Sabrija Hajdarević comes every year to her hometown of Srebrenica to commemorate the massacre in which more than 8.000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces.
In 1995, she lost both her husband and father.
This time, they will visit their graves on July 11, which is being marked for the first time as the International Day of Remembrance of the Genocide in Srebrenica, recently passed by the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly.
For the 67-year-old pensioner, who first escaped to Germany from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then moved to Australia with her children, this decision represents "satisfaction and relief".
"Let it be adopted and it should be known what happened, not to invent lies, because my soul hurts because of it."
"Well, would I say that my husband or grandmother is dead and he is alive, God forbid he is alive," Hajdarević told the BBC in Serbian.
The massacre in Srebrenica was the horrific climax of the war in Bosnia, which erupted after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when Bosnian Serbs, supported by Serbia, opposed Bosniaks and Croats.
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A protected zone that remained unprotected
Srebrenica, once a mining town in eastern Bosnia, is tucked deep into a valley surrounded by wooded hills.
During the war, this city became a refuge for about 40.000 Muslim refugees during the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Bosnian Serb forces.
In 1993, the United Nations declared Srebrenica a "protected zone", for the first time in history this organization.
The international peacekeeping force, UNPROFOR, was tasked with protecting the city from attack.
But in July 1995, when soldiers under the command of Republika Srpska Army General Ratko Mladić captured the city, the peacekeepers quickly retreated.
The refugees left the city towards the village of Potočari, the headquarters of the international peacekeepers, but soon Mladić's troops ordered the women and children to be separated from the men and boys.
For many, it was the last farewell.
Thousands of people were killed in nearby villages and forests as they tried to escape the city.
Today, in Potočari, a few kilometers from Srebrenica, there is an endless cemetery with the same, white tombstones for 8.372 victims who perished in just a few days.
The bodies of the murdered were found in dozens of mass graves, but they were also moved, which made identification and burial difficult for years.
This crime became known as the worst massacre on European soil since World War II.
The remains of around a thousand victims have not yet been found.
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The names of Sabrija's husband Zuhd Hajdarević and Sabrija Čivić's father are engraved on the marble slabs at the cemetery.
Like many victims' families, she waited for years to be told that their bodies had been found.
She buried her husband "just the head", she says.
The father's body has not been found so far, although he knows that he was killed ten meters from the house - near the mosque in Srebrenica.
"I have a picture of my father lying on the road, killed, with a cane, beaten, I never found him.
"Mati saw it with her own eyes," he tells us and shows Facebook where he keeps a picture of his father's murder.
The murder was recorded by a Belgrade photographer Dragoljub Zamurovic who, immediately after the entry of Mladić's troops into Srebrenica, was passing "Avetinski empty streets full of corpses".
As Sabria speaks, her sad blue eyes glaze over, but she manages not to cry.
Her mother, she says, died "of grief" six months later.
Every year, on the anniversary of the massacre in Potočari, the remains found in the last 12 months are buried.
This year there will be 14 new graves.
Beriji Delić lost her husband, whose remains were found a decade later and buried in 2010.
Beria decided to return to Srebrenica from Malta, where she lived after the war, last year.
Emphasizing that she is not a nationalist, she cheerfully tells us that her son is married to an Orthodox woman and that they are expecting a second child, and that her daughter-in-law "loves her baklava the most".
"What difference do we have, the same blood, if someone needs blood in the hospital, they wonder whose blood it is - whether it is Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox".
However, life in a city where both Serbs and Bosniaks still live today is not always simple.
"I see some people walking around town, you know he killed and you keep quiet, you can't stand it," says 69-year-old Beria through sobs.
Pravda
The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice have labeled the massacre in Srebrenica as genocide.
Mladić, as well as his wartime political boss Radovan Karadžić, were sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes, including genocide, as well as fifty other military and civilian representatives of Bosnian Serbs.
However, in the Republika Srpska, one of the two post-war entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, just like in Serbia, politicians have denied for decades that the massacre committed in Srebrenica was genocide.
They strongly opposed the adoption of the UN Resolution, which condemns both the denial of massacres and the glorification of war criminals, and demands that all those responsible be brought to justice.
The seal of Serbian opposition can still be seen today in Srebrenica, where on the main square next to the fountain and the peace monument, there is a billboard that says "we are not a genocidal nation".
The result was 109:84, which suggests that the "Serbian side" won more votes in the United Nations, although representatives of 84 countries voted for the Resolution, enough for adoption.
"I ignore that billboard, because I know it's not true," says Beria, a large woman with a strong voice.
Serbia and genocide
- The International Court of Justice in The Hague acquitted Serbia of direct responsibility for the genocide in Srebrenica in a 2007 verdict.
- In the same verdict, it is stated that Serbia is guilty of not preventing the genocide or punishing its perpetrators.
- In 2010, the Serbian Parliament adopted the Declaration on Srebrenica, which condemned this crime, but did not call it genocide.
- Most Serbian officials still refuse to call the crimes in Srebrenica genocide.
The biggest problem is unemployment
Srebrenica is and is still a political hostage.
There are fewer Bosniak residents, Serbs make up the majority, but they all share the same problem of unemployment.
Locals regretfully mention the fate of the source of the nearby Guber spa, whose healing water was left to flow into the nearby rivers.
Once a luxurious spa hotel, Domavia, bears witness to the city's decline.
Inside the dilapidated building with cracked windows, whose walls are covered with graffiti, a wild botanical garden of trees, weeds and shrubs thrives.
On the slopes of the hill, there is an Orthodox church and a mosque nearby.
"Srebrenica is used as currency when someone needs it, regardless of whether they are Serbs, Bosniaks or Croats, and it all goes behind our backs.
"Whoever wants to help can start a spa, create jobs so that people don't leave, and that will help us, and the fact that the mouths of Srebrenica are full in any context, and here the city remains deserted, that's not a concern for us," he says. Slaviša Petrović, director of the Tourist Organization.
This 37-year-old economist, who left Srebrenica only during the war and to study, says that the Serbs and Bosniaks in the town have no problems.
They visit each other, go out, make friends, and "tensions are brought only by people from outside" and the media with sensationalistic and inaccurate reporting.
Serbian and Bosniak children go to kindergarten and school together, and the pictures of the graduates are in the window of the biggest market in the city.
However, those students cannot have a snack on vacation - there is not a single bakery in the city.
The only coffee shop with only a few tables inside and outside, on the window, instead of the address, there is the inscription "street of closed bakeries".
There are no places to go out either, except for cafes where mostly middle-aged guests.
The pastry shop Slatki zolaj, which was run by a Serbian and Bosniak husband and wife, was also closed.
Petrović and his colleagues are trying to attract visitors to enjoy untouched nature, get to know sites from the ancient Roman era and visit medieval fortresses and monasteries.
However, everything is just beginning, because tourism cannot do without hotels, restaurants and roads.
Only a few hostels and apartments are not enough, and the motel is closed.
There have been no passengers for a long time at the bus station with half-open windows and dusty counters.
Although the facades of many buildings in the center are painted, and the sports fields in front of the school are modernly decorated, in almost every street of the city, destroyed houses, some with traces of shrapnel and bullets, are a gloomy reminder of the war years.
On the front wall of the building of the former police station there are two memorial plaques - black for Serb and white for Bosniak war victims.
A few meters away, the UN is written in white chalk - a reminder that international peacekeepers are also responsible for the massacre in Srebrenica, as the Dutch Supreme Court found.
On the side walls of the building, however, there are murals with messages of peace, love and tolerance, similar to children's drawings.
Probably no one knows the exact number of inhabitants of Srebrenica today, there has not been a census for a long time, and the locals say that it would not even show the real picture, because there are those who come to the town only then.
Naser Orić, the commander of the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica, was held accountable for the crimes committed against Serbian prisoners in this very police station before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
After two years in custody, he was first convicted and then acquitted of charges that he did not prevent the murders and cruel treatment of Serbian prisoners, as well as the murders of civilians in the surrounding villages, which were under the control of Serbian forces during the war.
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How much war crimes marked Srebrenica even before the genocide, is evidenced by the board on the stands of the school playground.
On April 12, 1993, 74 people were killed and 100 wounded in shelling from the surrounding hills controlled by Serbian forces.
No one was held accountable for this crime.
'Appendix'
Radenko Novaković was born in nearby Bratunac and moved to Srebrenica after the war.
A former fighter of the Republika Srpska Army says he is a "Serb, not a Bosnian", and a "Serb from the Republika Srpska".
He hangs out with his neighbors, both Serbs and Bosniaks, although politics makes people quarrel, and the biggest problem is jobs, he says.
In the past, you could go anywhere from Srebrenica, now only a minibus goes to Zvornik and Bratunac, and a school bus.
"Srebrenica is now an appendix," he says.
He receives a veteran's compensation of 130 marks, about 70 euros per month.
"It's the bottom of the bottom, what to do with 130 marks, people manage and work privately.
"I'm not politically engaged, maybe that's why I don't have a job," says the 56-year-old car mechanic with a smile.
Sabrija Hajdarević remembers how Srebrenica used to be "a beautiful city, full of life, with happy families" while describing and listing all the factories that worked in the city.
Today, "none of that," he says.
Because of the loved ones she lost, but also those beautiful memories of pre-war Srebrenica, "something pulls her" to "cross half the world" every summer.
As soon as she comes to the yard of her parents' house, she says, the image of her mother and father welcoming her appears before her eyes.
"To this day, believe it or not, sadness and joy are mixed here and my brain cannot function normally.
"These are emotions that cannot be described".
The house at the entrance to the city, where she lived with her husband and children, was among the first to be looted and set on fire during the war, and after the war, new tenants moved in.
When, after nearly 10 years, she came to Srebrenica for the first time in 2005, she found them on the first floor of the house.
"I came in front of my house, I entered the courtyard, when they opened the door, the woman asked me, 'is this my house', I said yes, and she said: 'Do you want juice from this rose of yours?'
"I was lost, I said 'I won't' and I left," Sabrija remembers.
The recently adopted United Nations resolution did not bring any changes to Srebrenica, Petrović is convinced.
"People are still leaving, as they were before the resolution, they still don't have jobs like they didn't have before."
The desolation is also witnessed by the surrounding villages, overgrown with grass, so that you can hardly make out where the road used to be.
"Whenever someone leaves, it's like they've left my house," he says sadly.
Although only three of his entire class remained in Srebrenica, and weddings and births of children are becoming rarer, he is determined to stay.
Will his now four-year-old daughter want the same?
"Difficult," he answers honestly.
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