Srebrenica Massacre (1995): Genocide in Bosnia

The Srebrenica massacre was the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, during the final months of the Bosnian War. It took place after the capture of Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia that the United Nations had declared a “safe area” under the protection of Dutch peacekeepers. International courts have ruled that the massacre was genocide, the first in Europe to be judged so since the Second World War.

Background: the enclave

Srebrenica lies in the valley of the Drina river close to the border with Serbia. Before the war its municipality had a Bosniak majority. In 1992, at the start of the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serb forces seized much of eastern Bosnia and drove out the non-Serb population. Tens of thousands of Bosniaks fled into Srebrenica, which held out as an isolated enclave.

Bosniak fighters in the enclave, led by Naser Orić, carried out raids on surrounding Serb villages in 1992 and 1993 in which Serb civilians were also killed. Serb leaders later pointed to these raids, but the courts found that they could not justify the killings of 1995.

By early 1993 Srebrenica was overcrowded, starving and under siege. On 16 April 1993 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 819 declaring it a safe area, “free from any armed attack or any other hostile act”. UN peacekeepers arrived, and the Bosniak defenders were supposed to hand over their heavy weapons. In practice the safe area was never properly defined, protected or supplied.

By 1995 the protection force was a battalion of about 600 Dutch soldiers, known as Dutchbat, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Thom Karremans. Bosnian Serb forces blocked supplies and fuel, and by the summer only around 400 Dutch troops were in the enclave, lightly armed and short of food and ammunition.

The fall of Srebrenica

On 6 July 1995 the Army of Republika Srpska began an offensive against the enclave. Bosnian Serb forces took Dutch observation posts and advanced on the town. Dutch requests for NATO air support were delayed, and when two NATO aircraft finally struck on 11 July they hit only a few targets. The Bosnian Serbs threatened to kill Dutch hostages and shell the town, and the air attacks stopped.

On the afternoon of 11 July General Ratko Mladić entered Srebrenica. In front of a Serb camera team he described the capture as revenge against the Turks, a reference to centuries-old Ottoman rule.

Around 20,000–25,000 Bosniak refugees, mostly women, children and elderly people, fled to the Dutch base at Potočari a few kilometres away. Only about 5,000 were allowed inside the compound; the rest gathered outside. Meanwhile a column of roughly 10,000–15,000 men, about a third of them armed, set off through forests and mountains in an attempt to reach Bosnian government territory near Tuzla, some 60 kilometres away.

The killings

On 12 and 13 July Bosnian Serb forces separated men and boys from the women and children at Potočari. The women, children and elderly were deported by bus to Bosnian government lines. The men, including teenage boys and old men, were held in buildings around Bratunac and elsewhere. Dutch soldiers witnessed the separations but did not stop them, and the Dutch also expelled from the compound several hundred men who had sheltered there.

Many men in the column were shelled, ambushed or captured along the route, and many surrendered after being promised safety. Over the following days, Bosnian Serb army and police units carried out systematic mass executions at a series of sites, including a warehouse at Kravica, a school and field at Orahovac, a dam near Petkovci, the Branjevo military farm and the Kozluk area. Most killings took place between 13 and 17 July, with further killings over the following days of men captured later.

Part of the column, after days of fighting and walking, broke through to government-held territory near Tuzla on 16 July. Thousands of others did not survive.

The killings were organised on a large scale. They required buses and trucks to move prisoners, buildings to hold them, execution squads, and heavy equipment to dig graves, all of which pointed to planning at a high level of the Bosnian Serb military. Video footage later shown at trial, filmed by members of a Serbian police unit known as the Scorpions, showed the execution of six young Bosniak prisoners and became one of the best-known pieces of evidence of the crime.

The cover-up

In September and October 1995, Bosnian Serb forces used heavy machinery to dig up many of the original mass graves and move the remains to dozens of secondary graves. This scattered and mixed the bodies, so that remains of a single person were sometimes found in several sites.

Aerial photographs released by the United States in August 1995 helped reveal the graves. After the war the International Commission on Missing Persons pioneered the use of large-scale DNA testing to identify victims. More than 6,900 people have been identified, and many families have buried only partial remains.

Key people

• Ratko Mladić, commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, personally directed the operation.
• Radovan Karadžić, president of Republika Srpska, ordered the offensive that created the conditions for the massacre.
• Radislav Krstić, a senior Bosnian Serb commander, was the first person convicted for his role in the genocide.
• Thom Karremans commanded the Dutch UN battalion in the enclave.

Trials and responsibility

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) tried many of those responsible. In 2001 it convicted Radislav Krstić of genocide; in 2004 the Appeals Chamber confirmed that genocide had taken place at Srebrenica and convicted him of aiding and abetting it, with a sentence of 35 years. In later cases, including Popović and others in 2010, several senior officers were convicted of genocide and other crimes.

Radovan Karadžić was convicted of genocide in 2016 and sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal in 2019. Ratko Mladić, who had been in hiding until his arrest in Serbia in 2011, was convicted in 2017 and his life sentence was confirmed in 2021. In 2007 the International Court of Justice ruled that Serbia had not itself committed genocide but had violated its obligation to prevent it and to punish those responsible.

Responsibility also extended to the international community. A 1999 report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged serious errors and said the tragedy would haunt the UN’s history. In the Netherlands a detailed report by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation led the government of Wim Kok to resign in April 2002. Dutch courts later ruled that the state was partly liable for the deaths of men expelled from the Dutch compound.

By the numbers

Legacy and memory

The Srebrenica–Potočari Memorial and Cemetery opened in 2003 opposite the former Dutch base. Each year on 11 July thousands gather there as newly identified victims are buried. The European Parliament designated 11 July as a day of remembrance in 2009, and in May 2024 the UN General Assembly established 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.

Denial of the genocide remains widespread in parts of the region, and some political leaders continue to dispute the courts’ findings. In 2021 the international High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina introduced a law making genocide denial a criminal offence. Together with the Rwandan genocide a year earlier, Srebrenica became a central example in debates about the international duty to protect civilians, and it hastened the end of the war: weeks later NATO launched air strikes that led to the Dayton Agreement, which also ended the Siege of Sarajevo.

Timeline

• 1993, 16 April: The UN Security Council declares Srebrenica a safe area.
• 1995, 6 July: Bosnian Serb forces launch their offensive against the enclave.
• 1995, 11 July: Srebrenica falls; refugees flee to the Dutch base at Potočari.
• 1995, 12–13 July: Men and boys are separated from women and children; deportations begin.
• 1995, 13–17 July: Mass executions take place at sites including Kravica, Orahovac and Branjevo.
• 1995, 16 July: Survivors of the column break through to government territory near Tuzla.
• 1995, September–October: Mass graves are dug up and remains moved to hide the crime.
• 2004, 19 April: The ICTY Appeals Chamber confirms that the massacre was genocide.
• 2007, 26 February: The International Court of Justice rules on Serbia’s responsibility.
• 2021, 8 June: Mladić’s conviction and life sentence are upheld on appeal.

Why it matters

Srebrenica was the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War and the first to be legally recognised as genocide there since the Holocaust. It exposed the failure of peacekeeping without the means or mandate to protect civilians, and the trials that followed helped shape international criminal law. For the families of the victims, the search for the missing and the fight against denial continue.