IN MEMORY OF THE BOSNIAN GENOCIDE (1992-1995)

Starving Bosniak Civilians in Trnopolje Concentration Camp in 1992 (Bosnian Genocide).
Photo Credit: RON HAVIV, Blood & Honey

In Memory of the Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995)

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina — ‘Republika Srpska’ and ‘Herzeg-Bosnia’. Both para-states enjoyed substantial political and military backing (overall control) from Serbia and Croatia respectively. NATO was involved in air-strikes against the Serbs.

Serbs committed at least 90 per cent of all war crimes in the Bosnian war, according to extensively documented 1995 report from the Central Intelligence Agency. (note: this report came to light in March of 1995, four months before the Srebrenica genocide)

The International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague proved — at least five times — that the Bosnian war was NOT a ‘civil war’ but an international armed conflict involving Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and NATO.

Bosnian Genocide was the brutal Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing — in which 1 million Bosniaks were displaced, 500,000 permanently removed from their ancestral land, and 65,000 to 75,000 innocent Bosniak civilians and soldiers killed during the 1992-95 international conflict that took place on a territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnian Genocide was characterized by the policy of systematic rapes of Bosniak women and girls, horrific and prolonged siege and shelling of Bosniak cities, starvation and terrorization of Bosniak population in the besieged enclaves and targeted destruction of Bosniak culture and history.

It is clear who the perpetrators and who the victims were. To put things into perspective: During the war, not even one Serb city was under the siege by Bosniak forces; in fact, majority of Serb civilian casualties were killed by the Serbian army commanded by Gen. Ratko Mladic in the process of sniping and shelling multiethnic Bosnian cities like Sarajevo and Tuzla. Serb people and Serb culture were not deliberately targeted for ethnic cleansing, rape, siege, shelling, and destruction in Bosnia; it was the Serb project of “Greater Serbia”, modeled on a Nazi policy of ethnic purification, that inflicted tremendous suffering on the Bosniak people between 1992 and 1995.

Presently, there are four legal judgements in which genocide was proven to have happened in Bosnia, other than Srebrenica.

The four international judgments acknowleding that genocide, indeed did take place in Bosnia, other than Srebrenica, include: Prosecutor v Nikola Jorgic (Doboj region), Prosecutor v Novislav Djajic [Dzajic] (Foča region), Prosecutor v Djuradj Kuslic [Kusljic] (Kotor Varos) and Prosecutor v Maksim Sokolovic (Kalesija, Zvornik region). All three cases were tried in Germany — at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — to ease caseload of the ongoing trials at the Hague.

IN ADDITION, the United States court determined that Radovan Karadzic is liable for acts of genocide, rape and torture.

The entrance to the Manjaca concentration camp reads in cyrillic letters “CONCENTRATION CAMP – PROHIBITED ENTRY.” Thousands of civilians, mostly Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were tortured in Serb-run camps like this one. Prior to announced visit of the international media in August of 1992, Serb guards relocated hundreds of emaciated and badly beaten prisoners to other locations. Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

If you are interested, please read more at:
http://www.bosniangenocide.wordpress.com