COMMENTATOR (COMM):
Thousands of mourners gather near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica for a mass ceremonial burial. They are remembering the victims of the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War.

There have been several similar commemorations here, but this year the ceremony will be particularly poignant. It is ten years since thousands of Srebrenica’s citizens were slaughtered by Serbian armed forces. Many international dignitaries have been invited to attend the ceremony, but one important guest will be absent.

CARLA DEL PONTE, Chief UN War Crimes Prosecutor:
I cannot show my face commemorating Srebrenica and knowing and to be responsible that Karadzic and Mladic, the most responsible for what happened at Srebrenica are still at large.

COMM:
Former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic top the list of those indicted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Both have evaded capture for ten years. But there is now a bigger political process at work, as all sides try to move towards a better and more secure a better future for the Balkans.

LORD PADDY ASHDOWN, High Representative – Bosnia and Herzogovina:
What Karadzic is saying and has said for many years, is derzhaete, derzhaete, derzhaete. Hang on, hang on, hang on, they will go away, they will get tired, they will get bored. We’ve managed to get the stone moving at last because they’ve been convinced that we are not going to get bored. There is one thing that unites this country. There is one thing, one glue that holds together the whole region. There’s one single aim that every single person, every single political party and every single ethnicity is bound to and that’s what we can have only one secure future and that’s in Europe and NATO.

COMM:
Now the people of Srebrenica must look beyond the Balkans if they are to find truth and justice.

Forensic scientists are still uncovering the truth about what really happened at Srebrenica during the war in Bosnia. The truth about atrocities committed by people who still haven’t been brought to justice. Their task is even harder than it looks.

DOUNE PORTER, Senior Forensic Anthropologist, International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP):
The perpetrators of the massacre went to enormous lengths to hide the evidence. They were originally buried in huge mass graves and then when it became apparent that satellite imagery could pinpoint the locations of these graves, they went in again using heavy machinery and dug up the bodies and then reburied them in smaller mass graves that they hid better.

COMM:
People have been arguing about Srebrenica for a decade. There are still some who deny or refuse to believe what happened. In July 1995 Serbian forces, led by General Mladic entered the mainly Muslim town of Srebrenica in North east Bosnia. 20,000 refugees, mainly women and children fled to the UN base at Potocari, while others, mainly men, headed for the hills around the town. At the base, inadequately armed Dutch peacekeepers, whose fellow soldiers had been taken hostage, had no option but to hand over thousands of refugees. Mladic and his troops separated men and boys from women and small children. Most of the women were then bussed out. Others were raped, tortured and murdered. The men were taken away to be slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves. The bodies or remains that have been recovered are brought here to the International Commission on Missing Persons, where forensic archaeologists begin the painstaking process of identifying the victims.

CHERYL KATZMARZK, International Commission on Missing Persons:
Srebrenica poses a unique forensic challenge simply because the victims were killed and buried in a primary grave and several months later they were dug up again and transferred to many smaller graves and what that process does, is that body parts become disconnected and so we may find parts of one person in one or two graves.

COMM:
General Mladic told the peacekeepers the Bosnian males, including the boys, were suspected of war crimes and were simply being taken away for questioning. The latest discovery here reveals the full horror of what really happened.

CHERYL KATZMARZK:
This is a male. He is clearly a male and as for age, we are looking at different parts of the body to come up with our best estimate and the anthropological team has estimated about 14-16 years old.

COMM:
In another grave, even more horrors have been uncovered, that contradict the official Serbian version of what happened.

MURAT HURTIC, Head of Federal Commission for Missing Persons:
All graves are very difficult, but the most significant of all is at another grave nearby. We found 38 body parts of which 4 belonged to women and 9 children. For example a child just a few months old to one of 10 years old and one we found was a woman killed when 9 months pregnant. A few days ago, we removed the foetus and this was one of the most traumatic of the graves I can ever remember although all were difficult.

COMM:
The warehouse next to the United Nations building in Potocari, which once held thousands of terrified men and women, has new owners. Some of the mothers of the missing men of Srebrenica have raised money to turn it into a memorial centre. Led by Munira Subacic they never want the atrocities that happened here to be forgotten.

MUNIRA (translation):
As I walk through here I can still here the screams. What day was it when they took Hilmo away? My son Nerko was taken away on the 12th and my husband Hilmo on 13th July. I still don’t anything about Nerko, but I have managed to find Hilmo after 9 years. I identified him by a tobacco case, that was still in his pocket and I will donate it to the museum to show that the only things people like him had on them, were a few personal items. They were unarmed. I mean, he wasn’t killed by a single bullet. He was machined-gunned.

COMM:
Each of these women has a tragic tale to tell of missing fathers, sons and husbands. Munira lost 22 members of her family. Their agony and grief is made greater by the fact that the guilty have not been punished. While thousands of people from Srebrenica fled here to the UN base and warehouse at Potocari. Many others, mainly men, took to the forested hills above the town in a desperate bid to escape, among them - Abdurahman Omic.

OMIC (translation):
Outside my house 74 neighbours gathered to escape and I know of only 9 who survived. My escape took 31 days, I tried first from this hill and then I went to the right to Zvornik, but I saw so many people with festering wounds and broken legs, and they suggested that I backtrack and change my route.

COMM:
Today Abdurahman Omic is in charge of Srebrenica’s 'Reconstruction and Returnee' programme. He deals with hundreds of applications from both Muslims and Serbs hoping to rebuild their shattered homes and lives. His job isn’t easy. He is pessimistic about Srebrenica’s future because of it’s troubled past and because so many of the perpetrators are still at large even in the town itself. Many Muslims cannot face returning home, because their neighbours may have been complicit in the atrocities here.

OMIC (translation):
Return to Srebrenica is impossible in the way that the international community and world imagines. I say this personally because I don’t know who is who and who is supporting the war criminals. I might even be working for them!

COMM:
Four members of Abdurahman’s family were killed. Only his brother’s remains have been identified and they will be buried here at Potocari, alongside some of the thousands of other victims. Munira buried her husband’s remains here, but her son is still missing.

MUNIRA (translation):
Justice has not come because of people like Karadzic and Mladic and all the other war criminals. They are not arrested and they are not convicted. We don’t return to our homes because no-one respects human rights and we don’t have rule of law in Bosnia Herzegovina.

LORD ASHDOWN:
There is a terrible tendency to look at the capture of war criminals in an exceptionally simplistic manner. I don’t blame you because maybe we looked at in a very simplistic manner as well. That you believe that this will be achieved by some dramatic moment when the Archangel of Justice in the form of a NATO helicopter descending on a clearing in the Zelengora and suddenly plucking Radovan Karadzic away to the Hague. It was never going to happen like that. Maybe one of our mistakes was believing it would. You have to think not of a commando raid, but a campaign to catch this, which has many ingredients.

COMM:
The continual unearthing of human remains not only helps the victim’s relatives come to terms with their loss, but it also provides irrefutable evidence that the Srebrenica massacres took place.

DOUNE PORTER:
We have on our data base over 7,600 people missing from Srebrenica and once those people are identified you eliminate the possibility of denial and by eliminating that possibility of denial you open a path for dialogue. If people don’t believe that it happened, they cannot talk about it so there is no possibility for reconciliation. So by really by addressing this issue in a scientific and apolitical way, coming up at the end of the day with the bodies and the names and the identities of these people, then in a way you open a path towards reconciliation and that’s about the future.

COMM:
The United Nations recently resorted to other ways of pressurising Serbs to hand-over suspected war criminals. Previously unseen footage of Bosnian Muslims being executed by a notorious Serbian paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions, was released and broadcast around the world. These shocking images were also shown in The Hague at the International Tribunal for War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia where it was submitted as possible evidence against former Serbian President, Slobodan Milosovic.

INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL PROSECUTOR describes the footage to the tribunal:
Two remaining not shot are untied. I needn’t go into the detail. They move the four bodies and then they themselves are shot. And I’ll leave it there.

CARLA DEL PONTE:
Of course it was shown to Milosovic, because he was in court. As I saw there was no reaction from his part. The day after or 2 days after, he contested the veracity of this video, but we are now presenting evidence about the authenticity of this video, but it is now a procedure in trial.

COMM:
The video had an immediate political impact. In Serbia, the President, Boris Tadic went on television to apologise to the people of Srebrenica publicly and announce his plans to attend the 10th memorial service in Potocari.

PRESIDENT TADIC ON TV (translation):
Those pictures are the proof of the monstrous crimes performed during the war in our region committed in our name.

COMM:
But for one Bosnian family watching the footage, it came as a complete shock.

NURA ALISPAHIC (translation):
The last two that remained were my son and another boy. His hands were tied behind his back. First they killed the guy in front of him and then they shot him once and a second time and then I started screaming. My son, they are killing you! But there was nobody there.

MAGBULA ALISPAHIC:
I saw the video the same night, before my mother, but I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her, I left her to see it with her own eyes and she went to her room and watched it. She called me, but I pretended not to hear.

COMM:
Serbs in Srebrenica, who say they were victims of earlier atrocities by Muslims, also saw the Scorpion footage. Mirko Sekulic, who has lived in the town most of his life, was watching television the night it was broadcast.

MIRKO SEKULIC (translation):
I understand if two armies are shooting each other on the front line and on either side you have army killing, this is something different. But civilians, women and children – I cannot accept. For those people prison isn’t an option, there must be something else. All this talk about Karadzic and Mladic creates a lot of tension among the people here. Get rid of them, take them off television. If you can’t find them, don’t pressurise us, don’t blame us and leave us alone.

LORD ASHDOWN:
How many times has NATO made serious attempts, organised attempts, operations to catch Karadzic and Mladic? Countless numbers of times. How many times had the local authority made those attempts – none. Who is trying and who is not. How much cooperation has NATO got from the local authorities here – particularly in Republica Srpska – none. So where would you put the blame – I think the answer is pretty self-evident.

DRAGAN CAVIC, President of the Serb Republic (translation):
That statement is not true anymore and I think that all international parties would agree. As we speak we are already working to resolve this problem and capture the war criminals. In December last year there were 18 war criminals still at large. But now at the end of June beginning of July there are a total of six missing. So in the past six months two-thirds of the suspects in the Republica Srpska have been transferred to the Hague.

COMM:
So after ten years, why are they being handed over now?

PRESIDENT CAVIC (translation):
This country and the others in this region, particularly in the Western Balkans, must join the European Union at some point, for the benefit of the country itself and the European Union and it would be equally mutually beneficial if the countries joined NATO – both for the countries and NATO.

COMM:
Mass graves, horrific video evidence and heart rending testimonies have gone some way to bringing war criminals to justice. What is clearly concentrating minds even more is the prospect of the Balkan States becoming full members of the European Union. The European Commission has completed a feasibility study on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s readiness to negotiate a ‘Stabilisation and Association Agreement’ – a key stage to full membership.

OLLI REHN, EU Commissioner for Enlargement:
We have two alternatives. One would mean we would give up our commitment to the Western Balkans which would lead us to have a black hole or a ghetto inside Europe which, I don’t want and I don’t think any sensible European would want. The other option is that we continue and reinforce our commitment in the Western Balkans and pave the way for the countries of the region, before long, to become members of the European Union. The Balkans should have a breathing space of the production of history and become better consumers than producers of history. To become a boring corner of Europe like the Nordic countries are for the moment. And the countries now have two choices - either revenge or reconciliation and I trust that they choose reconciliation and the European road.

COMM:
That process is already having an effect. Those wanted for war crimes are being handed over.

CARLA DEL PONTE:
It is extremely important what the European Union is doing in supporting us and putting conditions to the access of the Balkan states to enter the European Union on full cooperation with us. It is absolutely needed for us and we could not achieve what we have achieved now without the support of the European Union. So what we hope is that they can stay on this evaluation and keep this pressure. I would say maybe at the end of the year I can get my 10 fugitives.

LORD ASHDOWN:
Europe is the one glue that holds that region together take that glue away - and we have to look at the recent referendums and wonder - take that glue away and this region and this nation reverts to its natural state and we know what its natural state is.

END

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