tolerance among Bosnia’s Muslims, Serbs and Croats Saturday, September 20 as he dedicated a memorial near the town of Srebrenica to the victims of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.
Muslim prayers accompanied the procession of more than 100 bodies taken for re-burial in the new Potocari cemetery that surrounds the memorial center for those killed in the Srebrenica atrocities. The remains had been retrieved from several mass graves nearby.
Earlier this year, 882 victims were buried in two separate ceremonies. So far, 5,000 bodies have been exhumed from mass graves near Srebrenica, but only 1,083 have been identified so far using DNA technology.
The slaughter in Srebrenica, where up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in July, 1995, became a symbol for the brutality of the three-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"SAFE ZONE"
Srebrenica, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, had been declared a "safe zone" by the United Nations when it was overrun by Bosnian Serb soldiers. They began the executions after outgunned Dutch U.N. peacekeepers abandoned the region. Women were sent away in buses before the killings began.
The massacre prompted then-President Clinton to step up efforts to end the war, which killed more than 200,000 people and displaced nearly two million others. His administration pressed NATO to bomb Bosnian Serb artillery positions and later managed to get all the warring factions to sign the Dayton Peace Accord, which ended the conflict.
Speaking at the ceremony to officially open the cemetery and memorial, the former president urged the international community to arrest those accused of responsibility for the massacre, a reference to Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic.
MISTAKE
He stressed it would be a mistake to withdraw American forces from the region.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, told reporters in Budapest this week that although no decision was made all options were open, adding that thousands of Iraqi policemen will be trained, possibly in Central Europe, to boost security in Iraq.
However Clinton told the survivors that American and other peacekeepers are still needed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "There is still much to be done," he said. "I hope we will do more to help your economy. I hope more private citizens like me who were alive at that time and know what you endured, will do what we can to help you come back."
NEW TESTAMENT
Yet he also made it clear that it was time for the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina to begin a process of healing the wounds of history and made references to the New Testament. Clinton stressed children should learn "not only to see the fist, but also an open hand" of peace and reconciliation.
"Let us resolve to overcome our fears and mistrust," he said, his voice trembling. "Let us resolve to honor the dead by giving the children they left behind the blessings of the normal life they too should have had."
A day earlier in the troubled Serbian province of Kosovo, Clinton had warned students that those seeking revenge for atrocities committed by Serbian and Yugoslav forces during the 1990’s could hinder the prospects for independence.
VENGEANCE
"Do you want to get even?" he asked an invited audience at Pristina University, "I hope not. My Bible says that vengeance belongs to God." However the Balkans remain volatile and during the Srebrenica ceremony security was maintained by some 2,000 police and NATO peacekeepers.
One hundred international and local officials, including even the Bosnian Serb prime minister, attended the opening of the memorial and cemetery. It did little to ease the pain of Biba Delic, 37, who with her two children, wept as the body of her husband Aziz was brought in for burial alongside his two brothers and father.
"Today I am burying my husband and with him I am burying hope. The day we identified him, my hope that I might see him ever again died," she told the Reuters news agency while weeping and hugging her son and daughter. "I wish I could still hope…"
BosNewsLife has learned that several Christian organizations have been active in Bosnia Herzegovina to share what they see as the hope of Jesus Christ with Muslims, who were among the main victims of the Bosnian conflict.
