THE HAGUE, March 13 (AFP) - The fields around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica are peaceful now, but for many it is the peace of the grave.
In the days following July 11, 1995, when Serb forces overran the U.N.-mandated "safe area," at least 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were engulfed in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
Survivors' reports, aerial photography and the grisly evidence exhumed from mass graves indicate that most were summarily executed at the hands of troops under the command of the Bosnian Serb military leader General Ratko Mladic and his deputy General Radislav Krstic.
The Bosnian Serb army launched its assault on July 6, using tanks and artillery to brush aside a contingent of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers and overrun the enclave while U.N. Protection Force officials in Sarajevo and Tuzla waited for orders from
their superiors.
In the absence of support from UNPROFOR headquarters in Zagreb, and with the Dutch U.N. troops defending themselves, the town's poorly-armed Muslim defenders had no option but to surrender or flee.
In the hours before the town fell, anticipating the horrors to come, some 12,000 Muslim men gathered on a nearby hill and decided to gamble their lives on an arduous march through enemy-held territory to Tuzla.
While the commander of the Dutch peacekeepers, Ton Karremans, negotiated with Mladic over the security of his men, the Serbs began rounding up any Muslim men they could find, including youths barely into their teens, and loading them into trucks.
None of these men were seen alive again.
In the days that followed, the area became a killing field, with Serb forces able to fire at will on the columns of fleeing men as they straggled blindly towards safety.
Some were tricked into surrendering by Serb soldiers driving captured U.N. vehicles and masquerading as U.N. troops.
Fewer than half the Muslims made it to safety, according to international human rights organizations and Bosnian officials.
The extent of the killing only became apparent after survivors of the long march told their stories to reporters, diplomats and human rights activists.
Evidence presented to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia painted a picture, in the words of one judge, of "thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated
and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers' eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson."
These were, the judge said, "truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history."
The fall of Srebrenica marked a turning point in the Bosnian conflict.
With the Bosnian Serbs seemingly bent on humiliating the U.N. peacekeeping force, the international community was forced to adopt a more vigorous approach, leading to a strategy of massive airstrikes to protect the remaining safe areas.
Mladic and his political leader Radovan Karadzic were indicted by the ICTY for genocide.
No U.N. officials were ever held responsible for the failure to prevent the massacre at Srebrenica.
The Dutch troops who had witnessed the Serb operation were ordered to remain silent.
The women of Srebrenica, now living in Tuzla, Sarajevo or elsewhere in Bosnia, are campaigning for the full facts to be uncovered. Many of them still cling to fading hopes that their husbands and sons somehow escaped the bloodshed and are
being held prisoner in Yugoslavia or Republika Srpska.
