The 11th edition of the Vukovar-Srebrenica ultramarathon began on Wednesday morning at the Ovcara memorial site outside Vukovar in eastern Croatia, where a group of runners set off on the 227-kilometre route to the Potocari memorial near Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.

The race, organized by an association of ethnic Bosniaks in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, is meant to symbolically connect the sites of the two greatest massacres of civilians during the 1991-95 war.

According to the press release, the entire 227-kilometer route will be run by four runners, although they will be joined by others in some sections of the route, including nine more for the first 20 kilometers from Vukovar towards the town of Vinkovci.

“We will send a message to the domestic and international public, and especially to the small number of people in power who decide our destinies, that this kind of evil that happened in Vukovar, and ended with the genocide in Srebrenica, must never happen to anyone, anywhere, again,” the head of the Bosniak Council in Zagreb, Ekrem Becirovic, told the FENA news agency.

The runners are expected to arrive in Potocari near Srebrenica on July 10 at around 12:45 pm.

The ultramarathon is held under the auspices of the President of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, members of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, Zagreb Mayor, Tomislav Tomasevic, and Sarajevo Mayor, Benjamina Karic.