Srebrenica

In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN "safe area" since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories. Follow-up investigations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by several commissions have dissipated most of these rumors and contributed to a better knowledge of the Srebrenica events and the part played by the main local and international actors. This volume represents the first systematic, comparative analysis of those investigations. It brings together analyses from both the external standpoint of academics and the inside perspective of various professionals who participated directly in the inquiries, including police officers, members of parliament, high-ranking civil servants, and other experts. Evaluating how institutions establish facts and ascribe responsibilities, this volume presents a historiographical and epistemological reflection on the very possibility of writing a history of the present time.

This book traces the reverberations of genocide, forced displacement, and a legacy of loss in Bosnia and abroad.

In the hills of eastern Bosnia sits the small town of Srebrenica--once known for silver mines and health spas, now infamous for the genocide that occurred there during the Bosnian War. In July 1995, when the town fell to Serbian forces, 12,000 Muslim men and boys fled through the woods, seeking safe territory. Hunted for six days, more than 8000 were captured, killed at execution sites and later buried in mass graves. With harrowing personal narratives by survivors, this book provides eyewitness accounts of the Bosnian genocide, revealing stories of individual trauma, loss and resilience.

In July 1995, the Army of the Serbian Republic killed some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica--the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. Surviving the Bosnian Genocide is based on the testimonies of 60 female survivors of the massacre who were interviewed by Dutch historian Selma Leydesdorff. The women, many of whom still live in refugee camps, talk about their lives before the Bosnian war, the events of the massacre, and the ways they have tried to cope with their fate. Though fragmented by trauma, the women tell of life and survival under extreme conditions, while recalling a time before the war when Muslims, Croats, and Serbs lived together peaceably. By giving them a voice, this book looks beyond the rapes, murders, and atrocities of that dark time to show the agency of these women during and after the war and their fight to uncover the truth of what happened at Srebrenica and why.

The massacre at Srebrenica of between 3000 and 5000 Muslim prisoners by Bosnian Serbs is one of the most horrifying tales to emerge from the bitter conflict in Bosnia. It changed the course of the war and led to the deployment of US ground troops in the area. It also became the first atrocity in modern times where the well-intentioned but ineffectual Western involvment contributed directly to the mass executions.

In the aftermath of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the discovery of unmarked mass graves revealed Europe's worst atrocity since World War II: the genocide in the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica. To Know Where He Lies provides a powerful account of the innovative genetic technology developed to identify the eight thousand Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys found in those graves and elsewhere, demonstrating how memory, imagination, and science come together to recover identities lost to genocide. Sarah E. Wagner explores technology's import across several areas of postwar Bosnian society—for families of the missing, the Srebrenica community, the Bosnian political leadership (including Serb and Muslim), and international aims of social repair—probing the meaning of absence itself.

Senahid Halilovic is one of the very few survivors of the Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide. From July 11-July 22, 1995, more than 8,372 Bosnians, mostly men and boys - were rounded up and killed. Amongst them were his father and all three of his brothers. He is one of the rare Bosnian men who managed to overcome the 'Road of Death' and survive the Srebrenica genocide by walking for one week, through mountain crags without any food or water. "After the genocide, I tried several times to count how many relatives I lost, but I never could. Their images begin to show up in front of my eyes as soon as I try to think about it; this causes me great distress, and I often find myself giving up. I remember my mother telling me once "Oh, my son, you have lost 70 nearby relatives." I usually saw them in my dreams every night. At night when I dreamt of them, and then woke up, I felt very sad. Once I awoke from this dream, I could not sleep again. As I lay awake, no matter what I did, I saw their images in front of me." "And I realized something else; that they are not dead, that they remain alive, because they were killed in the name of injustice. At that point I wished for them to be with me and talk to me, even within my dreams. After this epiphany, any time one of them (especially my brothers or father) talked to me, or even if I saw one of them in the dream I felt much better. After I saw them in my dream, I felt lucky, like I had done a good deed. But now, years later, this does not happen usually; I rarely see them in dream, and I miss them too much. Life is like that. Sometimes the same thing that tortures you at one time, you later miss and wish you could experience more often." Senahid currently has several wishes: to find out the complete truth and ensure that all the people of the world hear the truth about what really happened to Bosnia and to Srebrenica during the war against Bosnia in 1992-1995 and the genocide against Bosniaks 1995, that there may be peace, justice and harmony on planet Earth, and that Srebrenica is never repeated again to anyone.