^3^

She certainly has a mind of her own. Yeah, I hate that in a woman.

31 years later 10 more victims will find their peace today. A father whose son was 7 months old when he last met him will be buried today by that son and his own son. A 20 year old boy will be buried next to his brother by his sister-in-law because his mother passed away before a bone of his had been found. That boy's few bones were found in 4 separate mass graves.

During and after Bosnian genocide between 1992 and 1995, Serb forces created a systematic, deliberate network of mass graves to execute and hide victims. This network involved moving bodies from primary mass graves near execution sites to remote secondary and tertiary graves to conceal evidence.

The forensic investigation and mapping of these sites are managed by the International Comission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the Bosnia and Herzegovina Missing Persons Institute.

Hundreds of mass graves have been documented so far - but there are still many more waiting to be found.

In primary mass graves victims were buried closer to the places of execution. These mass graves were planned and created before victims were even murdered, which shows that the genocide was carefully calculated in advance.

Within months, corpses were dug up with heavy equipment and reburied in remote locations to cover their tracks. The Serb Army used heavy machinery, trucks and buses belonging to local municipal companies and private entities. Numerous state-owned and private transportation, mining, and sanitation companies from BiH and Serbia provided these vehicles. To this day, these companies faced no consequences.

Human remains were often reburied several more times, typically to conceal war crimes. This devastating practice causes extreme fragmentation and commingling of skeletal remains, making forensic identification painstaking and very complex. This also means that the remains of individual victims are often scattered across over five different grave sites.

For example, Tomašica Mass Grave was discovered in 2013 and contained over 435 identified victims. Another major site in this region is the Korićani Cliffs on mount Vlašić. The Crni Vrh Mass Grave was discovered in 2003 near Zvornik. This massive secondary grave contained the remains of over 629 Bosniak victims who had been reburied to hide the crimes.

Over 750 to 1000 mass graves have been discovered in BiH since the Genocide. Even decades after the Genocide, hidden sites continue to be discovered through new witness testimonies, land development, or receding water levels.

After years, the story of blue butterflies and artemisia spread - a weed that commonly grows on graveyards.

According to these stories, when victims were buried, the disturbed soil altered the ground's chemical composition, causing dense clusters of mugwort to grow. These plants attracted swarms of blue butterflies. Allegedly, some villages witnessed a surge of blue butterflies. In a bizarre turn, the butterflies led the investigators to mass graves... Even the earth remembers.

A leading war crime investigator, Amor Mašović, discovered over 370 mass graves with his team. "Some mass graves were on the surface, some were in deep natural pits, some in inaccessible forest lands, caves, canyons, water reservoirs, waste landfils, even septic tanks."

To this day, more than 7500 people from the Bosnian Genocide are still missing, including over 1000 from Srebrenica alone, where during July 1995 over 8000 Bosniak men and boys were captured and brutally murdered as their killers proudly filmed themselves committing the crimes.

For many women in Bosnia, the stages of grief are on loop. For every time a woman thinks she has buried the remains of her husband or son, another piece of him resurfaces, and she must relive the anguish all over again. "We uncovered the remains of one man in four different gravesites, 50 kilometres apart. We had to carry out 13 separate DNA tests to identify him."

What inspired me to write this today was an interview withmentioned above Amor Mašović yesterday on one TV stations (all TV stations are showing related programme so I can't remember which one) and as he is the leading researcher of mass graves in BiH he spoke about a firm belief that the moving of the bodies is still happening in 2026 sponsorbed by governement of Republika Srpska entity. I think it is difficult not to believe that considering the persistent and loud genocide denial, and for me personally - my mother is from a city a two hour drive away from Srebrenica and she knows, her uncles know by name people who were slaughtering and killing in north and east Bosnia in the 90s and they live in that city and that area and they are boiling in hatred. Mašović went on to say that not a single testimony from people who moved the bodies at best, enjoyed slaughtering people at wors, came with a bit of remorse. Not a single drop of remorse in those eyes. One of the men who came to him to tell him a location of a gravesite told him outright he doesn't feel bad, doesn't feel remorse, but a priest suggested that since nothing else worked to prevent him from seeing eyes of one of the men he killed every time he tried to sleep, he should perhaps try to confess it to sleep better. A priest told him that as if he was suggesting to try a new sleeping pill. Mašović also mentioned a particular "doctor of medicine" in city of Brčko who is now retired and who during his work kept bones ofSrebrenica Genocide victims in his office where he treated ill people. After retirement he moved them to a fountain in his home garden. He still lives there and a clip was shown of journalists trying to talk to him. And one sentence has been stuck in my head since yesterday morning: "So what? I brought these from the hunt in the forest, it's not like I cooked them for a soup." Human bones.

Last year on the radio a mother who lost over 30 members of her family was saying how peace and living in peace was the most important thing. To respect everyone no matter nationality and religion and to be good people to our neighbours. At the end the journalist told her: "Thank you. We pray that you will find the skull of your son."