The Srebrenica Massacre stands as a harrowing testament to the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, which ensued after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Throughout July 1995, a minimum of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica were brutally slaughtered by Serbian forces. The perpetrators of this massacre callously disposed of the victims’ bodies in mass graves, later covering them with bulldozers in an attempt to conceal evidence of their heinous crimes.
How did the Srebrenica Massacre occur?
The bloody conflict in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 was triggered by the breakup of Yugoslavia. According to Srebrenica.org, Yugoslavia or the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, established in 1943 during World War II, was a federation consisting of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
Yugoslavia was led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito after the end of World War II, with Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox living together within its borders. After Tito’s death in 1980, ethnic-based nationalism began to rise. In 1991, the Yugoslav states started to break apart along ethnic lines.
Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence in June 1991, triggering the war. When the resurgence of Greater Serbia emerged in February 1992, a referendum on independence was held in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A total of 99.7 percent of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina voted “Yes” for independence. However, the Bosnian Serb leaders boycotted the referendum in order to prevent independence. Nevertheless, the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina was officially declared on March 1, 1992, and it was internationally recognized in April 1992.
Serbia Invaded Bosnia and Herzegovina
Shortly after the referendum, Serbian forces seized the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and initiated a bloody campaign that lasted for 4 years. Since May 1992, the Bosnian-Serbian forces, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, carried out shelling to target civilian areas of the city and key institutions, resulting in the killing, injuring, and terrorizing of civilian population.
During this harrowing period, nearly all of Sarajevo’s cultural, religious, and residential buildings were partially or completely destroyed.
The siege of Sarajevo resulted in over 11,000 deaths, including 1,600 children. Between 1992 and 1995, the residents of Sarajevo were subjected to daily shootings, sniper attacks, and isolation from the outside world.
Subsequently, from January to March 1993, Bosnian-Serb forces launched an offensive on the Cerska area in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thousands of Muslims fled to the United Nations-designated “Safe Areas” in Srebrenica and Zepa, hoping to find safety.
Following this, Serbian forces in Bosnia began to focus their efforts on capturing the strategically located areas of Srebrenica and Zepa, forcibly displacing the Bosnian Muslim population who had sought refuge there.
The Srebrenica Massacre of Muslims
On March 8, 1995, Radovan Karadzic (the Serbian-Bosnian political leader) ordered the Serbian forces to eliminate the Muslim enclaves in Srebrenica and Zepa. The Serbian-Bosnian forces began attacking the Srebrenica area on July 2, 1995. The assault continued until July 11, 1995, when Ratko Mladić and the Serbian-Bosnian forces entered Srebrenica.
The forces terrorized the Bosnian Muslims, forcibly relocating them to areas outside Srebrenica, and many of them fled through the forests towards Tuzla (a safe zone). The majority of this group consisted of civilians. More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim prisoners captured in the surrounding areas of Srebrenica were executed between July 13 and July 19, 1995.
After the war, over 40,000 people remained ‘missing,’ and more than 3,000 mass graves have been discovered containing the remains of the victims of the 1995 massacre. From August 1995 to November 1995, the Serbian-Bosnian forces were involved in organized and comprehensive efforts to conceal the Srebrenica massacre.
To this day, the remains of the victims are being identified using complex DNA techniques. It is recorded that 8,372 people died in Srebrenica, and over a thousand bodies have yet to be found.
War Crimes and Genocide
According to Britannica, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia concluded that the massacres in Srebrenica, along with the mass expulsion of Bosnian civilians, amounted to genocide. The tribunal attributed primary responsibility for these crimes to senior officers in the Bosnian Serb army. The United Nations (UN) and Western states also accepted some responsibility for failing to protect the men, women, and children of Bosnia in Srebrenica, which had been designated a “safe area” by the UN Security Council in 1993.
In a 1999 internal review, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged, ‘Through error of judgment and the inability to recognize the scope of the evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to help save the people of Srebrenica from the Serb [Bosnian] campaign of mass murder.’ While Serbia was not legally implicated in the massacre, in 2010, the Serbian National Assembly issued a resolution expressing an apology for the failure to prevent the Srebrenica massacre.
