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 Srebrenica massacre 20th anniversary infographic
Graphic shows timeline of Srebrenica massacre.
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WAR CRIMES

Srebrenica massacre 20th anniversary

By Jordi Bou

July 11, 2015 - July 13, 2015 - The 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre is marked across Europe. Around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the UN-designated “safe haven” by Bosnian Serb forces in just three days in July 1995 – the worst atrocity on European soil since the Holocaust.

GN Newsahead -- July 11, 2015: Srebrenica massacre victims mourned on 20th anniversary

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Several thousand people will gather at the Potocari cemetery to mourn the mass killings of some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim males by Bosnian Serb forces in the nearby town of Srebrenica 20 years ago, since recognised as genocide by two international courts.

Eight suspects were arrested in Serbia in Mar 2015. Some 160 others, including heads of state, have come before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague. In 2014 Dutch courts found the Dutch government liable for some of the killings.

Prosecutions have lagged because the perpetrators worked hard to disguise the evidence of their killings, including starvation and sexual violence. Mass graves are still are still being discovered. Many bodies have been found mutilated and with hands bound.

The remains of 6,066 people have been exhumed from mass graves and reburied at Potocari.

The slaughter was the culmination of a Serbian plan to annex part of eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina following the breakup of Yugoslavia. It began in 1992 with ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslim population and of others opposed to annexation. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica account, Radovan Karadžić, president of the self-declared autonomous Bosnian Serb Republic, directed his military forces in Mar 1995 to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.”

The mass killings began on July 6, 1995, with the advance of Bosnian Serb forces. They separated Muslim men from women and killed thousands of men en masse, or hunted them down in the forests. More than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area, with some seeking shelter at United Nations compounds.

The eight men arrested in Mar 2015 are suspected of having participated in the slaughter of over 1,000 Muslims at a warehouse on the outskirts of Srebrenica in 1995. The arrests manifest Serbia’s increasing effort to come to terms with its role in the mass killings. In 2011, it handed over former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic to the ICTY. Mladic, accused of masterminding the massacre, is currently being tried in The Hague. Karadžić is also on trial there. Both men could be convicted of genocide. Then-Serbian president Slobodan Milosovic, charged with crimes that included genocide, died in 2006 during his ICTY trial.

A court in the Netherlands ruled in 2014 that the country's government was partly liable for the deaths of 300 Bosnian Muslims whom Dutch peacekeepers failed to protect in Srebrenica in 1995. The court decision clears the government of liability in the deaths of the thousands of others who were killed in Srebrenica.

See Also GN Newsahead Factfile - | 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre |

Sources
PUBLISHED: 29/06/2015; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Getty Images
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