Five marathon runners are on Friday starting a 227-kilometre run from the Vukovar Memorial Centre of Ovcara in eastern Croatia to the Srebrenica Memorial Centre of Potocari in eastern Bosnia, where they plan to arrive in time for the 23rd commemoration ceremony, and the burial of the victims of the 1995 genocide that will be held on July 11.

Five runners – Drazen Cucic, Zmago Horvat, Robert Kasumovic, Elvir Rakipovic and Dusko Strbac – will run the route in five stages, allowing other runners who want to support their endeavor to run with them for a while.

The Council of the Bosniak National Minority of the City of Zagreb organised the event.

Croatia’s Parliament is on Friday holding a Srebrenica commemoration programme at noon. The event is supported by Croatia’s President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, the Bosniak member of Bosnia’s Presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, Zagreb’s Mayor, Milan Bandic, and the President of Croatia’s Parliament, Gordan Jandrokovic.

It is organised in cooperation with the Cultural Community of Bosniaks in Croatia ‘Preporod’ and the Parliament’s Special representative of the Albanian, Bosniak, Montenegrin, Macedonian and Slovenian minorities, Ermina Lekaj Prljaskaj.

A roundtable called ‘How to remember Srebrenica’ that will gather members of the academic community, will take place in the ‘Journalists’ Home’, the building where Croatia’s Journalists’ Association is located.

Scores of people are once again expected to pour into Srebrenica to pay their respects to the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre on July 11.

On that day, 23 years ago, more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks from the area of Srebrenica, mostly men and boys, were rounded up and killed by Bosnian Serb armed forces. After the Bosnian war ended, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ruled it was an act of genocide.

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