Bosnian Muslims commemorate Srebrenica genocide

Thousands of people were expected to gather Thursday in Srebrenica to commemorate the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims during the country’s civil war, two months after the UN created an annual day of remembrance of the genocide.

Every year, July 11th marks the anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres committed by the West against Muslims after World War II: the Srebrenica Massacre, carried out by the Serbian butcher Ratko Mladić in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Here is the full story of this massacre:

The Story of the Srebrenica Massacre:

On April 6, 1993, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 819, declaring Srebrenica and its surrounding 50-kilometer radius a safe area under UN protection. Despite this promise of safety, the residents of Srebrenica were betrayed as Serbian forces chose to implement a policy of genocide against the Muslims in the region.

The story began on March 1, 1992, when Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following a referendum boycotted by Bosnian Serbs.

The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina gained recognition from the European Union on April 6, 1992, and from the United States the following day, while the Serbian government refused to acknowledge the independence.

This international recognition was insufficient to stop the emerging conflict, leading to violent struggles for control over the land among the three major ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. The Serbs attempted to expel the Bosniaks from the land to create a “Greater Serbia,” a policy known as ethnic cleansing, as reported by the BBC.

Subsequently, Bosnian Serb forces, supported by the Serbian government led by President Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People’s Army, attacked Bosnia and Herzegovina under the guise of unifying Serbian territories.

https://youtu.be/Z_r2EOwrZCc

This assault led to campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Bosnian Muslims. Bosnian Muslims took up arms to fend off Serbian forces and defend themselves.

During this period, the international community attempted to bring peace to the region through various diplomatic efforts, all of which ultimately failed or achieved very limited success. The eastern part of Bosnia, particularly Srebrenica, near the Serbian border, saw particularly fierce fighting between Bosniaks (Muslims) and Serbs (Christians).

Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica, meaning “Land of Silver” in Bosnian, in 1992, but the Bosnian army reclaimed it shortly after, followed by a siege and skirmishes between both sides.

The Bosniaks are Muslims descended from Bosnian Slavs who converted to Islam under Ottoman Turkish rule in the Middle Ages.

A Futile UN Decision and a “Suicide” Agreement for the Bosniaks!

After months of fierce battles between Bosniaks and Serbs, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 819 on April 16, 1993, to protect the residents of Srebrenica, 75% of whom were Muslims according to the 1991 census.

The resolution declared that all parties in Srebrenica and its surrounding areas should consider it a safe area, free from armed attacks or hostile actions.

Two days later, the first group of UN Protection Force troops, mainly Dutch soldiers, arrived.

In May, an agreement was reached between Bosnians and Serbs, specifically between Bosnian General Sefer Halilović and his Serbian counterpart Ratko Mladić, stipulating that Bosnian soldiers would hand over their weapons and ammunition to the UN Protection Force.

In return, Serbian forces near the city would withdraw all their units, weapons, and heavy equipment from the area, supposedly making it a “demilitarized zone.”

This agreement was akin to suicide for the deceived Bosnians. Despite surrendering all their weapons and ammunition, Serbian forces did not honor the agreement, failing to withdraw any heavy equipment and continuing to besiege the city, occasionally attacking Bosnian positions within it.

The Serbs justified their breach of the agreement by claiming they had intelligence suggesting that the Bosnians had only surrendered their old weapons and kept the new ones.

By early 1995, Serbian President Radovan Karadžić ordered the complete blockade of Muslims in Srebrenica, cutting off all humanitarian aid to the city, causing Bosnian Muslims to starve.

This occurred under the watch of UN forces, who were unable to help the residents due to their own shortages of food, medicine, ammunition, and fuel, forcing them to patrol on foot. Dutch soldiers on leave were not allowed to return to the area.

The Beginning of the Srebrenica Massacre

In March 1995, despite international pressure to lift the siege, Radovan Karadžić, President of the self-proclaimed “Republic of Serbian Krajina,” issued Directive 7 to his troops, ordering the separation of Srebrenica and the nearby village of Šipovo and preventing any communication between the two.

On July 6, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces, led by the infamous “Butcher of the Balkans” Ratko Mladić, launched a serious attack on Srebrenica, causing UN forces to withdraw from the city. NATO airstrikes, called in to assist, only slightly slowed the Serbian advance, according to the official Srebrenica Massacre website.

On July 9, Serbian forces attacked a Dutch peacekeeping observation post, taking 30 soldiers hostage. The following day, Serbian forces bombarded Srebrenica and committed atrocities against its defenseless residents, resulting in over 8,000 deaths.

The Dutch UN battalion, led by Thom Karremans, called for NATO support. The next day, NATO planes bombed Serbian tanks, but the Serbs threatened to kill the Dutch soldiers if the bombing continued, leading to the cessation of airstrikes.

On July 11, 1995, Srebrenica fell after peacekeeping forces surrendered all their observation posts and checkpoints without resistance or any attempt to protect the civilians, allowing General Mladić and other generals to enter the city.

Around 20,000 Muslim refugees fled to the main Dutch UN base.

Systematic Ethnic Cleansing Ordered by the Serbian General Staff

The systematic genocide began the day after Mladić and his troops entered Srebrenica, targeting Bosnian Muslim refugees in evacuation buses in the nearby town of Potočari.

Under direct orders from the Serbian General Staff, Serbian forces carried out systematic ethnic cleansing against the Bosniaks, separating males aged 14-50 from women, children, and the elderly, cramming them into warehouses, barns, and schools outside Srebrenica, before shooting them and burying their bodies in mass graves. The bodies were later mutilated to conceal the crime, and women were raped.

According to the BBC, some reports indicate that some were buried alive, while others were forced to watch their children being killed. Meanwhile, women and girls were taken from evacuation queues for rape.

The poorly equipped Dutch soldiers did nothing to protect the Bosniaks and even handed over about 5,000 Muslims seeking refuge at their base.

The UN Forces Failed in Their Duty

Years after the massacre, relatives of the victims filed a case called “Mothers of Srebrenica.” In 2014, the Dutch Supreme Court in The Hague ruled that the Dutch peacekeeping battalion failed to protect over 300 Bosniaks, knowing that handing them over to Serbian forces would result in their deaths.

The Dutch court held the Netherlands responsible for the deaths of only 300 people, acquitting it of the deaths of over 7,000 others, arguing that these individuals did not seek refuge at the UN base but hid in nearby forests.

The Butcher of the Balkans Ratko Mladić, the Primary Culprit of the Srebrenica Massacre

Ratko Mladić, ethnically Serbian but born in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, was the commander of the Bosnian Serb army. Under his leadership, numerous systematic massacres were committed, including sniper attacks in Sarajevo, killing civilians, and bombarding the city, resulting in about 10,000 civilian deaths, including 1,601 children.

Mladić’s crimes against Bosnian Muslims spanned around 15 municipalities in Bosnia, but the most notable and horrific was the Srebrenica massacre.

Despite these atrocities, Mladić lived freely for 16 years, moving between Serbia and Russia until his capture in 2011 near Belgrade, preparing for a walk in the park.

The first indictment against Ratko Mladić was issued in 1995, listing numerous crimes, including genocide. His trial lasted 530 days, and in November 2017, he was found guilty of 10 out of 11 charges and sentenced to life imprisonment, as the International Criminal Tribunal does not impose the death penalty. He remains in prison, with defense lawyers appealing the verdict, while victims’ lawyers seek to add another case from which he was acquitted.

They Retaliated Against Us for Being Muslims!

Bosnian author and journalist Azra Omerspahić emphasized that Bosnian Muslims were guilty in the eyes of Bosnian Serbs simply for being Muslims. Despite the trust the Bosniaks placed in them, the Serbs betrayed it.

In an article published in “Arabi Post,” she wrote: “28 years ago, Srebrenica became known as the ‘saddest city’ in Bosnia. Everything began on July 11 when Ratko Mladić, known as the ‘Serbian butcher,’ entered the UN-declared safe area of Srebrenica with his armed troops, saying, ‘It’s finally time to take revenge on the Turks in this region.'”

She continued: “Thousands of women were raped, children were separated from their mothers, while all men who were taken were subjected to humiliating acts. They were forced to sing Serbian national songs and to commit atrocities such as mutilation, physical and sexual violence, and killing each other. They were even made to dig mass graves and bury their loved ones in those graves.”

Overall, the war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995 in Bosnia, left around 100,000 people dead and caused the displacement of more than two million people from their homes.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, as of the end of 2015, there were still 98,324 internally displaced persons, with 7,000 of them in temporary or collective shelters.

Branka Antic-Stauber, director of Women’s Power, an organization that provides psychological support to Bosnian refugees, says: “There was never a clear strategy for the return of Bosnian refugees to their war-torn villages. Sometimes, even after their homes were rebuilt, it was difficult for them to return. Almost all of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. We are talking about primary, ongoing, and chronic trauma here. Some women are still searching for their missing family members.”