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The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as Srebrenica Genocide, was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak males, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić during the Bosnian War. In addition to the Army of Republika Srpska, a paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the "Scorpions" participated in the massacre.

The Srebrenica massacre is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. In the unanimous ruling "Prosecutor v. Krstic", the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in The Hague, ruled that the Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide, the Presiding Judge Theodor Meron stating:

By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims , the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.

The International Court of Justice has subsequently confirmed the ICTY's finding that the Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide. The United Nations had previously declared Srebrenica a UN protected "safe area", but they did not prevent the massacre, even though 400 armed Dutch peacekeepers were present at the time. The massacre included several instances where preteen children, elderly and women were also killed. The list of people missing or killed in Srebrenica compiled by the Federal Commission of Missing Persons so far includes 8,373 names.

Background

The conflict in eastern Bosnia

Bosnia began its journey to independence with a parliamentary declaration of sovereignty on October 15, 1991. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognized by the European Community on April 6, 1992, and by the United States the following day. International recognition did not end the matter, however, and a fierce struggle for territorial control ensued among the three major groups in Bosnia: Bosniak, Serb and Croat. The international community made various attempts to establish peace, but their success was very limited. In the Eastern part of Bosnia, close to Serbia, the conflict was particularly fierce between the Serbs and the Bosniaks.

1992 ethnic cleansing campaign

Serbs intended to preserve Bosnia and Herzegovina as a component part of the former state. They believed that the area of Central Podrinje (Srebrenica region) had a primary strategic importance for them. Without the area of Central Podrinje, which was predominantly Bosniak ethnic territory, there would be no territorial integrity within their new political entity of Republika Srpska. The Serbs did not want to accept the Bosniak enclave within their planned territories, because the territory would be split in two and it would be separated from Serbia proper and from areas in eastern Herzegovina which were primarily inhabited by Serb population.

To achieve this aim, they proceeded with ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks from Bosniak ethnic territories in Eastern Bosnia and Central Podrinje with the aim of linking it to Serbian territory. In the neighbouring Bratunac, for example, the Bosniaks were either killed or forced to flee to Srebrenica. According to Bosnian government data, 1,156 Bosniaks from Bratunac were killed in these attacks (3,156 total during the entire war). About 762 Bosniaks had been killed in Zvornik on 1 June 1992. A similar massacre had taken place in Cerska on 9 September 1992, when a group of 6,000 refugees from Konjevic Polje, Cerska and Kamenica tried to reach Tuzla—the VRS had laid ambushes and opened fire on the column, killing many and taking hundreds of prisoners, who then "disappeared". Some 500 people were killed close to Snagovo, as the moving column came under fire from artillery and aircraft; human remains were still to be seen as the column of July 1995 passed on its way to Tuzla.

Surrounding Serb villages were used as bases to attack Srebrenica on a daily basis from day one, as concluded by ICTY.

Struggle for Srebrenica

In spite of Srebrenica’s predominantly Bosniak population, Bosnian Serb military and paramilitary forces from the area and neighboring parts of eastern Bosnia gained control of the town for several weeks, killing and expelling Bosniaks civilians, early in 1992. In May 1992, however, Bosnian government forces under the leadership of Naser Orić managed to recapture Srebrenica.

Over the next several months, Bosniak forces from Srebrenica increased the area under their control. By September 1992, Bosniak forces from Srebrenica had linked up with those in Žepa, a Bosniak-held town to the south of Srebrenica. By January 1993, the enclave had been further expanded to include the Bosniak-held enclave of Cerska located to the west of Srebrenica. At this time the Srebrenica enclave reached its peak size of 900 square kilometres, although it was never linked to the main area of Bosniak-held land in the west and remained a vulnerable island amid Serb-controlled territory.

In January 1993, Bosnian forces captured a strategically important Bosnian Serb base in the village of Kravica, killing several dozen Serb soldiers and civilians, and directly threatened Bratunac. Over the next few months, however, the reorganized Serb military launched another large-scale offensive, eventually capturing the villages of Konjević Polje and Cerska, severing the link between Srebrenica and Žepa and reducing the size of the Srebrenica enclave to 150 square kilometres. Bosniak residents of the outlying areas converged on Srebrenica town and its population swelled to between 50,000 and 60,000 people.

General Philippe Morillon of France, the Commander of the United Nations (UN) Protection Force (UNPROFOR) visited Srebrenica in March 1993. By then the town was overcrowded and siege conditions prevailed. There was almost no running water as the advancing Bosnian Serb forces had destroyed the town’s water supplies. People relied on makeshift generators for electricity. Food, medicine and other essentials were extremely scarce. Before leaving, General Morillon told the panicked residents of Srebrenica at a public gathering that the town was under the protection of the UN and that he would never abandon them.

Between March and April 1993 several thousand Bosniaks were evacuated from Srebrenica under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The evacuations were opposed by the Bosnian government in Sarajevo as contributing to the ethnic cleansing of predominantly Bosniak territory.

The Bosnian Serb authorities remained intent on capturing the enclave, which, because of its proximity to the Serbian border and because it was entirely surrounded by Serb-controlled territory, was both strategically important and vulnerable to capture. On April 13, 1993, the Bosnian Serbs told the UNHCR representatives that they would attack the town within two days unless the Bosniaks surrendered. Bosniaks refused to surrender.

"Srebrenica safe area"

April 1993: the Security Council declares Srebrenica a “safe area”

On April 16, 1993, the United Nations Security Council responded by passing resolution 819, declaring that: all parties and others concerned treat Srebrenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act.

The Security Council created two other UN protected enclaves at the same time: Žepa and Goražde. On April 18, 1993, the first group of UNPROFOR troops arrived in Srebrenica.

After a visit on April 26. 1993 Security council member Diego Arria voiced concerns about the nature of the enclave. He described it as an "open jail" awaiting a "slow motion Genocide".

Bosnian Serb forces from surrounding Serb villages continued to attack Srebrenica even after Srebrenica became a "Safe Haven", as concluded by ICTY.

While the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica largely demilitarized, as confirmed by UN conclusions, the Serb forces surrounding the enclave were well armed and refused to honor their part of the demilitarization agreement. The Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) was organized on a geographic basis and Srebrenica fell within the domain of the Drina Corps. Between 1,000 and 2,000 soldiers from three Drina Corps Brigades were deployed around the enclave. These Serb forces were equipped with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and mortars. The unit of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) that remained in the enclave – the 28th Mountain Division—was neither well organised nor equipped. A firm command structure and communications system was lacking, some ARBiH soldiers carried old hunting rifles or no weapons at all and few had proper uniforms.

From the outset, both parties to the conflict violated the “safe area” agreement. The ICTY Trial Chamber heard evidence of a deliberate Serb strategy of preventing access by international aid convoys into the enclave. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Karremans (the Dutchbat Commander) testified that his personnel were prevented from returning to the enclave by Serb forces and that equipment and ammunition were also prevented from getting in. Essentials, like food, medicine and fuel, became increasingly scarce. Bosniaks in Srebrenica complained of attacks by Serb soldiers. Insofar as the ARBiH is concerned, General Halilović testified that, immediately after signing the “safe area” agreement, he ordered members of the ARBiH in Srebrenica to pull all armed personnel and military equipment out of the newly established demilitarized zone, which they largely did. Although Serbs were attacking and killing Bosniak civilians in and around Srebrenica daily, to the Serbs it appeared that Bosniak forces in Srebrenica were using the “safe area” as a convenient base from which to launch counter-offensives against the VRS and that UNPROFOR was failing to take any action to prevent it. General Halilovic admitted that ARBiH helicopters had flown in violation of the no-fly zone and that he had personally dispatched eight helicopters with ammunition for the 28th Division. In moral terms, he did not see it as a violation of the “safe area” agreement given that the Bosniaks were so poorly armed to begin with. However, in legal and military terms, it was a violation.

Early 1995: the situation in the Srebrenica “safe area” deteriorates

By early 1995, fewer and fewer supply convoys were making it through to the enclave. The Dutchbat soldiers who had arrived in January 1995 watched the situation deteriorate rapidly in the months after their arrival. The already meager resources of the civilian population dwindled further and even the UN forces started running dangerously low on food, medicine, fuel and ammunition. Eventually, the UN peacekeepers had so little fuel that they were forced to start patrolling the enclave on foot; Dutchbat soldiers who went out of the area on leave were not allowed to return and their number dropped from 600 to 400 men. In March and April, the Dutch soldiers noticed a build-up of Serb forces near two of the observation posts, "OP Romeo" and "OP Quebec".

Spring 1995: Prelude to the VRS attack on the Srebrenica “safe area”

In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, President of Republika Srpska (“RS”), in spite of pressure from the international community to end the war and ongoing efforts to negotiate a peace agreement, issued a directive to the VRS concerning the long-term strategy of the VRS forces in the enclave. The directive, known as “Directive 7”, specified that the VRS was to:

Complete the physical separation of Srebrenica from Žepa as soon as possible, preventing even communication between individuals in the two enclaves. By planned and well-thought out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.

— 

Just as envisaged in this decree, by mid 1995, the humanitarian situation of the Bosniak civilians and military personnel in the enclave was catastrophic. In May, following orders, Naser Orić and his staff left the enclave by helicopter to Tuzla, leaving ranking officers in command of the 28th Division. In late June and early July 1995, the 28th Division issued a series of reports including urgent pleas for the humanitarian corridor to the enclave to be reopened. When this failed, the tragedy of Bosniak civilians dying from starvation began. On Friday, July 7, in one of his last communications, the mayor of Srebrenica reported 8 residents had died of starvation.

6th-11th of July 1995: the take-over of Srebrenica

Bosnian Serb forces entered the UN Safe Area in July 1995. By the evening of July 9, 1995, the VRS Drina Corps entered four kilometres deep into the enclave, halting just one kilometre short of Srebrenica town. Late on 9 July 1995, emboldened by this success and by little resistance from largely demilitarized Bosniaks as well as the absence of any significant reaction from the international community, President Karadžić issued a new order authorising the VRS Drina Corps to capture the town of Srebrenica.

On the morning of July 10, 1995, the situation in Srebrenica town was tense. Residents crowded the streets. The Dutch UNPROFOR troops fired warning shots over the attacking Serbs’ heads and their mortars fired flares but they never fired directly on any Serb units. The UN Secretary General's Report pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 on the Fall of Srebrenica notes that had they engaged the attacking Serbs directly it is possible that events would have unfolded differently. Lieutenant-Colonel Karremans sent urgent requests for NATO air support to defend the town, but no assistance was forthcoming until around 2:30PM on July 11, 1995, when NATO bombed VRS tanks advancing towards the town. NATO planes also attempted to bomb VRS artillery positions overlooking the town, but had to abort the operation due to poor visibility. NATO plans to continue the air strikes were abandoned following Bosnian Serb Army's threats to kill Dutch troops being held in the custody of the VRS, as well as threats to shell the UN Potočari compound on the outside of the town, and surrounding areas, where 20,000 to 30,000 civilians had fled.

The Dutch soldiers operating under the auspices of the UN have been described as "cowards" for their part in failing to protect the Bosniak refugees, with some soldiers reportedly sharing coffee with Serb troops. Commander Thomas Karremans, who was in charge of Dutch troops in Srebrenica at the time, was filmed drinking a toast with war-crimes suspect and Serb general Ratko Mladić, during the bungled negotiations on the fate of civilian population grouped in Potočari. On the other hand, the UN soldiers felt abandoned by their command in Sarajevo, and they were already taken virtual or even actual hostage by Serb troops. The area of 10 square kilometers was impossible to defend with 400 troops with small arms. One Dutch soldier was killed by a grenade lobbed from a column of retreating Bosniak soldiers urging the Dutch to hold their post; he was the only fatal Dutch casualty in Srebrenica.

The massacre

The two highest ranking Bosnian Serb politicians, Radovan Karadžić and Momčilo Krajišnik, were warned by Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladić, also indicted on genocide charges, that their plans could not be committed without committing genocide.

People are not little stones, or keys in someone's pocket, that can be moved from one place to another just like that... Therefore, we cannot precisely arrange for only Serbs to stay in one part of the country while removing others painlessly. I do not know how Mr Krajišnik and Mr Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide, said Mladić.

The crowd at Potočari

The UN neglected to protect the Bosniak civilians in Srebrenica as mandated in the UN resolution. One hundred lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers were denied repeated requests for reinforcements and consequently sidelined to witness what was to follow. Faced with the reality that Srebrenica had fallen under the control of the Bosnian Serb forces, thousands of Bosniak residents from Srebrenica fled to the nearby hamlet of Potočari seeking protection within the UN compound.

11th-13th of July 1995: the humanitarian crisis in Potočari

By the evening of July 11, 1995, approximately 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniak refugees were gathered in Potočari. Several thousand had pressed inside the UN compound itself, while the rest were spread throughout the neighboring factories and fields. Though the vast majority were women, children, elderly or disabled, 63 witnesses estimated that there were at least 300 men inside the perimeter of the UN compound and between 600 and 900 men in the crowd outside; the Dutch claimed their base was full.

Conditions in Potočari were deplorable. There was very little food or water available and the July heat was stifling. One of the Dutchbat officers described the scene as follows:

They were panicked, they were scared, and they were pressing each other against the soldiers, my soldiers, the UN soldiers that tried to calm them. People that fell were trampled on. It was a chaotic situation.

12th-13th of July: crimes committed in Potočari

On July 12, 1995, as the day wore on, the already miserable physical conditions were compounded by an active Serb campaign of terror, which increased the panic of the residents, making them frantic to leave. The refugees in the compound could see VRS soldiers setting houses and haystacks on fire. Throughout the afternoon, Serb soldiers mingled in the crowd. Summary executions of men and women occurred.

In the late morning of 12 July, a witness saw a pile of 20 to 30 bodies heaped up behind the Transport Building in Potočari, alongside a tractor-like machine. Another testified that, at around 12:00 hours, he saw a soldier slay a child with a knife in the middle of a crowd of expellees. He also said that he saw Serb soldiers execute more than a hundred Bosniak men in the area behind the Zinc Factory and then load their bodies onto a truck, although the number and methodical nature of the murders attested to by this witness stand in contrast to other evidence on the Trial Record that indicates that the killings in Potočari were sporadic in nature.

That night, a Dutchbat medical orderly witnessed a rape:

We saw two Serb soldiers, one of them was standing guard and the other one was lying on the girl, with his pants off. And we saw a girl lying on the ground, on some kind of mattress. There was blood on the mattress, even she was covered with blood. She had bruises on her legs. There was even blood coming down her legs. She was in total shock. She went totally crazy.

— 

Throughout the night and early the next morning, stories about the rapes and killings spread through the crowd and the terror in the camp escalated.

The separation of the Bosniak men in Potočari

From the morning of 12 July, Serb forces began gathering men from the refugee population in Potočari and holding them in separate locations. Further, as the Bosniak refugees began boarding the buses, Serb soldiers systematically separated out men of military age who were trying to clamber aboard. Occasionally, younger and older men were stopped as well. These men were taken to a building in Potočari referred to as the “White House”. As the buses carrying the women, children and elderly headed north towards Bosnian-held territory, they were stopped along the way and again screened for men. As early as the evening of 12 July 1995, Major Franken of the Dutchbat heard that no men were arriving with the women and children at their destination in Kladanj.

On 13 July 1995, the Dutchbat troops witnessed definite signs that the Serb soldiers were murdering some of the Bosniak men who had been separated. For example, Corporal Vaasen saw two soldiers take a man behind the "White House". He then heard a shot and the two soldiers reappeared alone. Another Dutchbat officer saw Serb soldiers murder an unarmed man with a single gunshot to the head. He also heard gunshots 20–40 times an hour throughout the afternoon. When the Dutchbat soldiers told Colonel Joseph Kingori, a United Nations Military Observer (UNMO) in the Srebrenica area, that men were being taken behind the "White House" and not coming back, Colonel Kingori went to investigate. He heard gunshots as he approached, but was stopped by Serb soldiers before he could find out what was going on.

The deportations

Serbian TV footage shows women and children being separated from the men and put on buses. As a show of reassurance then Serb commander-in-chief General Ratko Mladić told the women everyone would be taken by bus out and safely reunited with the men later.

However, when the cameras were turned off the men were deported and killed at the hands of the Serb army. More than 60 truckloads were taken from Srebrenica to execution sites where they were bound, blindfolded, and shot with automatic rifles. Some of the executions were carried out at night under arc lights. Industrial bulldozers then pushed the bodies into mass graves. Some were buried alive, Jean-Rene Ruez, a French policeman who collected evidence from Bosniaks, told The Hague tribunal in 1996. He gave evidence that Serb forces had killed and tortured refugees at will. Streets were littered with corpses, he said, and rivers were red with blood. Many people committed suicide to avoid having their noses, lips and ears chopped off, he said. Among other lurid accounts of mass murder, Ruez cited cases of adults being forced to kill their children or watching as soldiers ended the young lives: "One soldier approached a woman in the middle of a crowd. Her child was crying. The soldier asked why the child was crying and she explained that he was hungry. The soldier made a comment like, 'He won't be hungry anymore.' He slit the child's throat in front of everybody."

As a result of exhaustive UN negotiations with Serb troops, around 25,000 Srebrenica women were forcibly transferred to the Government-controlled territory.

Some buses never reached the safety. For example, according to the witness accounts given by Srebrenica massacre survivor—Kadir Habibović—who hid himself on one of the first buses taking women and children from the Dutch UN base in Potočari to Kladanj, he saw at least one vehicle full of Bosniak women being driven away from Bosnian government-held territory. One of his captors at one point complained that they were not getting a good choice of the Bosniak women from Srebrenica. Habibović said the men were taken to a remote location near Rasica Gai late in the evening. When the first group was taken from the truck and shot, he said he leapt from the truck and tumbled down a nearby slope; gunfire from the soldiers missed him and he escaped. He reached government-held territory on August 20, 1995.

Hague officials say that the tribunal's progress in dealing with rape has come from three factors—the courage of the victims and witnesses who testified, the tenacity of the prosecuting lawyers, and the years of tireless lobbying by pressure groups. The breakthrough came when prosecutors established that these rapes were entirely foreseeable. Judges agreed that the generals in charge should have reasonably predicted that, under these conditions, the sexual assaults were likely. It was concluded that any rapes that took place in Srebrenica were therefore the fault of the commanders.

The column of Bosniak men

As the situation in Potočari escalated towards crisis on the evening of 11 July 1995, word spread through the Bosniak community that the able-bodied men should take to the woods, form a column together with members of the 28th Division of the Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and attempt a breakthrough towards Bosnian-held territory in the north.

At around 2200 hours on the evening of 11 July 1995, the division command, together with the Bosniak municipal authorities of Srebrenica, made the decision to form the column. The young men were afraid they would be killed if they fell into Serb hands in Potočari and believed that they stood a better chance of surviving by trying to escape through the woods to Tuzla. The column gathered near the villages of Jaglici and Šušnjari and began to trek north. Witnesses estimated that there were between 10,000 and 15,000 men in the retreating column. Around 5,000 of the men in the column were active military personnel from the 28th Division, although not all of the soldiers were armed. Others included able-bodied men of military age, the political leaders of the enclave, the medical staff of the local hospital and family members of those who had played some prominent part in life within the enclave.

The other groups

A second and somewhat smaller group of refugees attempted to escape into Serbia via Mount Kvarac via Bratunac, or across the River Drina and via Bajina Bašta. According to the Humanitarian Law Centre in Belgrade, this group numbered some 700, although the organization Women of Srebrenica estimated that approximately 800 men had crossed the Drina on the way to Serbia. It is not known how many were intercepted, arrested and killed on the way.

A third group headed for Žepa, possibly having first tried to reach Tuzla. The size of this group is not known. Furthermore, not all the names of those who actually reached Žepa were recorded. The estimates of the numbers involved therefore vary widely, from 300 to around 850. The only firm figures in existence are provided by a report stating that 25 civilians arrived in Žepa on 16 July along with 82 soldiers of the 28th Division.

Apparently, small pockets of resistance had also remained behind in the former enclave. On 13 July ARBiH source learned this from communications made by a VRS officer in the enclave and intercepted by the ARBiH. There was still some shooting going on there, but the ARBiH within the enclave had no lines of defense left; they had been chased into one small area comprising two or three mountain tops. The VRS then instructed these remaining resistance fighters to reveal themselves and surrender. It is not known how many prisoners the Bratunac Brigade was able to take after the 'sweep' operation ordered by General Krstić on 13 July.

The Tuzla column departs

By far the largest group was that which followed the notorious route towards Tuzla through the forests and mountains. The journey to Tuzla — a distance of 55 kilometres as the crow flies - entailed crossing extremely hilly terrain in the height of the summer heat.

Conditions

In general, each individual had started out with enough rations for only two days, everyone having just a little bread and sugar; shortages began to become apparent on the third day, whereupon the people had to turn to leaves, grass and snails for sustenance. Alongside undernourishment, the high summer temperatures caused dehydration; finding sources of drinking water or moisture became a major problem. The enormous difficulties caused by hunger and thirst were further compounded by lack of sleep and the sheer effort required. Soon after setting out, the men faced a choice between acceding to the VRS call to give themselves up or carrying on. The latter option would inevitably entail ongoing armed conflict with the VRS which would in turn bring much death and destruction. As a result of genocidal actions by Serb army, some people began to show symptoms of severe mental distress. Some of them turned on others, killing them outright; others committed suicide.

There was little cohesion or sense of common purpose in the column. This would have been difficult to achieve given that the string of people stretched back several kilometres. Depending on the situation at any given moment, the column could be anything between five and ten kilometres in length. This made it a particularly easy target for the VRS and contributed much to a gnawing sense of uncertainty regarding the fate of friends and family elsewhere in the column. Many people in the column had been exhausted even before setting out on the march, following the siege of Srebrenica, the fighting with the VRS, the lack of food and the arduous conditions in general. The vast majority of the people from Srebrenica later reported as missing were among the 10,000 to 15,000 people who undertook this perilous journey.

Organization

An advance reconnaissance party went on ahead of the column proper; this group comprised four guides who set out one hour before the column and maintained a lead of approximately five kilometres throughout the journey. Next, there was a group comprising 50 to 100 of the best soldiers from each brigade, each carrying the best available equipment. Next in line was the 281st Brigade; all these men were originally from Cerska, Konjević Polje and Kamenica, they knew the terrain. The rest of the column followed at some distance. In order, there was the reconnaissance unit of the 28th Division, the 280th Brigade from Gornji Potočari, the division command, the wounded, the medical staff, the 281st Brigade, the 283rd Brigade, the Glogova independent battalion, and at the rear was the weakest and least heavily armed Brigade, the 282nd. Each brigade took a group of refugees under its wing. Notably, the best troops were all at the front of the column; here too were the elite of the enclave, including the mother and sister of Naser Orić and other prominent persons. Many civilians joined the military units spontaneously and acquaintances went along with the troops, and there were many shifts and changes of allegiance as the journey got under way.

Early events

The men's breakout from the enclave and their attempts to reach Tuzla came as a surprise to the VRS and caused considerable confusion, as the VRS had expected the men to go to Potočari. Serb general and indicted war-criminal Milan Gvero in a briefing described the column as "hardened and violent criminals who will stop at nothing to prevent being taken prisoner and to enable their escape into Bosnian territory." The Drina Corps and the various brigades were ordered to devote all available manpower to the task of finding, stopping, disarming and taking prisoner the men of the column.

At around midnight on 11 July 1995, the main column started moving along the axis between Konjević Polje and Bratunac. On 12 July 1995, Serb forces launched an artillery fire on the column that was crossing an asphalt road between the area of Konjević Polje and Nova Kasaba on route to Tuzla. Only about one third of the men successfully made it across the asphalt road and the column was split in two parts. Heavy shooting and shelling continued against the remainder of the column throughout the day and during the night. Men from the rear of the column who survived this ordeal described it as a "man hunt". Witnesses have since stated that the shooting began as one group of refugees entered a minefield.

Ambush at Kamenica Hill

Around 8 p.m., when most of the marchers had finally reached the hilly area around Kamenica and the front of the column had already begun to move on, those still at Kamenica Hill were ambushed by Serb forces, who started shelling and firing from all directions. As many of the marchers had been shelled en route to Kamenica Hill and as a result were very nervous, the ambush caused great panic and chaos. Those who were armed returned fire, apparently at random. All scattered.

Survivors recalled that a group of at least a thousand Bosniaks were engaged at close range by small arms. Hundreds appear to have been killed as they fled the clearing, and the skeletalized remains of some of those killed in this ambush remained clearly visible to ICTY investigators and United Nations staff members passing through in 1996. Survivors recalled how many wounded were left behind, some of whom shot themselves or detonated grenades in order to escape capture. Some of the wounded were carried on with the survivors, later surrendering. As the foremost group of the column continued on its way, the rear lost contact and panic broke out once more.

Cut off

Many people remained in the Kamenica Hill area for a number of days, unable to move on, the column having been cut in two where it crossed an asphalt road, with the remaining part’s escape route blocked by Serb forces. Thousands of Bosniaks were captured by or surrendered to Serb forces. In many instances, assurances of safety were provided to the refugees by Serb military personnel wearing stolen UN uniforms and by Bosniaks who had been captured and ordered to summon their friends and family members from the woods.

There are also reports that Serb forces used megaphones to call on the marchers to surrender, telling them that they would be exchanged for Serb soldiers held captive by Bosniak forces. Furthermore, there were rumours that VRS personnel in civilian dress had infiltrated the column at Kamenica. Human Rights Watch reported that the use of mind-altering chemical weapons like BZ "cannot be ruled out" (HRW, 1998). On the other hand, the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (NIOD) concluded that "here are no indications that the Serbs had combat gasses" (NIOD, 2002, App. III.3).

Sandići massacre

Close to Sandići, on the main road from Bratunac to Konjević Polje, one witness recalls seeing the scene with which the rest of the world was later to become familiar from Zoran Petrović's video footage: the Serbs were forcing a Bosniak man to call others down from the mountains. Some 200 to 300 men followed his instructions and descended to meet the waiting VRS. The brother of the witness was among those who gave themselves up expecting that some exchange of prisoners would take place. The witness himself was more cautious and hid behind a tree to see what would happen next. He watched as the two to three hundred men below were lined up in seven ranks, each some forty metres in length, with their hands behind their heads; then, they were mown down by machine gun fire. His own brother was among the victims, shot while he looked on.

During the search, the Bratunac Brigade discovered four children aged between 8 and 14 among the prisoners; they were taken to the barracks in Bratunac. When one of them had described seeing a large number of ABiH soldiers committing suicide and shooting at each other, Brigade Commander Blagojević suggested that the Drina Corps' press unit should record this testimony on video. It is possible that children's testimonies were forced for the purpose of spreading propaganda in the Serbian media. The fate of the boys remains uncertain.

The VRS also sent one of the civilians who wished to surrender back towards the column: one of his eyes had been gouged out, his ears had been cut off and a cross carved into his forehead. A small number of women and children, and a few elderly people who had been part of the column and who fell into Serb hands were allowed to join the buses which evacuated the women and children out of Potočari. Among them was Alma Delimustafić, a woman soldier of the 28th Brigade; at this time, Delimustafić was in civilian clothes and was released.

The central section of the column managed to escape the shooting and reached Kamenica at about 11.00 hours and waited there for the wounded. Captain Ejub Golić and the Independent Battalion turned back towards Hajdučko Groblje to help the casualties. A number of survivors from the rear, who managed to escape crossed the asphalt roads to the north or the west of the area, had joined those in the central section of the column.

The long trek to safety

The front of the column had already left Kamenica Hill by the time the ambush occurred. On July 12, its leaders sent out reconnaissance groups to scout out the route toward Burnice and then began to move. Heading for Mount Udrc, the marchers crossed the main asphalt road and subsequently forded the river Jadar. They reached the base of the mountain early on the morning of Thursday, July 13. Only an estimated about 5,000 people of the original group that had left Srebrenica arrived in Udrc. Here, the column regrouped. At first, it was decided to send 300 ABiH soldiers back in an attempt to break through the blockades. When reports came in that the central section of the column had nevertheless succeeded in crossing the road at Konjevic Polje, this plan was abandoned. Approximately 1,000 additional men managed to reach Udrc that night.

Snagovo fighting

From Udrc the marchers moved toward the River Drinjaka and on to Mount Velja Glava, continuing as darkness fell and through the night. Finding a Serb presence at Mount Velja Glava, where they arrived on Friday, July 14, the column was forced to skirt the mountain and wait on its slopes before it was able to move on toward Liplje and Marcici. Arriving at Marcici in the evening of July 14, the marchers were again ambushed near Snagovo by Serb forces equipped with anti-aircraft guns, artillery, and tanks. According to Lieutenant Džemail Bećirović, the column managed to break through the ambush and, in so doing, capture a VRS officer, Major Zoran Janković—providing the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a significant bargaining counter. This prompted an attempt at negotiating a cessation in the fighting, but negotiations with local Serb forces failed. Nevertheless, the act of repulsing the ambush had a positive effect on morale of the marchers, who also captured an amount of weapons and supplies.

Establishing contact

The evening of 15 July saw the first radio contact between the 2nd Corps and the 28th Division, established using a Motorola walkie-talkie captured from the VRS. After initial distrust on the part of the 28th Division, the brothers Šabić were able to identify each other as they stood on either side of the VRS lines. Early on the morning, the column crossed the asphalt road linking Zvornik with Caparde and headed in the direction of Planinci, leaving a unit of some 100 to 200 armed marchers behind to wait for stragglers. It reached Krizevici later that day, and remained there while an attempt was made to negotiate with local Serb forces for safe passage through the Serb lines into Bosnian government controlled territory. The members of the column were advised to stay where they were, and to allow the Serb forces time to arrange for safe passage. It soon became apparent, though, that the small Serb force deployed in the area was only trying to gain time to organize a further attack on the marchers. In the area of Marcici-Crni the RS armed forces deployed 500 soldiers and policemen in order to stop the split part of column (about 2,500 people), which was moving from Glodi towards Marcici.

At this point, the column’s leaders decided to form several small groups of between 100 and 200 persons and send these to reconnoiter the way ahead. Early in the afternoon, the 2nd Corps and the 28th Division of the ABiH met each other in the village of Potocani. The presidium of Srebrenica were the first to reach Bosnian terrain.

The breakthrough at Baljkovica

The hillside at Baljkovica formed the last VRS line separating the column from Bosnian-held territory. The VRS cordon actually consisted of two lines, the first of which presented a front on the Tuzla side against the 2nd Corps and the other a front against the approaching 28th Division. At approximately 05.00 hours on 16 July, the 2nd Corps made its first attempt to break through the VRS cordon from the Bosnian side. The objective was to force a breakthrough close to the hamlets of Parlog and Resnik. They were joined by Naser Orić and a number of his men.

On the evening of July 15, a heavy hailstorm caused the Serb forces to take cover. The column’s advance group took advantage of this to attack the Serb rear lines at Baljkovica. During the fighting, the main body of what remained of the column began to move from Krizevici. It reached the area of fighting at about 3 a.m. on Sunday, July 16, just as the forward groups managed to breach the line of the Zvornik Brigade's 4th Infantry Battalion. Unable to move several captured heavy arms including two Praga self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, they used them to fire into the Serb front line. Thus the column finally succeeded in breaking through to Bosnian government controlled territory and linked up with BiH units which had assaulted the 4th Battalion's front in order to meet the column at between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. on July 16.

Arrival at Tuzla

Only a few journalists were present to witness the arrival of the column in Bosnian-held territory after its eventful march across country, as most attention was being devoted to the reception of the women and children at the airbase in Tuzla. The few items that appeared in the press and on television described the arrival of 'an army of ghosts': men clad in rags, totally exhausted and emaciated by hunger. Some had no more than underwear, some were walking on bleeding feet wrapped in rags or plastic, and some were being carried on makeshift stretchers. There were men walking hand in hand with children; many were still visibly frightened. Some were delirious and hallucinating as a result of the immense stress and privations they had endured. One soldier began to fire on his own unit as they arrived in Baljkovica; he had to be killed to prevent further bloodshed. The medical station set up by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Međeđa handed out large quantities of tranquillizers.

The men who had managed to reach safety spoke of little else besides the atrocities they had seen, the fighting they had endured and the fact that many of their comrades had been killed. As one survivor said, anyone who had not been on the march could not possibly begin to imagine what it had been like. The survivors felt a certain bitterness towards the UN because it had not been able to protect the "Safe Area." That bitterness and resentment was also directed towards the 2nd Corps of the ABiH.

The column's arrival on territory contolled by ARBiH was marked by a number of incidents. In one, a member of the 28th Division opened fire at the Corps Commander, Sead Delić, who had resisted all calls from his officers for a military push to link up with fleeing soldiers and civilians; a Military Police bodyguard was killed, while another returned fire and killed the sniper. The tensions were so great following the crossing of the line of engagement that staff officers of 2nd Corps removed their insignia so that they could not be recognized as staff officers at all. According to the Deputy Corps Commander, the division had "turned against the 2nd Corps." In fact, the lack of confidence in the 2nd Corps was nothing new, as the 28th Division had felt abandoned already in Srebrenica.

On August 4 1995, a parade was held in Banovici, involving the 3,651 remaining soldiers of the 28th Division (of the original 6,500). The division was then disbanded.

Closure of the corridor

Only some 3,000 to 4,000 of the marchers who had left Srebrenica four days earlier arrived safely in Tuzla on July 16. Approximately one-third of the column, mostly composed of military personnel, crossed the Bratunac-Milići road near Nova Kasaba and reached safety in Tuzla. The remaining Bosniaks were trapped behind the Serb lines.

As the march progressed, many people fell behind, lost the way or decided to turn back into more familiar territory in the Srebrenica region and to attempt to reach Žepa from there. Others tried to push onwards in the wake of the vanguard of the column, following the signs that people had passed here, which included corpses—as the fighting between the VRS and ABiH, ambushes, fighting among factions within the column, suicide, exhaustion and the rigours of the journey would have claimed an unknown number of lives and the bodies of these people remained unburied in the woods. The groups who managed to complete the journey to Tuzla took widely varying times to do so; in a few extreme cases, people reached Bosnian territory only after several months.

Once the armed portion of the column had passed through, Serb forces closed the corridor and recommenced hunting down parts of the column which were still in areas under their control. On 16 July 1995, there were around 2,000 refugees hiding in the woods in the area of Pobudje, with many more scattered elsewhere.

A plan to execute the men of Srebrenica

Although Bosnian Serb forces have long been blamed for the massacre, it was not until June 2004 — following the Srebrenica commission's preliminary report — that Serb officials acknowledged that their security forces planned and carried out the slaughter. A Serb commission's final report on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre acknowledged that the mass murder of the men and boys was planned. The commission found that more than 7,800 were killed after it compiled thirty-four lists of victims.

The question of why the executions took place at all is not easy to answer. During the Radislav Krstić's trial before the ICTY, the prosecution's military advisor, Richard Butler, pointed out in taking this course of action, the Bosnian Serb Army deprived themselves of an extremely valuable bargaining counter. Butler suggested that they would have had far more to gain had they taken the men in Potočari as prisoners of war, under the supervision of the International Red Cross (IRC) and the UN troops still in the area. It might then have been possible to enter into some sort of exchange deal or they might have been able to force political concessions. Based on this reasoning, the ensuing mass murder defied rational explanation.

Although a number of women and children were murdered, together with a relatively large number of older men, the main focus of the VRS was on able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60. The buses which transported the women and children were systematically searched for men. Although very few, some exceptions were made; they included the casualties in Bratunac hospital who had previously been treated in the Dutchbat compound at Potočari. Thus, a concerted effort was made to capture and kill almost all Bosniak men of military age. All of them were targeted regardless of whether they chose to flee to Potočari or to join the Bosniak column.

The mass executions

Following the detentions of prisoners on July 13th, the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) conducted a number of mass executions between 13 July and 22 July. The vast amount of planning and high-level coordination invested in killing thousands of men in a few days is apparent from the scale and the methodical nature in which the executions were carried out. These events generally involved the pattern of isolating men and boys for transport to warehouses, where they were subsequently transported to fields for execution. As of 2005, more than 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from the Srebrenica region. The number of people missing or killed as compiled by the Federal Commission of Missing Persons includes 8,373 names so far.

Preparations for the executions

The VRS took the largest number of prisoners on 13 July, along the Bratunac-Konjevic Polje road. It remains impossible to cite a precise figure, but witness statements describe the assembly points such as the field at Sandići, the agricultural warehouses in Kravica, the school in Konjevic Polje, the football field in Nova Kasaba, the village of Lolici and the village school of Luke. Several thousand people were herded together in the field near Sandići and on the Nova Kasaba football pitch, where they were searched and put into smaller groups. In a video tape made by journalist Zoran Petrović, a VRS soldier states that at least 3,000 to 4,000 men had given themselves up on the road. According to intercepted radio communications, by the late afternoon of 13 July, the total had risen to some 6,000. The following day, Major Franken of Dutchbat was given the same figure by Colonel Radislav Jankovic of the VRS. Many of the prisoners had been seen in the locations described by passing convoys taking the women and children to Kladanj by bus, while various aerial photographs have since provided evidence to confirm this version of events.

One hour after the evacuation of the women from Potočari was completed, the Drina Corps staff diverted available buses to the areas in which the men were being held. Colonel Krsmanovic, who on 12 July had arranged the buses for the evacuation, ordered the 700 men in Sandići to be collected, and the soldiers guarding them made them throw their possessions on a large heap and hand over anything of value. During the afternoon, the group in Sandići was visited by Mladić who told them that they would come to no harm, that they would be treated as prisoners of war, that they would be exchanged for other prisoners, and that their families had been safely escorted to Tuzla. Some of these men were placed on buses to Bratunac and other locations, while some were marched on foot to the warehouses in Kravica. The men gathered on the football ground at Nova Kasaba were forced to hand over their personal belongings. They too received a personal visit from Mladić during the afternoon of 13 July. On this occasion, he announced that the Bosnian authorities in Tuzla did not want the men and that they were therefore to be taken to other locations. The men in Nova Kasaba were loaded onto buses and trucks and were taken to Bratunac or the other locations.

Numbering approximately 1,000, the men who had been separated from the women, children and elderly in Potočari , were transported to Bratunac and subsequently joined by men captured from the column. Almost to a man, the thousands of Bosniak prisoners captured, following the take-over of Srebrenica, were executed. Some were killed individually or in small groups by the soldiers who captured them and some were killed in the places where they were temporarily detained. Most, however, were slaughtered in carefully orchestrated mass executions, commencing on 13 July 1995, in the region just north of Srebrenica.

Mass execution pattern

The mass executions followed a well-established pattern. The men were first taken to empty schools or warehouses. After being detained there for some hours, they were loaded onto buses or trucks and taken to another site for execution. Usually, the execution fields were in isolated locations. The prisoners were unarmed and, in many cases, steps had been taken to minimize resistance, such as blindfolding them, binding their wrists behind their backs with ligatures. or removing their shoes. Once at the killing fields, the men were taken off the trucks in small groups, lined up, and shot. Those who survived the initial round of gunfire were individually shot with an extra round, though sometimes only after they had been left to suffer for a time.

Chronology of events

The executions began on July 13th, when seventeen men were transported by bus to the banks of the Jadar river and shot. By the afternoon of the 13th, large scale executions had begun near the River Cerska (150 men), Tisca (22 men), and near the Agricultural Cooperative in Kravica (1000-1500 men.)

This pattern of executions, now on a wide scale, continued on July 14th-17th. Executions were noted to occur in Grbavci and Orahovac (1000-2500 men), Petkovići (1500-2000 men), Branjevo (1000-2000 men), and Kozluk (around 340 men.)

Though the executions had begun to trail down by the 18th, a number of events occured between July 18th - 22nd. Most notably, a series of executions occured along the Brutanac-Konjevic Polje road (75-100 men), the Nezuk-Baljkovica frontline (several hundred men), and the Meces area (around 350 men.)

The Reburials

From approximately August 1st 1995 to November 1st 1995, there was an organized effort to remove the bodies from primary mass gravesites and transport them to secondary and tertiary gravesites. In the ICTY court case "Prosecutor v. Blagojevic and Jokic", the trial chamber found that this reburial effort was an attempt to conceal evidence of the mass murders.The trial chamber found that the cover up operation was ordered by the VRS Main Staff and subsequently carried out by members of the Bratunac and Zvornik Brigades. The cover up operation has had a direct impact on the recovery and identification of the remains. The removal and reburial of the bodies have caused them to become dismembered and co-mingled, making it difficult for forensic investigators to positively identify the remains. For example, in one specific case, the remains of one person were found in two different locations, 30 km apart. In addition to the ligatures and blindfolds found at the mass graves, the effort to hide the bodies has been seen as evidence of the organized nature of the massacres and the non-combatant status of the victims, since had the victims died in normal combat operations, there would be no need to hide their remains.

Forensic evidence

The progress of finding bodies of victims in the Srebrenica region, often in mass graves, exhuming them and finally identifying them was relatively slow. By 2002, 5,000 bodies were exhumed but only 200 were identified. However, since then the exhumed body count has risen to 6,000 and the identification has been completed for over 2,000, as of 2005.

After the massacre

On 22 July, the commanding officer of the Zvornik Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Vinko Pandurevic, requested the Drina Corps to set up a committee to oversee the exchange of prisoners. He also asked for instructions with regard to the prisoners of war his unit had already taken: where they should be handed over and to whom. A number of wounded captives (approximately 50) were taken to the Bratunac hospital. Another group of prisoners was taken the Batkovici camp (near Bijeljina), and these were mostly exchanged later. On 25 July, the Zvornik Brigade took a further 25 ABiH soldiers captive; they were taken directly to the camp at Batkovici. The same fate befell another 34 ABiH men the following day. The Zvornik Brigade reports until 31 July continue to describe the search for refugees and the capture of small groups of Bosniaks.

A number of Bosniaks managed to get across to Serbia in Ljubovija and Bajina Basta. From where 38 of them were returned to RS. Some of them were taken to the Batkovici camp, where they were exchanged. The fate of the majority of those returned has not been established to date.

By 17 July 1995, 201 Bosniak soldiers came to Žepa; they are very exhausted and many of them with light wounds. Another 500 people arrived to Žepa from Srebrenica by 28 July, 1995.

After 19 July 1995, small Bosniak groups were hiding in the woods for days and months, trying to reach Tuzla. Numerous refugees found themselves cut off for some time in the area around Mount Udrc. They did not know what to do next or where to go; they managed to stay alive by eating snails, leaves and mushrooms. The atmosphere was one of tension, hunger and desperation. On or about 23 July, the Bosnian Serbs swept through this area too, and according to one survivor they killed many people as they did so.

Meanwhile, the VRS had commenced the process of clearing the bodies from around Srebrenica, Žepa, Kamenica and Snagovo. Work parties and municipal services were deployed to help. In Srebrenica, the refuse that had littered the streets since the departure of the people was collected and burnt, the town disinfected and deloused.

The wanderers

Many people in the part of the column which had not succeeded in passing Kamenica did not wish to give themselves up and decided to turn back towards Žepa. Others remained where they were, splitting up into smaller groups of no more than ten. Some wandered around for months, either alone or groups of two, four or six men. Few knew the way and attempted to navigate by following overhead power cables. They often found corpses, by now in a state of decomposition. Sometimes one group met another group from Srebrenica who knew of a deserted Bosniak village in the region; they would then proceed there together.

To feed themselves, the men took potatoes and other vegetables from the fields around the Serbian villages at night. The local Bosnian Serb population therefore began to mount patrols around their villages. The Bosniaks would generally sleep by day and wait for the cover of darkness before moving on. This continued for a long time. For example, the people of Milici, a village on the route to Tuzla, discovered the disappearance of livestock in November 1995 and an armed group of some of them went in search of stragglers from the column.

Some of the Bosniak men decided to retrace their steps towards the Srebrenica region, since this was familiar territory and they knew where to find food. From here, they would once again set out towards Žepa or attempt to reach Tuzla. Some arrived in Tuzla after many months, having been wandering around the area between Srebrenica and Udrc with absolutely no sense of direction. A few hundred managed to reach Žepa just before the VRS occupied the enclave on 25 July. Once Žepa had succumbed to the Bosnian Serb pressure, they had to move on once more, either trying to reach Tuzla or crossing the River Drina into Serbia.

Survivors' stories

There are many stories recalling the experiences of those who lost contact with the column, their wanderings and the horrors they saw. These include the account of a 54-year-old engineer who lost touch with his group near to Kravica and who was attacked by a Bosnian Serb civilian wielding a metal pipe. The engineer was beaten unconscious and left for dead; when he came round, he went into hiding for a day before meeting a group of 6 other men from Srebrenica. Together, they lay low for another two days, living on mushrooms and the few rations they had remaining. During the next few days, this group grew to include approximately 50 men. They were surrounded by VRS troops who demanded that they should give themselves up; most did so immediately, but the engineer and seven others managed to remain hidden. This group split up, later met yet another VRS patrol and once again managed to escape capture. Hunger forced them to turn back to Srebrenica in the hope of finding something to eat in one of the abandoned villages. Eventually, the engineer reached Žepa where he managed to find a place on the last bus to transport the evacuees out of the town. General Mladić was there to bid a personal farewell to the passengers and assuring them that no harm would come to them on the way, while posing for a CNN camera team.

A particularly memorable story is that of three young men aged 17, 18 and 19. On several occasions they attempted to cross the main Konjevic Polje to Nova Kasaba road but were unsuccessful in doing so each time. They eventually managed to reach Žepa only after the enclave had fallen. They had set up camp in a couple of deserted Bosniak villages where they managed to hide out for several months without attracting attention. Sometimes the teenagers would escort groups of other refugees as far as the next obstacle before eventually returning to their base. Finally, on 26 April 1996, a full six months after the signing of the Dayton Accord, they crossed the Drina into Serbia.

Zvronik 7

Another group of seven men wandered about in occupied territory for the entire winter. On 10 May 1996, after nine months on the run, they were discovered in a quarry by American IFOR soldiers; the men immediately turned over to the Americans. They were searched and their weapons—two pistols and three hand grenades—were confiscated. The men said that they had been in hiding in the immediate vicinity of Srebrenica since the fall of the enclave; they did not look like soldiers and the Americans decided that this was a matter for the police. The operations officer of this American unit ordered that a VRS patrol should be escorted into the quarry whereupon the men would be handed over.

The prisoners said they were initially tortured after the transfer, but later were treated well. In April 1997 Bosnian Serb court convicted the group—known as the Zvornik 7—for illegal possession of firearms and three of them for the murder of four Serbian woodsmen. The trial was widely condemned by the international community as "a flagrant miscarriage of justice." When announcing the verdict the presenter of the Bosnian Serb TV described them as "the group of Muslim terrorists from Srebrenica who last year massacred Serb civilians."

This conviction was later quashed for 'procedural reasons' following pressure from the international community. In 1999 the three remaining defendants in the Zvornik 7 case had been swapped for three Serbs serving 15 years each in the Bosnian prison.

The reburials

From approximately August 1st 1995 to November 1st 1995, there was an organized effort to remove the bodies from primary mass gravesites and transport them to secondary and tertiary gravesites. In the ICTY court case "Prosecutor v. Blagojevic and Jokic", the trial chamber found that this reburial effort was an attempt to conceal evidence of the mass murders.The trial chamber found that the cover up operation was ordered by the VRS Main Staff and subsequently carried out by members of the Bratunac and Zvornik Brigades. The cover up operation has had a direct impact on the recovery and identification of the remains. The removal and reburial of the bodies have caused them to become dismembered and co-mingled, making it difficult for forensic investigators to positively identify the remains. For example, in one specific case, the remains of one person were found in two different locations, 30 km apart. In addition to the ligatures and blindfolds found at the mass graves, the effort to hide the bodies has been seen as evidence of the organized nature of the massacres and the non-combatant status of the victims, since had the victims died in normal combat operations, there would be no need to hide their remains.

Non-Serb participants in the killings

According to the report by Agence France Presse (AFP), a dozen Greek volunteers took part in the massacre of Srebrenica. These persons belonged to the Greek Volunteer Guard (ΕΕΦ), an integral part of the Drina Corps and were either members of the Golden Dawn, a Greek neo-Nazi group, or mercenaries. According to a book by Takis Michas, a Greek flag was raised in Srebrenica following the fall of the city while Radovan Karadžić had honored the volunteers. The pretense of involvement of Greek citizens in the massacre was to support their "Orthodox brothers" in battle.

The whole issue was forgotten for years until the Greek deputy Andreas Andrianopoulos broached the subject in 2005 and the Minister of Justice Anastasios Papaligouras committed an investigation, which is still underway.

Initial reactions to the massacre

Post-war developments

Dutch government report

The Srebrenica massacre led to a long-running discussions in the Netherlands. In 1996, the Dutch government asked the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (NIOD, translation: Dutch Institute for War Documentation) to conduct research into the events before, during and after the fall of Srebrenica. The resulting report was published in 2002. It concluded that the Dutchbat mission was not well considered and nigh impossible. The NIOD report is cited often, but it has not escaped criticism, leading the Institute for War and Peace Reporting to label the report controversial.

As a result the Dutch government accepted partial responsibility and the second cabinet of Wim Kok resigned.

Srebrenica genocide memorial and the terrorist plot

On September 30, 2003, former US President Bill Clinton officially opened Srebrenica Genocide Memorial. Total cost of the project was around $6 million, of which the United States government provided $1 million. We remember this terrible crime because we dare not forget, because we must pay tribute to the innocent lives, many of them children who were snuffed out in what must be called genocidal madness, Clinton said.

On July 6, 2005, Bosnian Serb police have found two powerful bombs at the memorial site, just days ahead of a ceremony to mark the massacre's 10th anniversary, when 580 identified victims were to be buried during the ceremony, and more than 50,000 people, including international politicians and diplomats, were expected to attend. The bombs would have caused widespread loss of life and injury had they exploded, and were probably aimed at plunging the region into further bloodshed.

Republika Srpska's report and official apology

In 2004, the international community's High Representative Paddy Ashdown had the Government of Republika Srpska form a committee to investigate the events. The committee released a report in October 2004 with 8,731 confirmed names of missing and dead persons from Srebrenica: 7,793 between 10 July and 19 July 1995 and further 938 people afterwards.

Findings of the committee remain generally disputed by the Serb nationalists, as they claim it was heavily pressured by the High Representative. Nevertheless, Dragan Čavić, the president of Republika Srpska, acknowledged in a televised address that Serb forces killed several thousand civilians in violation of the international law, and asserted that Srebrenica was a dark chapter in Serb history.

On November 10, 2004, the government of Republika Srpska issued an official apology. The statement came after government review of the Srebrenica committee's report. "The report makes it clear that enormous crimes were committed in the area of Srebrenica in July 1995. The Bosnian Serb Government shares the pain of the families of the Srebrenica victims, is truly sorry and apologizes for the tragedy." the Bosnian Serb government said.

Release of a massacre video

On June 2, 2005 video evidence emerged. It was introduced at the Milošević trial to testify the involvement of members of police units from Serbia in Srebrenica massacre.

The video footage starts about 2hr 35 min. into the proceedings. The footage shows an orthodox priest blessing several soldiers. Later these soldiers are shown with tied up captives, dressed in civilian clothing and visibly physically abused; they were later identified as four minors as young as 16 and two men in their early twenties. The footage then shows the execution of four of the civilians and shows them lying dead in the field. At this point the cameraman expresses disappointment that the camera's battery is almost out. The soldiers then ordered the two remaining captives to take the four dead bodies into a nearby barn, where they were also killed upon completing this task.

The video has caused a public outrage in Serbia. In the days following its showing, the Serbian government quickly arrested some of the former soldiers identified on the video. The event has most extensively been covered by the newspaper Danas and radio and television station B92. As was reported by Bosnian media, at least one mother of a filmed captive saw the execution of her son on television. She claimed she was already aware of her son's death, and said she had been told that his body was burned following the execution; his remains were among those buried in Potočari in 2003.

U.S. Congress resolution

On June 27, 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution (H. Res. 199 sponsored by Congressman Christopher Smith and Congressman Benjamin Cardin) commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The resolution was passed with overwhelming majority of 370—YES votes, 1—NO vote, and 62— ABSENT . The resolution states that:

...the policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing as implemented by Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 and 1995 with the direct support of Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević and its followers ultimately led to the displacement of more than 2,000,000 people, an estimated 200,000 killed, tens of thousands raped or otherwise tortured and abused, and the innocent civilians of Sarajevo and other urban centers repeatedly subjected to shelling and sniper attacks; meet the terms defining the crime of genocide in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in Paris on December 9, 1948, and entered into force on January 12, 1951.

Perpetuators named

On October 4, 2005, the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group said that 25,083 people were involved in the massacre including 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces that actively gave orders or directly took part in the massacre. They have identified 17,074 by name. It has also been reported that some 892 of those suspects still hold positions at or are employed by the government of Republika Srpska. The names are still held secret.

Discoveries of a further mass graves

By 2006, 42 mass graves have been uncovered around Srebrenica and the specialists believe there are 22 more mass graves. The victims identified number 2,070 while body parts in more than 7,000 bags still await identification. On August 11, 2006 over 1,000 body parts were exhumed from one of Srebrenica mass graves located in Kamenica.

Secret Serb report

On August 24 2006, The Oslobodjenje Daily started releasing secret list of over 800 Bosnian Serbs who participated in the Srebrenica massacre and are still believed to be in a position of power. The list was compiled by the Bosnian Serb government.

Srebrenica medal controversy

In December 2006 the Dutch government awarded the Dutch UN peacekeepers that served in Srebrenica an insignia because they believe they "deserved recognition for their behaviour in difficult circumstances", also noting the limited mandate and the ill-equipped nature of the mission. However, survivors and relatives of the victims condemned the move calling it a "humiliating decision" and responded with protest rallies in The Hague, Assen (where the ceremony took place) and Bosnia's capital Sarajevo.

Legal proceedings

On September 26 1997, Germany handed down first Genocide conviction to Serb soldier Nikola Jorgic for crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Ratko Mladić and other Serb officers in the Army of Republika Srpska have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes committed during the Srebrenica genocide.

Two Serb officers have been convicted for their involvement in the Srebrenica genocide, Radislav Krstić and Vidoje Blagojević. General Radislav Krstić, who led the assault on Srebrenica alongside Ratko Mladić, was convicted by the tribunal of aiding and abetting genocide and received a sentence of 35 years imprisonment. Colonel Vidoje Blagojević received a sentence of 18 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Krstić was the first European to be convicted on a charge of genocide and only the third person ever to have been convicted under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The ICTY's final ruling was that the Srebrenica massacre was indeed an act of genocide.

At the ICTY, the trial of seven senior Serb military and police officers facing charges ranging from genocide to murder and deportation for the crimes committed in Srebrenica began July 14, 2006. Their names are: Vujadin Popovic, Ljubisa Beara, Drago Nikolic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Vinko Pandurevic, Radivoje Miletic and Milan Gvero; Zdravko Tolimir is still at large. Eleven more individuals are on trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina for their involvement in the Srebrenica massacre, and they are: Milos Stupar, Milenko Trifunovic, Petar Mitrovic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Miladin Stevanovic, Brano Dzinic, Slobodan Jakovljevic, Branislav Medan, Dragisa Zivanovica, Velibor Maksimovic, and Milovan Matic.

In addition, the Srebrenica massacre is the core issue of the landmark court case Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice through which Bosnia and Herzegovina has accused Serbia and Montenegro of genocide and aggression. On February 26, 2007 the ICJ ruled that the Serbia could not be held responsible for the mass killing committed by Bosnian Serb forces, or complicity in the act. However, the court also ruled that Serbia failed to prevent the Srebrenica genocide and violated its international obligations by not handing over individuals accused of the crime. The Court also re-affirmed that the Srebrenica massacre was a genocide. The ICTY has already ruled, at least five times, that the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was an international conflict between Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.

Analyses

Role of Bosniak forces on the ground

The rapid fall of the Srebrenica enclave (and shortly thereafter of the Zepa enclave) and the minimal resistance has given rise to various theories. It has often been suggested that this course of events was the result of secret 'deals'. This, it is claimed, offers the only logical explanation. Why did the ABiH in the enclave put up so little resistance? Why was there no assistance from the ABiH outside the enclave? Why was UNPROFOR so reluctant to deploy air support? If some sort of secret agreement had been made, this would provide a ready answer to each of these questions. Moreover, it would largely serve to explain the presumed excessive belligerence or compliance on the part of the partners in such a deal.

On a 54th session of the United Nations General Assembly held in December 1999 the Assembly rendered its position regarding the role of Bosniak forces in Srebrenica in 1995. It stated that:

Concerning the accusation that the Bosniaks did not do enough to defend Srebrenica, military experts consulted in connection with this report were largely in agreement that the Bosniaks could not have defended Srebrenica for long in the face of a concerted attack supported by armour and artillery.

Many have accused the Bosniak forces of withdrawing from the enclave as the Serb forces advanced on the day of its fall. However, it must be remembered that on the eve of the final Serb assault the Dutchbat commander urged the Bosniaks to withdraw from defensive positions south of Srebrenica town – the direction from which the Serbs were advancing. He did so because he believed that NATO aircraft would soon be launching widespread air strikes against the advancing Serbs.

A third accusation leveled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few “raids” the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organized in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years which is was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Višnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of “moral equivalency” through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.

— 

Dispute regarding Serb casualties around Srebrenica

It is agreed by all sides that during military operations led by Naser Orić, Serbs suffered a number of casualties. However, the nature and number of these casualties has been a subject of dispute and controversy. The issue came to a head in 2005 in light of the 10-year anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. According to Human Rights Watch, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party then "launched an aggressive campaign to prove that Muslims had committed crimes against thousands of Serbs in the area" ; a campaign they observed "was intended to diminish the significance of the July 1995 crime." In a July 6, 2005 press briefing, a spokesperson for the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor noted that the number of Serbs in the region that Serbian authorities claimed to have been killed increased from 1,400 to 3,500; a figure the ICTY stated "just does not reflect the reality." To illustrate the inflation of casualty figures, this same press briefing listed several accounts from before the controversy of the time. They were:

• The Republika Srpska's Commission for War Crimes, which placed the number of Serb victims in the municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and Skelani at 995, of which 520 in Bratunac and 475 in Srebrenica.
• The book "The Chronicle of Our Graves" by Milivoje Ivanisevic (the president of the Belgrade Centre for Investigating Crimes Committed against the Serbs), in which he estimates the number of people killed to be around 1,200.
• A book published by the RS Ministry of Interior ("For the Honorable Cross and Golden Freedom") where the number of Serb victims for the Bratunac-Srebrenica-Skelani region is set at 641.

These claims have been disputed on two major counts. For one, the accuracy of the cited numbers is challenged. The ICTY noted, for example, that although Ivanisevic's book estimated around that 1,200 Serbs were killed, personal details were only available for 624 victims. Secondly, the validity of labeling some of the casualties in question as "victims" is contested: studies that have focused on the breakdown of Serb casualties between civilians and soldiers have found that the latter composed a significant majority. This would be in line with the nature of the conflict in question: Serb casualties died in raids by Bosniak forces on outlying villages that were used as military outposts for attacks on Srebrenica (many of which had a Bosniak majority prior to the war, but were ethnically cleansed in 1992). A good example of the situation lies in the village of Kravica. Attacked by Bosniak forces on Orthodox Christmas day, January 7, 1993, Serb sources (such as the above-mentioned book by Milivoje Ivanisevic) claimed that the villages 353 inhabitants were "virtually completely destroyed". In fact, the VRS' own internal records of the time indicated that only 46 Serbs had died in the Kravica attack: 35 soldiers and 11 civilians. Despite this, the event is still frequently cited in Serbia as the key example of heinous crimes committed by Bosniak forces around Srebrenica.

The latest figures regarding Serb casualties in the region come from the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center, a non-partisan institution consisting of a multiethnic staff. The RDC's extensive analysis of casualty data found that Serb casualties in the Bratunac municipality amounted to 119 civilians and 424 soldiers. The investigation further established that of 383 Serb victims buried in the Bratunac military cemetery, 139 (or more than one third of the total) had fought and died in a different region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite this, the buried at the military cemetery are presented as having been killed as the result of actions taken by ARBiH units from Srebrenica.

According to Serb sources, casualties and losses during the period prior to the creation of the safe area gave rise to Serb demands for revenge against the Bosniaks based in Srebrenica. The ARBiH raids are thus presented as a key motivating factor for the genocide that occurred in July, 1995. This view is echoed by various international sources, such as the 2002 report commissioned by the Dutch government on events leading to the fall of Srebrenica. However, these sources often cite misleading figures for the number of Serb casualties in the region. The previously mentioned Dutch report, for instance, claims that the raid on Kravica resulted in the total annihilation of its populace; a claim that, as was mentioned above, has been shown to be false. Many consider that such insinuations about the motivations for the Srebrenica massacre are merely revisionist attempts to justify the genocide that ensued. To quote the report to the UN Secretary-General on the Fall of Srebrenica:

Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it… The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.

In the proceedings against Naser Orić when the ICTY examined the attacks by Bosniak units under his control on various villages in the vicinity of Srebrenica it found that although there was no justification for the wanton destruction that took place in these villages, there was evidence in many cases of militarisation, military presence and provocative military action. In various villages referred to in the proceedings village guards received at least some military support. At the time of the attack on Ratkovići, Gornji Ratkovići and Dučići, a number of Bosnian Serb village guards were present. Although there was conflicting evidence the more convincing evidence suggested that at least some of those village guards underwent special military training and were relatively well-armed. The Trial Chamber did not exclude a military justification for the attacks on the villages. In Bjelovac and Sikirić village guards received weapons and ammunition from the Bratunac Brigade of the VRS, and there was a Serb and Bosnian Serb military presence in the area. Weapons and ammunition were stored in Bjelovac, and positioned in between houses in Ložnicka Rijeka and Kunjerac. The school building of Bjelovac was used as a kitchen to feed passing Bosnian Serb fighters.

With specific reference to the attack on the villages of Kravica, Šiljkovići and Ježestica on 7 and 8 January 1993 - the Orthodox Christmas Day attack - the Tribunal noted that throughout the summer of 1992 Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims had engaged in mutual fighting in the area of Kravica and Ježestica. The fighting intensified in December 1992 and at the beginning of January 1993, when Bosnian Muslims were attacked by Bosnian Serbs primarily from the direction of Kravica and Ježestica. In the early morning of 7 January Bosnian Muslims attacked Kravica, Ježestica and Šiljkovići. At the time of the attack a number of village guards were present. Convincing evidence suggested that the village guards were backed by the VRS and following the fighting in the summer of 1992 had received military support including weapons and training. A considerable amount of weapons and ammunition was kept in Kravica and Šiljkovići. There was evidence that as well as the village guards there was also a Serb and Bosnian Serb military presence in the area.

While not excusing the actions of the units under Orić's control the Tribunal referred to the wider context of conflict and military aggression in which those actions took place. "Alternative views" that seek to explain away the Srebrenica Massacre as a spontaneous act of revenge frequently refer to a series of attacks on Serb villages and implicitly on Serb civilians by units under Orić's command in a way that either ignores or underplays the militarisation of those villages and the provocative and retaliatory actions that were launched from them in the months and years before the final onslaught on Srebrenica.

"Alternative Views"

A range of alternative views of the Srebrenica massacre exist, from those who believe that the massacre did not take place at all to those who believe that far fewer than 8,000 were killed or that most of those killed were the result of combat, not executions.

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The Bosnian Serb side has, under the pressure of the authority of High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Paddy Ashdown, officially admitted the number of killed Bosniaks and expressed regrets for the massacre in 2004 (Comm. Inv. Ev. Srebrenica, 2004). Although the International Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia ruled that the Srebrenica massacre was an act of Genocide, the number of casualties is still disputed by some Serbs. The government of the Republika Srpska has officially condemned the atrocity.

Some in Serbia have had doubts about the number of people killed for some time. Among Western observers, the radicals on both sides of the political spectrum have disputed the original accounts of the massacre for different reasons. For example, the scale of the massacre has been questioned by some on the Marxist left, including the British magazine Living Marxism and American journalist Diana Johnstone.

Still, many Serb groups espouse denial of massacre, claiming that the intentional figure of nearly 8,000 deaths is grossly exaggerated and that Republika Srpska government had no extermination policy. Some others, who do not deny mass killings by the Republika Srpska, have engaged in pointing out "immoral equivalencies" (e.g. the killing and ethnic cleansing of Serbs by Croatian forces) and/or justifications for the executions (e.g. retaliation or punishment for sabotage, terrorism, or subversion). Others have claimed that the fact that only men were killed means that the massacre was not an act of genocide although the veracity of this assumption has been shown to be inaccurate. It should also be noted that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime as "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part").

Many Serbs distrusted the western explanation of the events due to the long delays in proving that there were mass graves in the area, and that people in them were indeed Bosniaks (it took almost a decade for a notable percentage of bodies to be identified). In their eyes, further doubt was cast on the mainstream story when the UN High Representative Paddy Ashdown relieved and replaced the examining commission of Republika Srpska which supported the republic's initial self-exoneration. This only exacerbated the concern that there was bias among the westerners resulting in focusing on the wartime acts of Serbs and neglecting those of Bosniaks and Croats.

Further reading

• Template:PDFlink, April 2004, provides an extensive account of the massacre.
• NIOD report— The Dutch government's investigation of the massacre, April 2002
• David Rohde. 1997. Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst massacre Since World War II. WestviewPress. ISBN 0-8133-3533-7.
• Van Gennep, 1999. Srebrenica: Het Verhaal van de Overlevenden . Van Gennep, Amsterdam. ISBN 90-5515-224-2. (translation of: Samrtno Srebrenicko Ijeto '95, Udruzenje gradana 'Zene Srebrenice', Tuzla, 1998).
• Postcards from the Grave—by Emir Suljagic. ISBN 0-86356-519-0.

See also

• Srebrenica
• Srebrenica Genocide Memorial
• Višegrad massacre
• Bosnian genocide
• Bosnian war
• Genocide
• Gendercide
• Postcards from the Grave
• The Enclave

External links

• Template:PDFlink
• Template:PDFlink, April 2004
• Initial indictment at the ICTY against Karadžić and Mladić for Srebrenica—ICTY
• Initial Indictment at the ICTY against Popovic et al. (7 accused)
• ICTY Case Information Sheet - ICTY against Naser Oric
• Case Study: The Srebrenica Massacre, July 1995 Gendercide Watch
• The Association Women of Srebrenica
• Updated list of 8,373 Bosniaks killed or missing from Srebrenica Federal Commission for Missing Persons
• Committee on Conscience Balkans Section—U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Bosnian Genocide
• Chemical Warfare in Bosnia? The Strange Experiences of the Srebrenica Survivors—Human Rights Watch
• Srebrenica's Inferno—Srebrenica in pictures from www.islam.co.ba
• The uncensored version of the Bosnian execution video—Warning: shocking content!
• Genocide and Aftermath: Rationalizing the Process of Truth and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina—Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York
• The Events in and around Srebrenica between 10th and 19 July 1995
• Myth about Serb Civilian Casualties Around Srebrenica—Sarajevo-based Research & Documentation Center
• BOSFAM—Non-Governmental group supporting displaced women in Bosnia
• A Toast to the Dead: Srebrenica Widows Sue U.N., Dutch Government—Der Spiegel, July 4, 2006.
• July 12, 1995 Through My Eyes, the Fall of Srebrenica—Sobaka Magazine
• Sense Tribunal—News and analysis of International Crimes Tribunal proceedings
• New Srebrenica mass grave found, BBC News, 11 November 2006
• Tarik Samarah: Srebrenica
• Documentary: SREBRENICA, AN ORCHESTRATED TRAGEDY
• Poem to the victims of Srebrenica - written in Serbian language by Serbian teenager Dragoljub Todorovic
• Women for Women International One of the ways to help Bosnian women
• Yale University - Bosnia Genocide Studies Program
• BAACBH.org - Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia-Herzegovina

Links espousing controversial views

• Report of Srebrenica Research Group, concludes that "the contention that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed has no basis in available evidence and is essentially a political construct" and includes articles questioning if the Srebenica massacre was actually a "hoax".
• Report of International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), says that the "alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims vastly inflated and unsupported by evidence"
• The real story behind Srebrenica by the former UNPROFOR commander, Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, The Globe and Mail, 14 July 2005.
• "The Forbidden Srebrenica report", report denying the Srebrenica massacre issued by the Republika Srpska Bureau for Cooperation with the ICTY in September 2002.
• Using War as an Excuse for More War: Srebrenica Revisited—article outlining the Bosnian government's role in the massacre and how it has used it for political benefit, by Diana Johnstone, Global Research, October 18, 2005
• The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre article argues that only some Bosniaks were executed, most died in battle, many of the bodies in mass graves are actually Serbs, by Edward S. Herman, 7 July 2005

References

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78. Template:PDFlink
79. ITN vs Living Marxism

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