The massacre in Srebrenica in July 1995 became one of the most notorious episodes of the Bosnian war. By decision of the UN, this city was declared a security zone where civilians could calmly wait out the bloodshed. In two years, thousands of Bosnians moved to Srebrenica. When it was captured by the Serbs, the army staged a massacre. According to various estimates, from 7 to 8 thousand Bosnians died - mainly boys, men and the elderly. Later, the international tribunal recognized these events as an act of genocide.
Background
Mass killings of civilians were not uncommon for the Bosnian war. The Srebrenica massacre was only a logical continuation of this inhuman attitude of the opponents towards each other. In 1993, the city was occupied by the Bosnian army, commanded by Nasser Oric. So the Srebrenica enclave appeared - a small piece of land controlled by Muslims, but completely surrounded by the territory of the Republika Srpska.
From here, the Bosnians began punitive raids on neighboring settlements. Dozens of Serbs died during the attacks. All this added fuel to the fire. The two warring armies hated each other and were ready to vent their anger on civilians. In 1992 - 1993 Bosnians burned Serbian villages. In total, about 50 settlements were destroyed.
In March 1993, the UN turned their attention to Srebrenica. The organization declared this city a safety zone. Dutch peacekeepers were introduced there. A separate base was allocated for them, which became the safest place for many kilometers around. Despite this, the enclave was actually under siege. Blue helmets could not affect the situation in the region. The events in Srebrenica in 1995 occurred exactly when the Bosnian army surrendered the city and its surroundings, leaving the civilian population alone with the Serbian brigades.
Capture of Srebrenica by Serbs
In July 1995, the Republika Srpska Army launched an operation to establish control over Srebrenica. The attack was conducted by the forces of the Drinsky Corps. The Dutch practically did not try to stop the Serbs. All they did was shoot over the heads of the attackers in order to scare them. The attack involved about 10 thousand soldiers. They continued to move to Srebrenica, which is why the peacekeepers decided to evacuate to their base. Unlike the UN forces, NATO aircraft tried to fire at Serbian tanks. After that, the attackers threatened to crack down on a much smaller peacekeeping contingent. The North Atlantic Alliance decided no longer to interfere with the elimination of the Bosnian enclave.
On July 11, in the town of Potochari, about 20 thousand refugees gathered at the walls of a military unit belonging to UN peacekeepers. The Srebrenica massacre did not affect the few Bosnians who managed to break into the guarded base. There was not enough space for everyone. Only a few thousand people took refuge. The rest, in anticipation of the Serbs, had to hide in the surrounding fields and abandoned factories.
Bosnian authorities understood that with the advent of the enemy, the enclave would come to an end. Therefore, the leadership of Srebrenica decided to evacuate civilians to Tuzla. This mission was assigned to the 28th division. It had 5 thousand military personnel, about 15 thousand more refugees, hospital personnel, the city administration, etc. On July 12, this convoy was ambushed. A battle ensued between the Serbs and the Bosnian military. Civilians fled. Later they had to get to Tuzla on their own. These people were unarmed. They tried to bypass roads in order not to stumble upon Serbian roadblocks. According to various estimates, about 5 thousand people managed to escape before the massacre in Srebrenica in Tuzla began.
Mass killings
When the Republika Srpska Army established control of the enclave, soldiers began mass executions of Bosnians, who did not manage to escape to safe areas. The reprisal lasted several days. The Serbs divided the Bosnian men into groups, each of which went to a separate room.
The first mass shootings took place on July 13. Bosnians were taken to the valley of the Cersky River, where large-scale executions were carried out. The shootings also took place in large barns belonging to the local agricultural cooperative. Muslims who were waiting for imminent death were held captive without food. They were given only a little water to support life until the moment of execution. July heat and crowded rooms of abandoned premises became an excellent environment for unsanitary conditions.
First, the bodies of the dead were thrown into ditches. Then the officers began to allocate equipment specifically in order to transport the corpses to specially prepared places where huge mass graves were dug. The military wanted to hide their crimes. But at such a scale of atrocities, they failed to conceal enough to get out of the water. Later, investigators gathered a lot of evidence of the violence. In addition, the testimonies of numerous witnesses were summarized.
Continuation of the massacre
For the killings, not only firearms were used, but also grenades, which threw barracks full of captured bosnyks. Later, investigators discovered the remains of blood, hair and explosives in these warehouses. An analysis of all these material evidence revealed some of the victims, the type of weapon used, etc.
People were caught in the fields and on the roads. If the Serbs stopped the refugee buses, they took all the men with them. Women are more fortunate. Representatives of the UN began negotiations with the Serbs and persuaded them to expel them from the enclave. 25 thousand women left Srebrenica.
The Srebrenica massacre was the largest massacre of civilians in Europe after World War II. There were so many dead that their burial places were found many years later. For example, in 2007, a Bosnian mass grave was accidentally discovered, in which more than 600 bodies rested.
Responsibility of the leadership of the Republika Srpska
How events in Srebrenica of 1995 became possible? For several days there were no international observers in the city. It was they who could at least replicate information about what happened to the whole world. It is significant that rumors of reprisals began to leak out only a few days after the incident. Nobody owned information about the scale of the Srebrenica massacre. The reasons for this were also the direct patronage of criminals by the authorities of the Republika Srpska.
When the Yugoslav wars were left behind, the Western countries made Belgrade condition to extradite Radovan Karadzic to an international tribunal. He was the President of the Republika Srpska and the Commander-in-Chief of the officers, who started the massacre in Srebrenica. A photo of this man constantly appeared on the pages of Western newspapers. A major reward of five million dollars was announced for information about him.
Karadzic was caught only many years later. About 10 years he lived in Belgrade, changing his name and appearance. A former politician and military man rented a small apartment on Yuri Gagarin Street and worked as a doctor. The special services managed to reach the fugitive only thanks to a call from the exile’s neighbor. Belgrade has advised to take a closer look at the unknown because of his suspicious similarity with Karadzic. In 2016, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison on charges of organizing mass terror against the Bosnian civilian population and other war crimes.
Denial of crime
In the first days after the tragedy, the Bosnian Serb leadership generally denied the fact of large-scale executions. It sent a commission to investigate the events in Srebrenica in July 1995. Her report spoke of hundreds of prisoners of war killed.
Then the government of Karadzic began to adhere to the version that the Bosnian army tried to break through the encirclement and break out into Tuzla. Opponents of the Serbs exposed the bodies of those killed in these battles as evidence of "genocide." The Srebrenica massacre in 1995 was not recognized by the Republika Srpska. An objective investigation at the scene began only after the end of the Bosnian war. Until that moment, the enclave continued to be controlled by separatists.
Although today the massacre in Srebrenica in July 1995 was condemned by the Serbian authorities, the current president of this country refuses to recognize the incident as genocide. According to Tomislav Nikolic, the state must find the criminals and punish them. However, he believes that the wording “genocide” would be incorrect. In Belgrade, they are actively cooperating with the International Tribunal. The extradition of criminals to the Hague court is one of the most important conditions for the inclusion of Serbia in the European Union. The problem of integration of this country into the common “family” of the Old World has remained unresolved for several years. At the same time, neighboring Croatia joined the EU in 2013, although it was also affected by the Balkan wars and the obscurantism of bloodshed.
Political implications
The terrible massacre in Srebrenica in 1995 had direct political consequences. The Serbs' seizure of the zone under the control of UN peacekeepers led to the start of NATO bombing in the Republika Srpska. The intervention of the North Atlantic Alliance hastened the end of the war. In 1996, Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats signed the Dayton Accords, putting an end to the bloody Bosnian War.
Although the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 took place a long time ago, the echo of those events is still echoed in international politics. In 2015, a meeting of the UN Security Council was held, at which a draft resolution on the tragedy in the Bosnian enclave was considered. Britain proposed recognizing the massacre of Muslims as genocide. The United States and France also supported this initiative. China abstained. Russia opposed the resolution and vetoed it. Kremlin officials at the UN explained this decision by saying that too sharp assessments of events in Bosnia could lead to another round of interethnic conflict in the Balkans today. Nevertheless, the wording “genocide” continues to be used in some instances (for example, in the Hague Tribunal).
Srebrenica after the war
In 2003, the President of the United States in 1993 - 2001. Bill Clinton personally arrived in Srebrenica to open a memorial to the victims of war crimes. It was he who made decisions during the wars in the Balkans. Every year, thousands of Bosnians visit the memorial - relatives of the dead and injured and ordinary compatriots. Even those residents of the country who were not directly affected by the massacre understood and understand the horrors of war. The bloody conflict tormented the entire territory of Bosnia, without exception. The Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 only became the crown of that interethnic confrontation.
This city got its name thanks to the local mineral deposits. Ancient Romans knew about silver here. Bosnia has always been a poor country and a corner deaf (under the Habsburgs, in the Ottoman Empire, etc.). Srebrenica for her for many centuries remained one of the cities most adapted to comfortable living. After the civil war, almost all the inhabitants (both Bosnians and Serbs) left this region.
Criminal trial
The international tribunal found that General Ratko Mladic became the person who authorized the massacres. Already in July 1995, he was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. On his conscience were not only the events in Srebrenica in 1995, but also the blockade of the capital of Bosnia, the hostage-taking, who worked at the UN, etc.
At first, the general lived quietly in Serbia, which did not extradite the military leader to the international court. When the Milosevic government was overthrown, Mladic had to hide and live on the run. The new authorities arrested him only in 2011. The trial of the general is still ongoing. This process was made possible by the testimony of other Serbs accused of involvement in the massacre. It was through Mladic that all officer reports passed, in which they reported on the killings of Bosniaks and their burials.
Nearby generals chose places where huge mass graves were dug. Investigators found dozens of burials. All of them were randomly located in the vicinity of Srebrenica. Carriages drove around the former enclave not only in the summer, but also in the fall of 1995.
Guilty plea
In addition to Mladic, many more servicemen of the Republika Srpska Army were charged with crimes in Srebrenica. The first in 1996, his term in prison was a mercenary Drazen Erdemovich. He gave a lot of evidence on which to build a further investigation. Soon followed by the arrests of senior Serbian officers - Radislav Krstic and his entourage. Responsibility was not only personal. In 2003, the new authorities of the Republika Srpska, which is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, pleaded guilty to the massacres of the civilian Bosnian population. In the 90s, a war with Muslims was underway with the active participation of Belgrade. Independent Serbia, in the person of its parliament, also condemned the massacre in 2010.
It is interesting that the Hague court did not leave without consequences the connivance of the Dutch peacekeepers, who were located at the base near the place of bloodshed. Colonel Carremants was accused of extraditing some of the Bosnian refugees, knowing that they would be killed by the Serbs. Over two decades of endless trials and court hearings, a substantial evidence base has been compiled for those atrocious crimes. For example, in 2005, thanks to the search for Serbian human rights defenders, a video was found and published that recorded the facts of the executions.