This week marks the 30th anniversary of one of the worst massacres against humanity, that of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Three decades later, survivors of the massacre say they live in the shadow of death.
Three decades after their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons disappeared in the bloodiest episode of the Bosnian war, survivors of Srebrenica find little solace in being able to exhume the remains of their loved ones from distant mass graves and return them to their final resting place.
The women of Srebrenica can now live in their hometown, next to individual graves and collective memorials that remind them not only of the tragedy, but also of their love and perseverance in seeking justice for the men they lost.
"I found peace here, next to my loved ones. At home, often, especially at dusk, I imagine that they are still nearby, that they have gone out to work and that they will return. That idea, that they will return, that I am next to them, is what keeps me alive. I could not stay away from this place, there is no beauty that could tempt me to leave this place or compare to living here," said Fadila Efendić, a survivor of the massacre.
The Srebrenica killings were the bloody climax of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, which came after the breakup of Yugoslavia unleashed territorial ambitions that pitted Bosnian Serbs against the country's two other main ethnic populations - Croats and Bosniaks.
On July 11, 1995, Serbs occupied Srebrenica, then a UN-protected safe zone. They separated at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers, and sisters and massacred them.
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Those who tried to escape were chased through the forests and mountains surrounding the ill-fated city. Women and children were put on buses and driven out of the city.
The executioners attempted to eliminate the victims, placing their bodies in hastily constructed mass graves, later digging them up with bulldozers and scattering them among other burial sites to hide evidence of the crime.
But once the war was over, Efendiq and other women who shared her fate vowed to find the remains of their loved ones, bring them back to the city, and give them a decent burial.
To date, almost 90% of those reported missing from the fall of Srebrenica have been found through remains exhumed from hundreds of mass graves scattered across the eastern town.
"We wrote history on white marble tombstones and this is our success. Despite our pain, despite the fact that our hearts tremble when we talk about our sons, our husbands, our brothers, our people, our city, we refused to let what happened to them be forgotten," said Kada Hatić, another survivor.
The Srebrenica massacre has been declared genocide by two UN tribunals.
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Dozens of Srebrenica women have testified before the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, helping to incarcerate nearly 50 wartime Bosnian Serb officials, collectively sentenced to over 700 years in prison.
After decades of fighting to ensure that the world would neither deny nor forget the truth of what happened in Srebrenica, these women now spend their days looking at the few memories of their former lives and imagining the world that could have been.
