Bosnians commemorate 21st anniversary of Srebrenica genocide
Thousands attend a ceremony at the Potocari memorial near Srebrenica commemorating the deaths of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in July 1995, as Serbian nationalists still refuse to recognise the massacre as a genocide.
Muslim men pray in front of coffins during mass funeral in Potocari near Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina July 11, 2016
Thousands of people came to Srebrenica on Monday to attend a ceremony commemorating the Srebrenica genocide, in which over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed in July 1995.
It was the worst incident of mass murder in Europe since the end of World War Two.
Bosnian Serb paramilitaries led by Ratko Mladic carried out the killings – dumping the bodies of the victims in mass graves. Over 1000 bodies are still missing.
In 2007 the International Court of Justice ruled that the massacre at Srebrenica was an act of genocide.
To this day, the skeletons of those killed are still being uncovered and identified. During the ceremony, the remains of 127 victims were reburied in individual graves.
Muslim women cry during mass funeral in Potocari near Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina July 11, 2016.
The ages of those buried today ranged between 14 and 77.
Serb nationalists, however, refuse to recognise the incident as a genocide.
Milorad Dodik, the president of the Republika Srpska – the autonomous Serb state in Bosnia-Herzegovina – on Monday accused Bosnian Muslims of "manipulating the number of victims."
He dismissed the death toll as a "false story," saying that "the Hague Tribunal reduced to 5,000, and now the number in use is 4,000."
Muslim men pray in front of coffins during mass funeral in Potocari near Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina July 11, 2016.
Officials from the Republika Srpska and Serbia didn't attend the ceremony, after being told by the Mayor of Srebrenica Camil Durakovic that they wouldn't be welcome there.
The disagreement arises from the fact that many Bosnian Muslims and Serbs disagree with each other over what exactly took place at Srebrenica and during the Bosnian War in general.
Serbs argue they were also victims of atrocities, while Bosnian Muslims say these cannot be compared to the treatment their people were subjected to.
Muslim women cry near coffins of their relatives, who are newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which are lined up for a joint burial in Potocari near Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina July 9, 2016.
In March this year, former Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, known as the "Butcher of Bosnia," was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of five counts of crimes against humanity and four counts of war crimes between the years 1992-95 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
He was the highest-ranking person to face the UN tribunal in the Hague over the war which left at least 130,000 people dead as rival armies carved up Bosnia along ethnic lines that largely survive today.
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