9 July 2010 | Thousands of people, including survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, have set off Thursday on a symbolic three-day march to the eastern Bosnian town ahead of events marking the 15th anniversary of the crime on Sunday, July 11.

“We came here out of solidarity with survivors, but also to voice our hope that crimes such as Srebrenica will never happen again,” said 21-year-old Nermin Glibanovic, who joined the marchers as they left the village of Nezuk, 110 kilometers northwest of Srebrenica on Thursday.

They are to retrace the path taken over hills and through dense forests by some 15,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men trying to escape mass killings in Srebrenica after the town, which had been declared a United Nations “safe haven” in 2003, was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995.

Hundreds were killed along that path 15 years ago as the exhausted men were under almost constant machine gun and artillery fire while trying to flee to the territory then controlled by Bosniak-led government forces.

In Srebrenica itself, Serbs separated over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from women and summarily executed them over the following days.

Their bodies were dumped in a number of mass graves, many of which have been exhumed since the end of the war.

Their remains are in most cases found in secondary graves, where they had been moved from initial burial sites in an attempt by Serbs to cover up war crimes.

The marchers, including people from across Bosnia, but also from abroad, are expected to reach Srebrenica on Saturday evening, only hours before the commemmoration and burial ceremony for 755 newly identified victims is set to take place.

The burial and ceremony, which is expected to be attended by 50,000 people from Bosnia and abroad, will take place at a memorial cemetery in Potocari, near Srebrenica. The cemetery was built in 2003 across from an abandoned car battery factory that was the wartime base for Dutch U.N. soldiers.

Edin Buric, who works for the organizational committee, told media in Bosnia and Herzegovina that this year the remains of 774 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and one Catholic will be buried, all killed 15 years ago in what is considered the biggest massacre in Europe since World War II.

The Catholic victim who will be buried on Sunday, Rudolf Hren, lived in Srebrenica before and during the war and was a member of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His family agreed that he be buried with the other victims in Potocari, but with Catholic insignia on his grave and with a priest presiding over the burial. The Islamic community give its approval, as well as families of other Srebrenica victims who are buried in Potocari.

So far some 3,831 victims have been buried at the memorial.

Many international and regional dignitaries, including French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Serbian President Boris Tadic and Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, are expected to attend the funeral.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Srebrenica in 2009 calling the massacre "the biggest war crime in Europe since the end of WWII" and a "a symbol of the international community’s impotence to intervene and protect civilians".

All over the Europe, as well as in the region, July 11 will be marked as a day of commemoration for the victims of Srebrenica. All the countries in the region except Bosnia and Herzegovina have adopted resolutions condemning the crimes committed 15 years ago in Srebrenica.

Bosnia has not adopted this resolution as political parties from Republika Srpska, one of the two entities in the country, have rejected every attempt to pass the motion in the state parliament.

The Srebrenica massacre is the only episode in Bosnia's brutal 1992-95 war to have been ruled a genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal and the International Court of Justice, both based in The Hague.

This article is courtesy of Balkan Insight, the online publication of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, which contains analytical reports, in-depth analyses and investigations and news items from throughout the region covering major challenges of the political, social and economic transition in the Balkans.

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