, Tunis, Melbourne, Tokyo, Karachi, Sanaa, Rabat and elsewhere.
Since October 7, after Israel unleashed a bloody military campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, demonstrators around the world have rallied to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people, condemn Israel’s war on Gaza, and call for a permanent ceasefire.
Nearly 18,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed, with more buried under the rubble. More than 49,500 others were injured in the Israeli attacks.
According to UN figures, about 1.9 million of the 2.3 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip have been forced to flee their homes. They have been forced to move to the increasingly overcrowded border city of Rafah, bordering Egypt, or a coastal area in the Southwest, bordering Jordan.
Reports by various aid agencies revealed that the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza’s basic infrastructure has left 500,000 people vulnerable due to a lack of water and food.