Six-month-old baby and five other victims to find final rest in Bratunac

(Patria) - A farewell ceremony for the remains of five victims of Bosniak nationality, killed in the Bratunac area during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, was held yesterday in front of the Memorial Centre in Tuzla.

Another coffin, the sixth victim, containing the remains of Hanija Čivić, will be added at today's collective funeral prayer.

After more than three decades, the victims will find their final rest at the Memorial Complex and Martyrs' Cemetery "Veljaci" in Bratunac, where a collective funeral prayer will be held today.

Among the killed is baby Almera Paraganlija, the youngest victim of this year's collective funeral prayer, who was only six months old when she, together with her mother Zineta, was brutally murdered in May 1992.

Their story is deeply moving - the mother and daughter were only found in October 2021 in a mass grave at the Joševa site.

The Paraganlija family has become a symbol of one of the most tragic sufferings in the Podrinje region. Their tragedy illustrates the scale of the evil that engulfed Bratunac in the spring of 1992.

Only two small souls survived - an 11-month-old girl and her five-year-old brother, who was later found in Tuzla after being, it is assumed, taken to Serbia for adoption.

Today, years later, the brother and sister await the final rest of their mother and sister, who will be laid side by side in the "Veljaci" cemetery.

The farewell ceremony in Tuzla was attended by family members, friends, citizens, and representatives of institutions.

Among the victims whose remains will be buried today are Hamdija Salkić, Mevludin Šehić, Džemal Pitarević, and Hanija Čivić.

Yesterday's farewell ceremony for the coffins was also attended by Ramiz Salkić, who will bury his brother Hamdija. The ordeal they went through in 1992, captivity and camps, has forever marked this family.

Salkić is today a deputy in the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska, but he uses every address to reiterate the fact that an aggression was committed against Bosnia and Herzegovina, during which the genocide in Srebrenica was carried out.

Victims to be buried today:

- Zineta and Almera Paraganlija, remains exhumed in 2021 at the Joševa site;

- Hamdija Salkić (1971) from Hranča near Bratunac, whose remains were identified in 2023;

- Mevludin Šehić (1958) from Dimnići near Srebrenica, missing during the war in the Bratunac area, his remains were handed over from Serbia in 2023;

- Džemal Pitarević (1955) from Srebrenica, the oldest victim in this year's funeral prayer, whose remains were found in three mass graves;

- Hanija Čivić (1959), killed in 1992 in the settlement of Loznička Rijeka, Bratunac municipality.