Our new geoblog, a partnership with Google Earth, documents and maps genocide and related crimes against humanity.
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This guest post was written by Enough Project staffer Ledio Cakaj. Read more posts about Sudan at Enough’s blog, Enough Said. “Tell them about our suffering here,” said the Bishop… More»
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Warning Signs
Past Group Violence
Civilian groups in the Balkans, the region that includes Bosnia, were targeted during World War II and in the 1990s.
During World War II several armed forces committed abuses. Croats collaborating with Nazi Germany killed several hundred thousand Serbs, Roma ("Gypsies"), and Jews. At the end of the war, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia unified to form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Yugoslav republics began declaring their independence in 1990. During the Croatian war of independence (1991), the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army supported Serb separatists in Croatia and committed atrocities against Croatian civilians.
Scapegoating
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic seized on nationalism, which gained momentum after the 1980 death of Yugoslavia's longtime leader, Josip Broz Tito, to engineer changes in the Yugoslav constitution that strengthened Serbia's position. He also transformed the military so that it became 90% Serbian and extended his control over the country's financial, mass-media, and security structures to support Serbian nationalists in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.
He and Serbian separatists in Croatia and Bosnia used their influence to convince Serbian civilians that their Croatian, Bosniak, and Albanian neighbors would threaten their rights.
Armed Conflict
When Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia was recognized by the U.S. and European Union on April 7, 1992, Bosnian Serb forces backed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army immediately launched offensives to control areas they coveted. Behind the front lines, Bosniak and Croatian civilians bore the brunt of Serbian assaults in what became known as "ethnic cleansing": torture, rape, murder, robbery, and forced displacement.
The Bosnian government army tried to defend its territory, at times in alliance with and other times in opposition to Croatian forces. While all sides committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, Bosnian Serb forces systematically perpetrated abuses throughout the areas they controlled.
Preparations
In the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serb army prepared to capture and "cleanse" the three towns in eastern Bosnia that remained under Bosnian government control: Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde. Planning for these offensives occurred even though the international community in 1993 had declared these enclaves "safe havens" to be disarmed and protected by UN peacekeeping forces.
