8106 names of Srebrenica’s dead on a 60 metre long banner in front of the Neue Wache in Berlin

Ten years after the mass murder in Srebrenica, the East Bosnian city on the river Drina, employees of the Society for threatened Peoples (SftP) together with Bosnians living in Germany are walking from the Brandenburg Gate to the Neue Wache in Berlin with a 60 metre long banner, bearing 8106 names and dates of birth of those known to have been murdered. After short speeches by a representative of the bereaved, the former international mediator for Bosnia and ex-federal minister Dr. Christian Schwarz-Schilling, as well as the President of the Society for threatened Peoples International, Tilman Zülch, the names of the Bosnian Muslim victims will be read.

"Our campaign outside the central memorial site of the Federal Republic of Germany recalls Europe’s joint responsibility of the terrible genocide of about 200,000 Bosnians,” said Zülch. "While Great Britain, France and Russia massively supported the Serbian aggression in the multi-ethnic Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the majority of German and European politicians and parliamentarians simply stood by and did nothing while mass killings and mass rapes were taking place, when concentration and rape camps were being set up, when Sarajevo was under fire for years.”

Schwarz-Schilling said: "All the solemn vows made particularly by the Western states since 1945, that genocide can never be allowed to take place again and that we need to act before it is too late, have been broken. This is why there has been so little help for Srebrenica, because no one really felt responsible.”

The SftP is the only western non-governmental organisation with an office in Srebrenica. Today, the world’s governments have forgotten this city. The people there have sunk into poverty, 4500 repatriates – mostly widows with their children in 59 villages – struggle for survival daily. The SftP initiated aid campaigns for them and supports the neediest by giving them seeds and cattle. The only hospital in the city is closed, the industry and economy have collapsed.

The SftP demands that the European and Western community:

The 60 metre long banner with the 8106 names of those murdered will be hung up during the memorial service on 11 July 2005 to be held at the Potocari memorial site near Srebrenica. Of the 6500 victims exhumed from 41 mass graves, 1327 have been identified and buried at the memorial site. On 11 July, a further 600 victims will be laid to rest.

The mass executions in Srebrenica are considered to be the worst mass murders on European territory since the end of the Second World War. On 11 July 1995 Serb troops marched into what was then the UN safe area. Men and boys were separated from women and small children and shot before the eyes of the Dutch UN Protection Forces that were stationed there. Their bodies were thrown into mass graves. To cover tracks, the bodies were often dug up again with bulldozers at a later stage and buried elsewhere.

The Bosnian SftP section, with an office in Sarajevo, helps the survivors and repatriates, supports reconciliation initiatives, researches and documents the fate of victims of crimes and informs journalists, politicians and relief organisations. In this way, the human rights organisation gives the weakest and most helpless a voice.

Zülch is the editor of the first volume about the genocide in Bosnia (1992) and has since then co-published a series of documentations and articles about the genocide and crimes in Srebrenica and has worked together with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.