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Srebrenica Geocide
the July
1995 killing, during the
Bosnian War, of more than 8,
000 Bosniaks (
Bosnian Muslims), mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the
Army of Republika Srpska (
VRS) under the command of
General Ratko Mladić.
The mass murder was described by Secretary-General of UN as the worst crime on
European soil since the
WW2.
A paramilitary unit from
Serbia known as the
Scorpions, officially part of the
Serbian Interior Ministry until
1991, participated in the massacre and it is alleged that foreign volunteers including the
Greek Volunteer Guard also participated.
In
April 1993, the
United Nations declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica in the
Drina Valley of north-eastern
Bosnia a "safe area" under UN protection.
However, in July 1995, theUnited Nations
Protection Force (
UNPROFOR), represented on the ground by a 400-strong contingent of
Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, did not prevent the town's capture by VRS and subsequent massacre.
In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on case of Prosecutor v. Krstić, the Appeals
Chamber of the
International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia (
ICTY), located in the
Hague, ruled that the massacre of the enclave's male inhabitants constituted genocide, a crime under international law.
The forcible transfer of between 25,000 to 30,000
Bosniak women, children and elderly which accompanied the massacre was found to be confirming evidence of the genocidal intent of members of the VRS
Main Staff who orchestrated the massacre.
Theodor Meron, the presiding judge of the Appeals Chamber, stated:
By seeking to eliminate a part of Bosnian Muslims,
Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide.
They targeted for extinction the 40,000 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.
In
February 2007 the
International Court of Justice (
ICJ) concurred with the ICTY judgement, stating:
The Court concludes that the acts committed at Srebrenica falling within
Article II (a) and (b) of the
Convention were committed with the specific intent to destroy in part the group of the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina as such.
Accordingly that these were acts of genocide, committed by members of the VRS in and around Srebrenica from about 13 July 1995.
The vast majority of those killed were adult men & teenage boys but the victims included boys aged under 15, men over the age of 65, women, & reportedly even several babies.
The Preliminary
List of
People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica compiled by the
Bosnian Federal Commission of
Missing Persons contains 8,373 names, some
500 of them under 18,
And includes several dozen women &girls.;
As of July
2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through
DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves and 5,657 victims have been buried at the
Memorial Centre of Potočari.
In
2005, in a message to the tenth anniversary commemoration of the genocide, the
Secretary-General of the United Nations noted that, while blame lay first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre and those who assisted and harboured them, great nations had failed to respond adequately, the UN itself had made serious errors of judgement and the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever.
FRY was cleared of direct responsibility for or complicity in the massacre, but was found responsible for not doing enough to prevent the massacre and not prosecuting the responsible, in breach of the
Genocide Convention.
Netherlands is also considered responsible for not preventing the massacre, due to presence of its UN contingent, and government of Netherlands acknowledged this symbolically by resigning over the issue, though no international rulings or cases concerning the issue have been considered, except in the case of individual victims suing Netherlands
. In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v.
Serbia and Montenegro case the International Court of Justice presented its judgment on
26 February 2007.
It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide,
but ruled that
Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995
Srebrenica massacre, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladić.
Mladić had been accused by the ICTY and was suspected of hiding in Serbia until his arrest there on 26 May
2011.
- published: 08 Aug 2012
- views: 32426