The World
Remembers
Srebrenica

After World War II, Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six federal republics of Yugoslavia. Forty years of relative peace slowly started to dissolve after the death of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, when ethnic tensions began rising.

“‘It took you a long time to find them, didn't it? Three months! And so near to Venice! All you people could think about was poor, sophisticated Sarajevo. Ha-ha!’ And then, with a chill in his voice: ‘None of you ever had your holidays at Omarska, did you? No Olympic Games in Prijedor!”

Srebrenica was conquered by the Novi Sad Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in April 1992. Small bands of Bosniak resistance fighters in the surrounding mountains regrouped and, by late May, managed to push the Army out.

“There will be no retreat when it comes to the Srebrenica enclave, we must advance. The enemy’s life has to be made unbearable and their temporary stay in the enclave impossible so that they leave en masse as soon as possible, realising that they cannot survive there.”

A majority of the Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica chose not to surrender to the Serbs, since they knew that would be the equivalent of suicide. A decision was made to try and break through towards the town of Tuzla, which was under Bosnian Government control. An estimated 15,000 Bosniak men and boys gathered and formed a column to make their way through the woods.

Bosniak men and boys who were captured or who surrendered were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs with wire. They were then executed at one of several locations: in Orahovac, Petkovci, Branjevo, Pilica, Kozluk, or Kravica.

The bodies of executed Bosniaks were dumped into hidden mass graves dug by the Bosnian Serb Army, to conceal the crimes it had committed.

In 1996, the Bosnian Government established an expert group to search for missing persons who had been victims of mass atrocities.

Today, the Srebrenica genocide is still vociferously denied in many Bosnian Serb and Serbian academic and political circles

“By killing all the military aged men, the Bosnian Serb forces effectively destroyed the community of the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica as such and eliminated all likelihood that it could ever re-establish itself on that territory ...”

A peculiar aspect of modern genocide is the celebration phase. In today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, many of the institutions responsible for perpetrating genocide still exist and function, and convicted war criminals are honored as heroes.