The panic and fear felt by Bosnian Muslims at the time is vividly remembered by one survivor living in Australia.
"For me Srebrenica is not the past," said artist, poet and filmmaker Saidin Salkic.
"For me Srebrenica is the present. I live with that every day."
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Mr Salkic was 12 years old when Bosnian Serb troops overran the United Nations declared "safe area" in Potocari where he, his mother and sister, and thousands of other Bosnian Muslims had sought refuge in July 1995.
"You could see them walking through and examining people almost everyone individually," he said.
"The attempt certainly from my family was to try to almost hide. To make yourself look as small as possible."
When the family tried to board a bus to leave the camp near Srebrenica, soldiers ordered Mr Salkic to one side.
"My mother realised I had been taken away and she turned around and she started screaming. Pulling me away."
"They pulled their guns out. They said "Shut up we are going to kill you".
"And then one of them said he is young enough he can go."
There was no escape for the 33-year-old's father who was captured as he attempted to hike a forest trail to the town of Tuzla.
"On SBS News in 2005, I saw the execution of my father in the famous Scorpions video with five other Bosnians," he said.
"He was wearing the same blue shirt I saw him [wearing] last."
"He was executed last. He was made to pull the bodies of other people that had been executed into the bushes."
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were rounded up and killed by troops led by the Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic.
They were then buried in mass graves.
"Everybody I ever played with never came through. Never came back," said Mr Salkic.
"And these were all 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old boys."
After years in refugee camps the Salkic family settled in Australia making Melbourne home.
A father himself now Mr Salkic can see beauty where for such a long time there was darkness.
He says his 3-year-old daughter Sevdah has brought the family much joy.
"Historically she will find the facts. Intimately she will feel it from me."
"It has left an enormous amount of melancholy. You sort of live with it."
