At the height of the Bosnian War, more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnians, mostly men and boys, were killed around the town of Srebrenica.
Members of Windsor's Bosnian and Muslim communities plan to mark the July 1995 event during a remembrance ceremony Saturday in Jackson Park. The second annual Commemoration of Srebrenica Remembrance Day starts at noon.
The killings were perpetrated by the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under the command of General Ratko Mladic. A paramilitary unit from Serbia also participated after Dutch forces to prevent the town's capture.
In April 1993, the United Nations had declared the enclave of Srebrenica a so-called safe area after the break up of the former Yugoslavia and the ensuing war between Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The massacre is considered one of the worst war crimes committed since the Second World War, and in 2005, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote that the international agency had made serious errors of judgement.
So far, 6,838 victims have been identified through DNA analysis and 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potocari.
To this day, the massacre has not officially been classified as a genocide after Russia vetoed a UN resolution condemning it as such. However, the European Union and the U.S. have reaffirmed the description.
Windsor West MP Brian Masse fought to have Canada recognize the event as a genocide, and was successful in May 2015.
