Srebrenica victims welcome UN chief’s visit

Victims of the Srebrenica massacre voiced hope yesterday that a visit by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to the site of the slaughter would keep the UN from looking on as genocide was carried out in future.
“It is important that after 17 years the top UN official visits the site of the crime, the site of genocide,” said Munira Subasic, who heads an association of Muslim women whose male relatives were killed by Bosnian Serbs in the UN-protected enclave.
“A UN flag was there and genocide was committed under that flag,” she said.
“No one can return our dead, but... it is important that world leaders, like Ban Ki-moon and others, say that what has happened in Srebrenica will not happen anywhere else again under UN protection,” added Subasic, who lost her son and husband in the slaughter.
Ban starts his week-long tour of the Balkans in Slovenia on Thursday. He will also visit Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia before ending his trip Bosnia. He leaves the region on July 26.
Ban will be the first UN chief to visit the Potocar memorial center near Srebrenica where more than 5,600 massacre victims are buried.
Serb forces killed around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in just a few days after they captured the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.