REMEMBERING ZAKLOPACA MASSACRE

DO NOT FORGET ZAKLOPACA

In honor of innocent victims and survivors of the 1992 Zaklopaca Massacre. We will never forget brave people of Zaklopaca.

Photo 1/17: Forensic member of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) shows remains of the Bosniak child wrapped in a blanket and located in the Zaklopaca mass grave. The youngest victim was 4-year old Naida Hodzic and the oldest victim was 62-year old Fatima Berbic.

The Institute for the Research of Genocide, Canada, (IRGC) has published an interview with the survivor of the 1992 Zaklopaca Massacre, Nihada Hodzic. The Zaklopaca Massacre occurred three years before the Srebrenica Genocide, at the time when Serb forces were committing a campaign of ethnic cleansing, rapes and massacres of the Bosniak civilians in the Srebrenica region. And that's exactly what the Serb forces were doing in the Srebrenica region three years before the genocide - they were killing Bosniak women, children and the elderly and destroying Bosnian Muslim villages in the area.

Photo 2/17: ICMP forensic inspects the skull and hair braids of a Bosnian Muslim child slaughtered by Serbs in the 1992 Zaklopaca Massacre. Serbs relocated remains of the victims from the village of Zaklopaca into a secondary mass grave two kilometres away in a failed attempt to conceal the crime. The youngest victim was 4-year old Naida Hodzic and the oldest victim was 62-year old Fatima Berbic.

According the Institute for the Research of Genocide, Canada:

"On 16 May 1992, Serb forces approached the village and demanded Bosniak residents to hand over their weapons. Except few hunting rifles, Bosniak residents did not have any combat weapons to defend themselves. When the Serbs learned that the residents were effectively unarmed, they blocked all exists of the village and massacred at least 63 Bosniak men, women and children."

In the words of Dr. Marko Attila Hoare, a renowned British historian of the former Yugoslavia:

"One of the myths most frequently used in attempts at justifying the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 is the myth that the fighting in the Srebrenica region was started by the Bosnian side, and that the massacre was therefore an act of ‘retaliation’ or ‘revenge’. In this interview Nihada Hodzic, a survivor of the Zaklopaca massacre of 16 May 1992, tells Daniel Toljaga of the Institute for the Research of Genocide, Canada how Bosniaks in the Srebrenica region were persecuted and killed from the first weeks of the Bosnian war in the spring of 1992 – months before Naser Oric’s oft-cited raids against the local Serb villages."

Photo 3/17: Forensic team of the ICMP inspects remains of the Bosniak victims - women, children, and the elderly - in the Zaklopaca mass grave. The massacre was perpetrated by Serb forces three years before the Srebrenica Genocide.

Photo 4/17: Forensic team of the ICMP inspects remains of the Bosniak victims - women, children, and the elderly - in the Zaklopaca mass grave. At least 63 unarmed Bosniak women, children, and the elderly died in the 1992 Zaklopaca Massacre.

Photo 5/17: Forensic team of the ICMP inspects remains of the Bosniak victims - women, children, and the elderly - in the Zaklopaca mass grave. At least 63 unarmed Bosniak civilians died in the 1992 Zaklopaca Massacre.

Photo 6/17: Forensic team of the ICMP inspects remains of the Bosniak victims - women, children, and the elderly - in the Zaklopaca mass grave. At least 63 unarmed Bosniak civilians died in the 1992 Zaklopaca Massacre, three years before the Srebrenica Massacre.

Photo 7/17: ICMP forensic expert Sharna Daley (center, front) of London, UK, works on the excavation site of the Zaklopaca Massacre victims.

Photo 8/17: ICMP forensic expert inspects remains of the Zaklopaca Massacre victims in a secondary Zaklopaca mass grave few kilometres away from the massacre site.

Photo 9/17: ICMP forensic expert Sharna Daley of London, UK, inspects remains of the Zaklopaca Massacre victims in a mass grave located few kilometres away from the Zaklopaca village where a crime took place on 16 May 1992. Three years before the Srebrenica Massacre, Serb forces torched hundreds of Bosniak villages in the Srebrenica region and massacred thousands of Bosnian Muslim civilians.

Photo 10/17: ICMP forensic experts excavate remains of the Zaklopaca Massacre victims. Remains of a Bosnian Muslim child, wrapped in a blanked, seen in the center. Serbs relocated remains of the victims from the village of Zaklopaca into a secondary mass grave two kilometres away in a failed attempt to conceal the crime.

Photo 11/17: Forensic experts remove remains of the Zaklopaca Massacre victims from the Zaklopaca mass grave.

Photo 12/17: ICMP forensic expert Sharna Daley of London, UK, (second from left) works with other members of the team on the excavation site of the Zaklopaca Massacre victims.

Photo 13/17: ICMP forensic expert Sharna Daley of London, UK, (second from left) inspects remains of the victims located in the Zaklopaca mass grave.

Photo 14/17: Relatives look on as ICMP forensic team works in the Zaklopaca massacre mass grave located 2 km away from the massacre site.

Photo 15/17: ICMP forensic expert Sharna Daley of London UK inspects remains of the Bosniak victims located in the Zaklopaca mass grave.

Photo 16/17: Bosnian forensic experts collect remains of the Zaklopaca victims located in a secondary mass grave 2 kilometres away from the scene of the massacre.

Photo 17/17: Skull and bones of the Zaklopaca victims located in a secondary Zaklopaca mass grave. Serbs relocated remains of the victims from the village of Zaklopaca into a secondary mass grave two kilometres away in a failed attempt to conceal the crime. The youngest victim was 4-year old Naida Hodzic and the oldest victim was 62-year old Fatima Berbic.