Hatidža Mehmedović

Hatidža Mehmedović (née Bektić; 1 March 1952 – 22 July 2018) was a Bosnian human rights activist, survivor of the Srebrenica genocide, and founder of the Mothers of Srebrenica, an association of women whose relatives were killed in the July 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. Following the genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys, including her husband and two sons, Mehmedović became a vocal advocate for bringing the perpetrators of the Srebrenica genocide to justice.

Biography Hatidža Mehmedović was born as Hatidža Bektić in the hamlet of Bektići, near Sućeska in the Srebrenica Municipality. At the outbreak of the Bosnian War, she was a homemaker with a primary school education. She lived with her husband, Abdulah Mehmedović, and their sons, Azmir and Almir (who was nicknamed Lalo), in Vidikovac, just outside of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Srebrenica massacre By 1995, Serb forces had overrun much of eastern Bosnia and expelled the local Bosniak population in an ethnic cleansing campaign. Their objective was to annex Serb controlled areas to the neighboring Serbia. More than 40,000 people, mostly Bosniaks, took refuge in Srebrenica, one of the region's last enclaves outside Bosnian Serb control. However, the town was conquered by forces led by the Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić. Srebrenica's women were evacuated, but much of Srebrenica's male population would be killed by paramilitaries under Mladić's command. Hatidža Mehmedović last saw her husband, Abdulah (aged 44), and sons, Azmir (aged 21) and Almir (aged 18), in the forested hills surrounding Srebrenica before their separation. She described her final parting with her family in a November 2017 interview with a Bosnian television station, "We were standing there and my young one, Lalo — that's what we called him, although his name was Almir — was saying, 'Go on, mother, go, leave, already' as he was pulling me closer and closer, and would not let me go... We thought we'd see each other in two, three days. We did not know they'd kill them all." Mehmedović was bused to the relative…Citește mai mult

Activism The remains of her husband and sons were later recovered within the more than 100 mass graves uncovered in the region surrounding Srebrenica. Their bodies were positively identified. In 2010, Mehmedović had them reburied at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in the nearby village of Potočari. Mehmedović lived in a suburb of Sarajevo from the late 1990s until 2002. In 2002, she moved back to her prewar home in Vidikovac, located just outside Srebrenica on the road to Potočari, despite memories of the war and massacre. Mehmedović, who was one of first Bosniaks to permanently return to the area following the Bosnian War, wanted to show that Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs could still live side-by-side. She returned to a very different area. There was little electricity in 2002 and few paved roads in region. Her only neighbor at the time was an elderly Serb man, whom she helped with chores and shopping. She stressed that she did not blame Serbs or harbor collective guilt towards them. Instead, Mehmedović began to advocate for the arrest and convictions of individual perpetrators of the Srebrenica massacre. In 2002, the same year she moved back to Srebrenica, Mehmedović founded Mothers of Srebrenica, an association…Citește mai mult

Death Hatidža Mehmedović died from complications of breast cancer at a hospital in Sarajevo on 22 July 2018 at the age of 65. Her death was confirmed by Ćamil Duraković, her friend and former Mayor of Srebrenica, who called her a "tough, strong woman, an incredible leader in the largely patriarchal society in which women remain mostly in the background." Hundreds of people attended her funeral in Srebrenica. She was buried in Sućeska. Michael Brand, a German politician and member of the Bundestag who worked closely with Mehmedović, noted that she "fought like a lioness" on behalf of the massacre victims and their families, but "justice was her mission, not revenge." He called her "a thorn in the side of people who to this day try to sweep the most serious war crimes under the carpet and rewrite history" and reiterated that without Mehmedović many details and perpetrators of the attacks in Srebrenica would have never been uncovered.