Collective funeral and burial of Bratunac victims held in Veljaci, including a six-month-old baby

(Patria) - A collective funeral and burial for six victims of the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina, killed in 1992 solely because of their faith and name, was held today at the Memorial Complex and Martyrs' Cemetery Veljaci in Bratunac.



The case of the Paragalija family, whose five members will be buried today, is particularly harrowing. These are victims of Bosniak nationality who were brutally killed on May 23, 1992, in an attack by members of the Serbian army. Among them is the youngest victim – six-month-old Almera Paragalija, who was killed together with her mother Zineta. Their remains were found in 2021 in a mass grave at the Joševa site, in a forest near Bratunac.

Funeral in Bratunac for six victims of genocide pic.twitter.com/hJJicx5PrF

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Along with Almera and Zineta, other members of this family, Rukija Paragalija, as well as two other women, a mother and daughter, who were buried together in makeshift graves, were also interred. According to the testimony of neighbor Sadik, their remains were buried in the forest by neighbors at the time, but the family was unable to reach them again after the fall of Srebrenica.

– A brother and sister from the Paragalija family survived the shooting. It was thought the boy was sent to Serbia, but he was later found in Tuzla. This is one of the most brutal examples of the suffering of Bosniaks in Bratunac, Sadik told Hayat TV.

Today, Hamdija Salkić, brother of RS National Assembly representative Ramiz Salkić, as well as Mevludin Šehić and Džemal Pitarević, whose remains were identified in previous years, were also buried. The burial of the sixth victim, Hanija Čivić, is scheduled for tomorrow.

To date, 307 victims have been buried at the Veljaci Memorial Center, while another 42 people have been buried in family cemeteries.

For crimes committed in the Bratunac area, numerous high-ranking officials of the then authorities have been convicted before the Hague Tribunal and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Radovan Karadžić, Biljana Plavšić, Momčilo Krajišnik, Miroslav Deronjić, Najdan Mlađenović, Mirko Todorović, Miloš Radić, and Milan Trišić.