Facility for storing remains of genocide victims to be built in Srebrenica

(Patria) - Today, within the USAID PRO-Future project, representatives of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, the Catholic Relief Services organization, and the company Unioninvest d.d. signed an agreement for the construction of a facility for storing the remains of genocide victims within the complex of the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

The signing was attended by a delegation of United States (US) senators and US Ambassador Michael Murphy.

This will officially mark the beginning of the construction of a depot – a facility where biological material, personal belongings, and clothing of genocide victims exhumed from hundreds of mass graves over the past nearly three decades, and which have not been identified to date, will be stored in an adequate and dignified manner.

All the material is currently in boxes and bags in the premises of the Podrinje Identification Project in Tuzla, which has been an inadequate and temporary solution from the very beginning, said Emir Suljagić, Director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center (MCS).

"The facility we are building will help us preserve in a dignified manner everything that was left behind by the victims of the genocide, thus contributing to awareness of their suffering. At the same time, this will give families a sense of security that their loved ones will not be forgotten. This facility, in line with the overall purpose of the Memorial Center, should serve to honor the victims and preserve historical memory," Suljagić added.

He explained that the initiative to build the facility was launched by MCS and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) back in 2016, and three years later, a conceptual design was created according to which it would be located in the hall of the former accumulator factory. The completion of the works on the facility is planned for the spring of 2024.

Funds for the construction were jointly provided by the Srebrenica Memorial Center and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the PRO-Future peace project. The facility represents a significant contribution to memorialization and the prevention of genocide denial.

"The culture of silence and denial is still very pronounced in Bosnia and Herzegovina and represents a serious obstacle to establishing lasting peace in this country. This facility and everything in it will remind future generations of the truth about the genocide in Srebrenica, in the hope that such a thing will never happen again, anywhere," said Sanela Imamović, representative of the Catholic Relief Service (CRS) BiH organization, which implements the PRO-Future project.

According to the verdicts of international courts, genocide was committed in Srebrenica in July 1995. The forces of the Army of Republika Srpska executed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, and buried their bodies in numerous mass graves.