Life After Genocide- Srebrenica 20 years on.

Every year on July 11th Bosniak families and others come to the Memorial Cemetery in the village of Potocari to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide of 1995 and to bury the bodies that have been identified during the past year. Potocari, which abuts Srebrenica, was the headquarters of the Dutch UN Peacekeeper battalion, who were housed in an abandoned car battery factory across the road from the present graveyard. The factory has now been transformed into a museum and a resource center.

On 16 April1993, the UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a safe haven. When the Bosnian Serb militia attacked the town in July 1995 in defiance of that declaration, the thousands of Bosnian Muslims from the region who had gathered in the UN-declared ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica pressed on to the Potocari compound hoping for safer refuge. The peacekeepers at first allowed around 5000 refugees into the factory, but then, at the order of the Serb militia commander, ejected them from the building back on to the street.

The Serbs then separated the men from the women and children, placed them on trucks and buses, sent the women to the Muslim-controlled town of Tuzla and transported the men to various sites in the area, proceeding massacre more than 8000 of them.

At the same time, around 15,000 men and boys (and a few women) went into the hills and forests surrounding Srebrenica, in the hope of walking to the Muslim-controlled area 120 kilometres to the north.

Leading up to the Commemoration and the "Burial of the Dead" ceremony that takes place on July 11th, a “peace walk,” that is held annually on July 11th, in which thousands of people commemorate the original escape walk, but in reverse, beginning in the village of Nezuk, near Tuzla, and ending in Potocari at the Memorial graveyard.

The idea for the commemorative walk was born near Montreux (!) by Bosnians who had resettled there. The first walk, in 2005, marked the 10th anniversary of the genocide. I participated in this trip in 2011. During the three-day walk, Carrying all my equipment, tent, food, camera, etc., I lost seven kilos, as temperatures reached 44 degrees C. The experience gave me some little idea of what the marchers must have suffered on the original walk which is referred to as the "Death March".

The series of pictures here is about life after the genocide and is focusing on the life of the people growing up now in this region. Some experienced the genocide, some are born at the end of or just after the war.

The idea is to start this series with the coffin and end it with the new baby and a new generation who hopefully can help create stability and hope in this region.

You meet Marizella who want to move away from living on the small family farm, you meet Fatima who worked as a young doctor in Srebrenica- her first job- during the genocide and who escaped with the men and boys. Then you meet Saliha who lost her two sons and husband before you meed Advija who buried her father in Potocari a couple of years ago and now is ayoung mother herself. Captions are included on all the images.

The story continues and this July I will once again spend the commemoration in Potocari, Srebrenica and Tuzla in order to continue to document the people who have now become my friends. This time will be special as it marks 20 years since the genocide in Srebrenica.