Massacre of Srebrenica

The massacre of Srebrenica (or genocide of Srebrenica according to TPIY and the the International Court of Justice (CIJ), although this term is disputed) is a tragic episode of the war of independence of Bosnia which proceeded between the 11 and on July 16th 1995, close to the town of Srebrenica. The victims of it were a great number of men (adolescent and old men included/understood) Bosnian, killed by the army of the Serbes of Bosnia of the general Ratko Mladić. The figures, details and precise causes of this episode - as its qualification - today are still discussed (see below).

Chronology of the facts

Context

After the dissolution of the socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia and the consecutive war, the Serbes of Bosnia-Herzégovine took control of the major part of Eastern Bosnia, leading an ethnic campaign of Nettoyage against the Bosnian of the area, brought back by thousands of eyewitnesses and international agencies. The town of Srebrenica belonged to the handle of remaining Bosnian enclaves officially demilitarized in this sector.

Many Serb the outlying areas and the city joined the Serb army at the beginning of the conflict, helped by the Serb population of the area which provided them weapons and ammunition such as mortar shells, taking part even sometimes in the attacks to plunder and destroy the Bosnian houses.

The Bosnian forces of the ABiH, ordered by Naser Orić, preserved, in spite of official demilitarization, some of their weapons and several trenches behind the sure zone, perpetrating war crimes. Thus, the French general Morillon, who ordered the forces of UNO on the spot, shows: In the night of orthodoxe Christmas, harms crowned January 1993, Nasser Oric carried out raids on Serb villages… There were cut heads, abominable massacres made by the forces of Nasser Oric in all the neighbouring villages . Nasser Orić was condemned by the International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia (TPIY).

In addition, a report/ratio of UNO, written one year and half earlier by Kofi Annan, declared Izetbegovic had learned that an intervention of NATO in Bosnia-Herzégovine was possible. But it would take place only if the Serb ones were introduced of force in Srebrenica and massacred at least 5.000 people there. . The Morillon general estimated in addition that in fact the authorities of Izetbegovic were opposed so that one evacuates all those which required it, and they were numerous .

Sit of the city

In 1995, the Serb forces launched a massive offensive against the city, forcing the defenders to give their agreement to the supervised plan of demilitarization of UNO, making of Srebrenica a sure zone. About six hundred blue helmets Dutch of FORPRONU were deployed to protect the townsmen but were implied in Escarmouche S.

At the end of May 1995, 400 blue helmets are taken as an hostage by the bosno-Serb forces following an air raid of NATO against an ammunition dump.

The June 4th 1995, the French commander of the military forces of UNO in old Yugoslavia, the general Bernard Janvier, meets secretly the general Ratko Mladić to obtain the release of the hostages, of which more half were French. Mladić required January that there is no more air striking. Five days later the representative in the area of UNO, Takashi Akashi, declared that UNO would conform strictly to the principle of maintenance of peace .

The July 7th 1995, the Serb forces of Bosnia carried out by the general Ratko Mladić took by storm the city. The Dutch of FORPRONU in vain required an air help before being taken as hostages by the Serb forces. Orić had left Srebrenica, leaving the command with its lieutenants and incentive the media to show the Bosnian forces not to implement an adequate defense. The majority of the civilians left immediately for the town of Potoćari where the principal military base of UNO was. Other civilians travelled by buses for Bosnian territories.

Massacre runaways

The majority of the men - soldiers but also of the old men and teenagers -, formed a column to avoid the mines and to try to join the Bosnian city of Tuzla, located at fifty kilometers. This column - one estimates at approximately 12.500 the number of runaways - was quickly encircled by the Serb forces, which opened the fire using anti-aircraft guns and of heavy machine guns. This ambush made several hundreds of killed, as well as many casualties. Those which chose to go were taken along then carried out, while the Serb forces continued to continue the remainder of the group, making victims to the Bosnian territory. The survivors showed the Serb ones to have used chemical weapons or biological, apparently it acted of a stun gas made up of Benzilate, which disorientates the victims and gives them Hallucination S.

Assessment

Estimates of the number of victims

The advanced figure of the number of the people killed at the time of the catch of the city generally varies between 2000 and 10000, although some refuse to speak about massacre, pointing out the precedent of the mass graves of Timişoara, while others speak about Génocide. The least which one can say is that the assessment remains still obscure more than 10 years later.

It seems nevertheless to get clear that a variable number between 4000 and 6000 bodies were exhumed mass graves. However, the identification of these bodies is not easy (lack of register of civil statue, declarations voluntary always credible steps, ceaseless displacements of the populations of a country in war, displacements of body a posteriori, political pressures of all edges etc), which can explain the controversies which also exist on the identity of the victims.

The Srebrenica Research Group (group of research on Srebrenica) published a history of the various advanced estimates, concerning as well the number of victims as their identification.

Responsibilities

The Serb general Ratko Mladić as well as the political leader of Serb of Bosnia Radovan Karadžić were shown by the International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia of Génocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and habits of war. They are at present always in escape.

The August 2nd 2001, Radislav Krstić, a Serb general of Bosnia which had carried out the attack on Srebrenica to the side of Ratko Mladić, was condemned by TPIY to 46 years of prison for genocide and other crimes. The charge of Génocide was rejected in call, but the court however retained a load of genocide complicity towards Krstić, its sorrow being reduced 11 years.

In 2004, the president of the Serb Republic of Bosnia (autonomous region with strong Serb majority of Bosnia-Herzégovine) Dragan Čavić, recognized on television that the Serb forces killed several thousands of civilians by violating the International law, and declared that Srebrenica was a dark chapter in the history of the Serb ones. The November 10th 2004, the government of the Serb Republic of Bosnia presented its excuses for the massacre of Srebrenica and was committed translating into justice the culprits.

In May 2007, the ex-general Zdravko Tolimir, near to the general Ratko Mladić, was stopped close to the border between Serbia and the Republika Sprska. The TPI had accused Zdravko Tolimir in February 2005 of crimes against humanity and war crime for " the murder, expulsion and the cruels" treatments; clerk against the Muslim populations of Bosnia of the enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa.

In June 2007, a complaint was deposited by the law firm Van Diepen & Van der Kroef, in the name of the survivors and parents of the victims of Srebrenica, against the Netherlands and the United Nations for non-observance of contractual obligations, “failure to prevent a genocide” and “not-declaration of war crimes”. It is reproached the 450 Dutch blue helmets positioned near the enclave and supposed to protect it not to be not intervened vis-a-vis the Serb attackers (approximately a thousand), that although the population sought refuge near their base.

Controversies on the qualification of genocide

The massacre of Srebrenica is very often qualified worse massacre made in Europe since the end of the Second world war , at least in the French media.

The International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia qualified the massacre of Srebrenica of genocide. However voices protested against this qualification considered to be inadequate. It would support a certain vulgarizing of the concept of genocide, compared to the genocides of the Armenian , Juif S or Tutsis, which were marked by the planned will of éradiquer definitively of the populations, systematically, women and children included.

In the case of this massacre, if the will to exterminate this column of men fleeing the city is undeniable, the character of planned extermination would be badly established. The fact that the International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia is located in the country whose forces were implied in spite of them in this event, which had great repercussions with the Netherlands, would be perhaps also one of the keys of this qualification.

One does not fail either to notice that the two Courts for Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia had a long time the same prosecutor. This qualification was not can be not foreign either with the will expressed by the allies of the Habyarimana mode to qualify crimes against the humanity made with the Rwanda by FPR like genocide. It is known indeed that an arm wrestling took place between the authorities of Rwanda and those of the International penal court for Rwanda on this subject.

The February 26th 2007, the the International Court of Justice (CIJ), body of the United Nations, confirms that the massacre was a genocide and that the Serbia did not do anything to prevent it but that it of it is not responsible. Serbia did not make a genocide by the means of its bodies or people in Srebrenica, according to the stop of the CIJ, read by its president Rosalyn Higgins. It is thus not question of compensations, as Sarajevo claimed some.

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