MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR KILLED SERBS TO BE HELD TOMORROW IN ZALAZJE

SREBRENICA, JULY 11 /SRNA/ - In Zalazje, the municipality of Srebrenica, 33 years since the deaths of 69 Serb civilians and soldiers on Petrovdan /St. Peter’s Day/, July 12, 1992, in this village and Sase, as well as in Biljača and Zagoni in the Bratunac area, will be commemorated tomorrow.

In addition to the 69 killed and a large number wounded, 22 Serbs went missing on that tragic Petrovdan. Of the 22 missing, 10 were accidentally found and exhumed on June 10, 2011, from a mass grave in Zalazje during the search for missing Bosniaks. The remains of the victims were identified after more than a year and buried on St. Peter’s Day in 2012, while two others were exhumed, identified, and buried earlier. Ten of the missing have still not been found, and all traces of them were lost in the camp at the former Srebrenica police station. None of the captives survived, and no one has been held accountable for their murders. A memorial service will be held at the monument and ossuary in Zalazje for those killed on St. Peter’s Day in 1992, as well as for all other Serb soldiers and civilians from this municipality who died in the Defense Patriotic War, and the victims from this village who were killed by the Ustaše on the third day of Holy Trinity in 1943. The memorial service in Zalazje will begin at 12:30. After the liturgy at the Church of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos in Srebrenica, family members of the fallen, relatives, neighbors, comrades, and interested delegations will visit the sites of the tragedies, lay flowers at memorials, and light candles for the souls of the victims at the cemetery in Bratunac and the execution sites in Biljača and Sase. This will conclude the program of the traditional memorial event "Petrovdanski dani" /St. Peter’s Days/, organized in memory of the fallen Serbs under the slogan "33 years of crime, without punishment." The memorial program today includes visits to the families of fallen soldiers, war veterans with disabilities, and ill demobilized soldiers. Tomorrow, a memorial mini football tournament will be held near the church in Toplica in honor of the priest-martyr Boban Lazarević, who was killed by Muslim executioners while performing a religious ceremony on July 5, 1992, in Krnići. Continuing the systematic, planned ethnic cleansing of Serb territories that began in April, numerous Muslim forces from Srebrenica, under the command of Naser Orić, on July 12, 1992, attacked several Serb villages in the Srebrenica and Bratunac municipalities, killing, looting, and burning everything in their path. No one has been held accountable for these and many other mass crimes committed against Serbs in Srebrenica and the Middle Podrinje. The organizer of this commemoration is the Committee for Commemorating Serb Suffering in Srebrenica.