How the Crime of Genocide in Srebrenica Was Decoded

By Sead Omeragić

I remember a story from long ago about a man who bought a large excavator and started a business. On one occasion, while digging, his excavator suddenly unearthed human bones. His hair stood on end from the horror of disturbing someone's bones. He jumped out of the excavator's cabin and ran as far away from that place as he could, like a soulless person. The excavator later stood there for days because the man didn't have the courage to return.

In the consciousness of people in these regions, disturbing someone's bones has always carried a kind of curse.

Hasan Nuhanović, who lost his mother, father, and brother in the Srebrenica genocide, was a key figure in initiating the construction of the Potočari Memorial Center. The mothers of Srebrenica watched over him. These beginnings were sad and catastrophic. The bodies of dead Srebrenica residents were scattered hundreds of kilometers around the city. They dissolved in the rain and snow and were carried away by wild forest animals. Thousands of executed people at several mass execution sites were thrown into mass graves, then exhumed and transported to other and third pits. The truth had to be hidden, buried, its traces erased. Human remains were mixed beyond recognition. The dead were pushed into the complete darkness of oblivion.

Hasan Nuhanović and the Mothers of Srebrenica wanted at least a dignified burial for the thousands of dead human beings from the Srebrenica enclave, and among them, for who knows what remains of their loved ones.

Some foreigners suggested that all the murdered be buried in one cemetery. Above these remains, there would only be a sign without a name. Hasan Nuhanović refused at the time.

“To throw them from one black earth into another hole, that won't happen,” he said in despair.

Everything was heading towards that fate.

At the same time, by God's will, one of the greatest human secrets was being revealed. The science of identifying the genetic structure of human beings grew rapidly and conquered unimaginable spaces. By some miracle, the decoding of the human gene began, almost simultaneously as thousands of missing persons across Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in Srebrenica, were to be buried as numbers and nameless human beings.

But, a miracle of comfort and salvation for the dead and the living in Srebrenica was happening. Hasan Nuhanović's despair turned into a great victory of the dead over the living perpetrators. Those who were supposed to be marked as missing, forgotten, and forever buried as unknown human remains, were suddenly recognized and identified. Human bones were getting their names back. Thrown into the darkness of mass graves, they now emerged from the earth and brought their destinies back to life after death. One of the geneticists was himself amazed at how much could be discovered thanks to DNA investigations.

The bones of a young man buried this year, 2017, in Potočari were found in five mass graves. Lies no longer exist; instead, their shameful and dark side is being revealed.

Today, people examine their DNA and learn about hundreds of their ancestors around the world. Numerous nations and races are part of our genetic codes. This knowledge is incredible, and it's as if we are one human race. Humanity is like a large family. Those who kill one person kill their code of a million and a half genes, merged into one, unusual, perhaps the most beautiful story of the human race.

Hasan Nuhanović, a great man, exceptional in every way, can, I believe, be at peace today with what he sees in Potočari.

Human life is no longer a mystery. Criminals tried in vain to hide their crimes. The Hague has legally decoded the crime of genocide in Srebrenica and proven everything that could be proven.

The existence of all of us is immortalized even in death. Humans are genetically 99.9 percent identical. Only 0.1 percent of the genetic structure makes our difference. We call that 0.1 percent nations and races. They kill us because of that 0.1 percent of diversity.

When there are no more secrets, when it is clear that the victims cannot be hidden and denied, the denial of the Srebrenica genocide continues. In whose name and why?