Understanding Srebrenica Genocide Study Tour + Homemade Lunch with Local Family Included

The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the ethnic cleansing of another 25,000–30,000 refugees, 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 during the Bosnian War. A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions, officially part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, participated in the massacre. It is alleged that foreign volunteers including the Greek Volunteer Guard also participated.

In April 1993 the United Nations had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica in the Drina Valley of north-eastern Bosnia a “safe area” under UN protection. However in July 1995 the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), represented on the ground by a 400-strong contingent of armed Dutch peacekeepers, failed to prevent the town’s capture by the VRS and the subsequent massacre by the Bosnian Serbs of more than 8,000 civilians and prisoners, mostly men and boys.

The Srebrenica massacre is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on the “Prosecutor v. Krstić” case, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in The Hague, ruled that the massacre of the enclave’s male inhabitants, accompanied by the forcible transfer of all of the women, children and elderly, constituted a crime of genocide. Theodor Meron, the presiding judge, stated:

By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the 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 that the atrocities committed at Srebrenica constituted a genocide, 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; and accordingly that these were acts of genocide, committed by members of the VRS in and around Srebrenica from about 13 July 1995.

The ICJ also ruled that Serbia “has violated the obligation to prevent genocide”, and that Serbia was to cooperate fully with the ICTY including the transfer of individuals accused of genocide to the ICTY. Ratko Mladić has been accused by the ICTY but still remains at large and is suspected of hiding in Serbia or in the entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina called the Republic of Srpska.

The majority of those killed were adult men and teenage boys but the victims included boys aged under 15, men over the age of 65 and even reportedly 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 and girls. As of March 2010, 6414 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves and 3,647 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 described Srebrenica as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War, and while noting that great nations had failed to respond and that blame lay first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre and those who assisted and harboured them, acknowledged that the UN itself had made serious errors of judgement and the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN’s history forever.

Serbia and Montenegro 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. The Preliminary List of People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,373 names. As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves; as of July 2013, 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potočari. Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić officially apologized for the massacre, although he stopped short of calling it genocide.

In 2013 and 2014, the Netherlands was found liable in its own supreme court and in the Hague district court of failing in its duty to prevent more than 300 of the deaths.

On 8 July 2015, Russia, at the request of the Republika Srpska and Serbia, vetoed a UN resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre as genocide. Serbia called the resolution “anti-Serb”, while European and U.S. governments affirmed that the crimes were genocide. On 9 July 2015, both the European Parliament (EP) and the U.S. Congress adopted resolutions reaffirming the description of the crime as genocide.

On 22 November 2017, Ratko Mladić was convicted of various crimes at the United Nations’ tribunal, including genocide for his role at Srebrenica. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and as well for Radovan Karadžić in 2019.

• Wikipedia on Srebrenica
• How to prove Genocide
• Srebrenica Genocide Blog
• International Commission on Missing Persons
• International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
• Sky above Srebrenica
• Gallery 11.07.1995
• RAM Plan
• http://srebrenica.org.uk/
• Peace March
• Women who refuse to die
• How Britain and the US decided to abandon Srebrenica to its fate
• Rewriting Yugoslav history: Serbian war criminals-turned authors
• A Nobel prize that dishonours the victims of genocide
• Nobel winner Peter Handke compared my questions about Genocide in Bosnia to a “Calligraphy of Shit”
• Making a Movie About a Genocide That Some Still Deny