Women of Srebrenica central at Hague genocide remembrance

On Saturday, a ceremony on Lange Voorhout in The Hague marked the 31st anniversary of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which about 8,000 Bosniak men were killed. Mayor Jan van Zanen and Bosnian ambassador Almir Šahović addressed the gathering, noting that the trauma of the genocide still lives on.

The event placed women survivors at the centre of the program. Van Zanen named Alma, who was 14 when her father was murdered, and her daughter Hanna, who wears a hockey shirt with the number 11 in memory of her grandfather and other victims. The city is preparing a permanent monument at the former Yugoslav tribunal site, now marked by 31 stone slabs—one for each year since the genocide, with van Zanen saying, “One stone for each year that separates us from the genocide.” Ten newly identified victims were interred at the cemetery near the Potočari memorial in Bosnia and Herzegovina.