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Reuters
SREBRENICA, Bosnia
Four Yazidis from Iraq joined thousands of Bosnian Muslims at a commemoration on Tuesday of the 8,000 men and boys killed in 1995 at Srebrenica and called for atrocities committed against their sect by Islamic State to be recognised as genocide.
The Srebrenica massacre by Bosnian Serb forces near the end of Bosnia's war was declared a genocide by two United Nations courts and leaders including General Ratko Mladic have been prosecuted at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
The 2014 killings at Sinjar of thousands of Yazidis by IS militants who buried some alive and took thousands of women as slaves have also been called a genocide by a UN commission but activists are seeking wider recognition and prosecutions.
"We have endured horrific abuse and persecution -- the Bosnian Muslims at the hands of Serbs and Yazidis at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) -- and we share the memories and recognise each others'feelings,"said Hussam Abdukah, a Yazidi lawyer who is documenting the IS crimes and is a member of a peacebuilding programme in northern Iraq.
Tuesday's commemoration of the killings at Srebrenica 22 years ago included the burials of 71 newly identified victims at a cemetery near the eastern town, bringing the total number interred there to 6,575.
