2015 / Editorial / Conflict

Srebrenica. Requiem for a dream

  • Photographer
    Mattia Vacca
  • Prizes
    Silver in Editorial/Conflict

Every year the 11th of July a sea of coffins lined up for the funeral in the small, used to be forgotten at-the-end-of-the-road town called Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The international criminal court said the most terrible crimes of genocide on European soil since the Second World War were committed in Srebrenica area when the Bosnian Serb forces massacred more than 8000 of Muslims after the enclave, ironically under U.N. protection as a safe heaven, was overrun by an army led by its ruthless commander; General Ratko Mladic. On may 2011, after more than 15 years on the run Mladic was captured in a small village in Serbia and he joins Radovan Karadzic, his war-time president and another “butcher of Balkans”, in the Hague. 2015 is the twentieth anniversary of the massacre. Over 4.000 body bags are still in a cold store, waiting to be opened and checked by the experts of ICMP (International Commission of Missing Persons), whose mission is to complete the bodies and identify them.