--- title: "The Bosnian Genocide: Europe’s Only Genocide Since WWII" description: "Tragically, Europe is no stranger to genocide. From the Harrying of the North in the 11th century, in which up to 75% of the population of Northern England was either killed or displaced, to the Holocaust of the 20th century, in which up to 20 million minorities met their end at the hands of the wicked Nazi Empire.\n\nA small, ever so slight silver lining to this cloud most dark, however, is the fact that we are better than that nowadays — \"never again,\" and all that… or so we like to tell ourselves anyway, because actually, the spectre of genocide continues to rear its wicked head over European soil even in the modern day, as exemplified by the Bosnian Genocide, which ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.\n\nIt is a tragically unknown event in the modern zeitgeist, and today, we shall be doing what we can to right that wrong, by presenting to you a primer on how it played out, right from its early nascent beginnings to its brutal zenith.\n\nOh, and fair warning before we get going… this is a heavy one.\n\n## Background\n\nThe Bosnian Genocide occurred within the wider context of the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the many wars that broke out among the former members of the Federation, which included Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia.\n\nTensions had always existed within multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, but Josip Broz Tito, who ruled as President from 1953 to 1980, had managed to by and large keep a lid on these tensions, particularly during the autumn years of his rule.\n\nBut following his death, later leaders such as Lazar Koliševski, Petar Stambolić, and Raif Dizdarević completely failed to nurture any sense of 'Yugoslavian-ness' like Tito had before them, and thus, lacking any sense of collective identity, it wasn't long until the people of Yugoslavia were identifying primarily with their ethnic identities, something that naturally made a multi-ethnic federation such as Yugoslavia… 'volatile,' to say the least.\n\nAnd then, just to pour petrol onto a well stacked bonfire, ethno-nationalist leaders who exploited these divisions to consolidate power began to rise, with examples being Slobodan Milošević from Serbia, Franjo Tuđman from Croatia, and Radovan Karadžić from the Serbian minority within Bosnia — and remember him in particular… he'll become important later in the story.\n\nFigures such as these manipulated ethnic identities, rewrote historical narratives, and stoked fears of the \"other\" as they consolidated power, and as a result, when Yugoslavia finally collapsed, it wasn't exactly a clean breakup, and armed conflict commenced almost immediately, under the umbrella moniker of the 'Yugoslav Wars,' which would rage from 1991 to 2001.\n\nWithin that expansive umbrella were old fashioned wars of independence such as the Slovenian War of Independence and Croatian War of Independence, which raged for 10 days in 1991, and between 1991 and 1995 respectively. Nothing too complicated here, they wanted out, Yugoslavia wanted to keep them, and so war ensued, with both prior examples winning their independence after their respective conflicts.\n\nThere were also 'insurgencies' such as the 1999 to 2001 Preševo Valley Insurgency in what is now Serbia, and the 2001 Macedonian Insurgency. These were caused by the fears of various minority groups who were, for want of a better description, 'left behind' as Yugoslavia collapsed, and feared for their safety in ethnically orientated states that weren't their own.\n\nIn both of those examples the minority in question were Albanians — a minority which hadn't got a nation of its own during the breakup, and understandably, didn't see why it should have to up sticks and flee to Albania proper just for a basic guarantee of safety and prosperity.\n\nThis brings us to the Bosnian War, the war in which the foul events of the Bosnian Genocide occurred. It was one of the former such independence wars, and broke out following the 1992 Bosnian independence referendum, which returned a 99.71% result in the aye direction, and led to Bosnia and Herzegovina formally declaring independence on the 3rd of March 1992.\n\nBosnian Serbs however were furious about this turn of events, and so they in turn immediately declared independence from the newly independent nation, creating the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the leadership of Radovan Karadžić. They then immediately asked for aid in securing their independence from what was left of the Yugoslav Central Government, which was still dominated by Serbs, and only too happy to oblige.\n\nThe war's exact start date is still contested, but it is typically given as the 6th of April 1992, the day that Bosnia and Herzegovina's independence received international recognition, and as for the genocide, that is typically agreed upon as starting on the same day, with massacres organised from both the top down and bottom up beginning almost immediately.\n\n## The Genocide\n\nThe genocide itself was made up of a plethora of individual acts and instances of Serb-perpetrated, Bosnian-targeted ethnic violence, and as a result, if we wish to get our heads around it, we are better suited to 'jump' around the story somewhat, so that you can get a general impression of the wicked violence that overtook Bosnia and Herzegovina during the genocide, rather than worrying too much about a strict 'timeline' of the violence as we otherwise might.\n\nSo, with that said, let's begin with the Markale Massacres. They were two separate mortar attacks launched against the marketplace at the centre of Sarajevo's old town. The market had no strategic value, and no Bosnian military presence, and instead was full of nothing but innocent civilians simply trying to get on with some semblance of a normal life as their country burnt around them. Serbian Forces were fully aware of those facts and nonetheless targeted the market specifically — to them it was simply a handy opportunity to quickly kill a large number of Bosnians.\n\nThe first attack occurred on the 5th of February 1994, and consisted of a single 120mm mortar round being fired at the market. It landed dead on a heavily crowded fruit stand, and as a result, despite being only a single round, the toll it wrought was nothing short of horrific, killing 68 outright, and wounding a further 144 — all of whom were left with permanent life-altering wounds.\n\nThe second attack occurred on the 28th of August 1995, and saw five mortar rounds launched on the market. Mercifully, despite the greater intensity of the barrage, none of the rounds managed to strike a target as crowded as in the first attack, but they still killed 43 outright, and wounded a further 75.\n\nSerbian forces vehemently denied responsibility for both attacks, and even suggested that they were false flag attacks carried out by the Bosnian Government in order to drum up sympathy for their cause in order to increase the odds of NATO entering the war on their side. Needless to say, such claims have long since been debunked and proven to be complete nonsense.\n\nThere was also the Tuzla Massacre. The atrocious event occurred on the 25th of May 1995, and saw the Serbs set up a battery of 130mm artillery guns outside of the town of Tuzla and proceed to hammer it with relentless fire throughout the night. Their primary target was Kapija Square, a leisure quarter popular with the city's youth, and it once again had absolutely no strategic value or military presence — and of course, yet again, the Serbian forces were perfectly aware of this fact. 71 were killed, and 240 were injured in the attack, nearly all of whom were between the ages of 18 and 25.\n\nAt the time, Serbian forces claimed the attack was legitimate, as a convoy of nearby evacuating troops were ambushed by Bosnian troops in violation of an agreed withdrawal, and thus as far as they were concerned the town was a legitimate military target. This ambush did indeed happen, but their specific targeting of civilian areas in response was deemed to be a nonsense response by international observers — they were angry and wanted to vent by slaughtering civilians, and there was nothing more to it than that.\n\nIncidents such as those, tragically, represent the smaller end of the scale when it comes to attacks carried out against Bosnians. On the larger end, you have horrific incidents such as the Višegrad Massacres. They occurred during mid-1992 and saw the entire town of Višegrad emptied of Bosnians, either through murder or deportation, in what the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia called \"one of the most comprehensive and ruthless campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian conflict.\"\n\nIt began on the 6th of April, when Serbian forces occupied the town following several days of fighting in the local vicinity. To formalise their control over the area, the Serbian Municipality of Višegrad was then incorporated, which centred on the town, after which the Serbian Army proper withdrew, and control was handed to Serbian police and paramilitary forces.\n\nThe killing started immediately after the handover, with those aforementioned controlling forces taking their guns, spanning out, and shooting at anything Bosnian that moved. They began by roaming the streets, clearing them out as they roamed, and then moved on to a house-to-house search, where they spanned the entire length of the town, kicked open every door they found, and if Bosnians happened to be on the other side of it, they emptied their magazines and moved on.\n\nThe only pause in the shooting came when Serbian Forces found a young woman, because often, they weren't killed, and instead were dragged off for wicked reasons we're sure you really don't need us to go into details on — we stress the young part as well, there was no lower age limit on who would be dragged off.\n\nMany Bosnians did attempt to flee when it became apparent what was going on, but barely any escaped — those who dallied and tried to pack possessions were found and shot before they left their homes, and those who took unfortunate turns as they fled were shot before they could escape the town. The exact numbers of survivors is unclear, but we're talking a couple of hundred, max.\n\nWhen the massacres finally ended in August 1992, the town which used to be 63% Bosnian and 33% Serbian, was now 100% Serbian.\n\nEvents such as these give you a general 'feel' for how the Bosnian Genocide played out; brutal war was waged between the Bosnians and the Serbians, and while that played out massacres of all kinds were committed against the Bosnians — from small scale ones such as at Tuzla and Sarajevo, to larger scale systematic ethnic cleansing as at Višegrad.\n\nSo, now that we have a general understanding of how the genocide played out, let's now bring this chapter to a close, and move on to deepen our understanding by zooming in further still and having a look at a single massacre in depth; the single worst one of the entire genocide, at least by numbers — the Srebrenica Massacre.\n\n## The Srebrenica Massacre\n\nIn 1992, as the war waged on, tens of thousands of Bosnians fled to the relative safety of Srebrenica. The mid-sized town faced unrelenting assault by Serbian forces, but the Bosnians were holding, at least for now, and so the town, with its reasonable infrastructure and connections to aid networks, seemed like a sensible enough place to find refuge — at least compared to remaining in outlying settlements, where at any time Serbian forces could sweep through and massacre everyone.\n\nEventually however, as the Serbian assault eventually remoulded into a full-blown siege, the situation in the town began to deteriorate. The now 60,000 people crammed inside, many of whom were forced to find shelter in stairwells, corridors, bus shelters; anything that offered some semblance of cover from the elements, were now all but cut off from the outside world. Aid packages, which now had to go through the Serbians, were more often than not stolen for their own use.\n\nIn response to what was gearing up to be a humanitarian disaster, the UN Security Council declared the town a 'safe area' and negotiated a unilateral cease fire in April 1993. A small contingent of 600 lightly armed Dutch troops were dispatched to enforce this, and a humanitarian corridor was opened out of Srebrenica to allow the evacuation of the wounded, and the delivery of desperately needed supplies. This was by no means ideal to be sure, but the situation was at least stable — the people inside could survive.\n\nThis situation persevered for 23 months, until Radovan Karadžić, fuelled partly by rabid racial rage, and the realisation that the 600 lightly armed Dutch soldiers stationed there were, in real terms, powerless to stop him, snapped, and issued 'Directive 7,' which ordered the Drina Corps of his Army to, quote:\n\n> \"By planned and well-thought-out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for inhabitants of Srebrenica.\"\n\nSaid operations began on the 12th of July 1995. They quickly took control of Potočari, an outlying village to the north of Srebrenica, and then they immediately began separating the male and female inhabitants of the village. The women were loaded up onto buses and transported further back into Serbian held territory, and as for the men, they were rounded up in a building in Potočari known locally as 'the white house.' Their personal belongings were torn from them, piled up outside, and torched… \"you won't be needing them any longer,\" the brave few who dared to ask questions were told.\n\nThe following day, Srebrenica itself fell, and the separation of men and women continued. When no one else in the town could be found, 15,000 of the men and boys in their custody were formed into a lengthy column ten kilometres long, and marched off in the direction of Tuzla, which Serbian forces then held.\n\nAs for those who remained, they began to be loaded up onto buses, and driven north to Bratunac, a large town a few kilometres north of Srebrenica — they were given no food or water, and those who expressed their distress over this fact were beaten mercilessly.\n\nAnd then, when people began arriving in Bratunac en masse, the killing started.\n\nThe majority of the detained were being held at the local high school. No food was provided, and occasionally a bucket of dirty old rainwater was hurled into the rooms packed shoulder to shoulder with people.\n\nThose who needed to use a bathroom were among the first to die. They were only allowed to go if escorted by Serbian soldiers, and those soldiers, disgusted by the task, beat them with the butts of their rifles the entire way — several were also shot in fits of rage on the part of their captors, their corpses then simply being kicked into the side of the hallway to get them out of the way.\n\nFrom there the killing only escalated, as sporadic Bosnian prisoners began to be dragged out of the school and shot for the slightest of imagined infractions against their captors — about 50 were killed in these spontaneous ways before the intentional mass killing began, which wouldn't take long.\n\nOn the afternoon of the 13th of July, prisoners began to be transferred to Kravica Warehouse, a small one-story building not too far away — either by bus or being forced to march there on foot. Come 5pm, the warehouse was rammed so tightly that many had already suffocated to death… and then the shooting started.\n\nSerbian forces had surrounded the warehouse and they all opened up in unison, dumping magazine after magazine, and belt after belt into every door and window the warehouse had — pausing only to give the soldiers the safety needed to approach a window and throw in a grenade, or dump a magazine more closely. The shooting quietened come nightfall, at which point over 1,000 innocent Bosnian men had been killed.\n\nBut tragically, that was just the start. The following day prisoners began to be loaded up onto buses and taken to the school in Orahovac, another village in the surrounding area. When it was full later that day, men and boys were blindfolded and taken from the school by the truck full, driven 800 metres down the road to a nearby meadow, where they were then unloaded from the trucks and shot without hesitation. This continued for a little over two hours, at which point at least 839 men and boys had been killed, their bodies left where they fell in the meadow.\n\nElsewhere on the 14th, other prisoners began to be taken to the school in Petkovci, which once again was filled until it was crammed shoulder to shoulder. In this instance, the Serbian soldiers chose to add greater humiliation to their barbaric routine, forcing unloaded prisoners to sing patriotic Serbian songs as they were pushed into the school, and then, when inside, a Serbian officer took to the stage that used to be used for wholesome school assemblies, and had them repeat in chorus \"This is Serbian land and will always remain so\" over and over again, all the while sporadic bursts of gunfire could be heard as prisoners were occasionally dragged outside and shot.\n\nCome dusk, with the officer leading the forced chorus getting bored, those prisoners who had survived until that point were slowly bused down the road to Petkovci Dam, where they were immediately shot. At least 815 men and boys were killed during this ordeal, with only two being known to have survived.\n\nThe following day Vujadin Popović, Chief of Security of the Drina Corps arrived on site to see how the execution of Directive 7 was coming along, and he ordered that a new approach be taken — now the prisoners were to dig their own graves to expedite the cover up.\n\nMake no mistake however, Popović was a demon the likes of which have barely trampled European dirt before, and so his want to see bodies expediently covered was not the result of some lingering shred of humanity that tugged away at the furthest reaches of his psyche and reminded him that what he was doing was wrong, oh no, he was just a pragmatist, and was well aware that with the whole world firmly taking Bosnia's side in the war, his team likely wasn't going to emerge victorious, and thus he wanted to ensure that evidence was properly buried; as much as possible, as quickly as possible, rather than just being left out in the meadows and warehouses to be easily found.\n\nTrue to his order, that was exactly what was done for the next mass killing, as that afternoon, some prisoners were taken to a site adjacent to the Drina River, and after digging an enormous hole by hand, they were subsequently pushed into the hole and shot. Only to then have their remains covered by more victims, who were transported out on trucks, tipped out in the hole, and then shot while clamouring over the remains of the last victims. All in all, a further 809 victims met their end in that hole.\n\nTwo more further mass killings were then carried out before the massacre came to an end, another on the 16th, in which around 1,200 were killed at the Branjevo Military Farm, and another at Pilica Cultural Centre in which around 500 were killed.\n\nAll that was to be done then was to sweep the area for survivors, of which the Serbian Forces found four at Baljkovica, two near Snagovo, 39 in Bišina, and six around Trnovo by the 31st of July. All of those found were killed, no exceptions, some were killed while bound by rope, some while blindfolded, and some were humiliated on film for the soldiers' enjoyment before meeting their end — and with that, the Srebrenica Massacre was over.\n\nWe ultimately have no idea how many were murdered for certain, and even the figures we presented should be taken as provisional, because new exhumations constantly reveal the remains of new victims who previously went undocumented, and so the tragic tally ticks ever upwards. As things stand however, at the time of writing, the number of known victims rests at 8,372.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nThe genocide was only stopped by the end of the Bosnian War itself, which was brought to an end by the signing of the Dayton Agreement on the 14th of December 1995 — an agreement that saw the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina abandon its claims of independence, its forces lay down its arms, and its allies from Serbia proper (Yugoslavia having fully disintegrated in 1992) withdraw their forces back across the border.\n\nAs for the final death toll, for much the same reasons as we couldn't fully commit to a number in the last chapter, we cannot commit to the one for the whole genocide, but as of the time of writing, the provisional figure stands at 33,071.\n\nMercifully, extensive efforts have at least been made to bring the perpetrators to justice, with the UN founding the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia exclusively for that very reason.\n\nThis saw Radovan Karadžić be handed a 40-year sentence in 2016, Vujadin Popović receive life imprisonment in 2010, and Novak Đukić, the lead perpetrator of the Tuzla Massacre, get 25 years in 2009 — not that any length of time behind bars can ever truly heal the wounds their actions created.\n\nSuch wicked violence can never be allowed to happen again, and we can only hope that for once, when Europeans all join hands and declare \"never again,\" that we actually mean it this time.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The Bosnian Genocide occurred during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, following the collapse of Yugoslavia.\n- Ethnic tensions and nationalist leaders fueled the conflict, leading to widespread violence against Bosnians.\n- The genocide included systematic ethnic cleansing and massacres, such as the Srebrenica Massacre, which resulted in over 8,000 deaths.\n- The Dayton Agreement in 1995 ended the Bosnian War and the genocide, with efforts made to bring perpetrators to justice.\n- The final death toll of the Bosnian Genocide is estimated at over 33,000, with ongoing efforts to document and honor the victims.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What was the Bosnian Genocide?\n\nThe Bosnian Genocide was a series of atrocities committed against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and other non-Serbs by Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Serbian government and military, during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.\n\n### When did the Bosnian Genocide start?\n\nThe Bosnian Genocide is typically agreed upon as starting on April 6, 1992, the same day Bosnia and Herzegovina's independence received international recognition.\n\n### What were the Markale Massacres?\n\nThe Markale Massacres were two separate mortar attacks launched against the marketplace in the center of Sarajevo’s old town, killing and wounding hundreds of innocent civilians.\n\n### What was the Srebrenica Massacre?\n\nThe Srebrenica Massacre was the single worst massacre of the Bosnian Genocide, where over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically killed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995.\n\n### What was Directive 7?\n\nDirective 7 was an order issued by Radovan Karadžić to the Drina Corps of his Army to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity for the inhabitants of Srebrenica, leading to the Srebrenica Massacre.\n\n### What was the Višegrad Massacre?\n\nThe Višegrad Massacres occurred during mid-1992 and saw the entire town of Višegrad emptied of Bosniaks, either through murder or deportation, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.\n\n### What was the Tulza Massacre?\n\nThe Tulza Massacre occurred on May 25, 1995, when Serbian forces targeted Kapija Square in Tulza with artillery fire, killing 71 and injuring 240, mostly young people.\n\n### What was the Dayton Agreement?\n\nThe Dayton Agreement, signed on December 14, 1995, ended the Bosnian War and the Bosnian Genocide. It saw the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina abandon its claims of independence and its forces lay down their arms.\n\n### What was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia?\n\nThe International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was founded by the UN to bring the perpetrators of the Bosnian Genocide to justice. It handed down sentences to key figures like Radovan Karadžić and Vujadin Popović.\n\n### What was the final death toll of the Bosnian Genocide?\n\nAs of the time of recording, the provisional figure for the death toll of the Bosnian Genocide stands at 33,071, though this number may increase with new exhumations.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Into the Shadows video: The Bosnian Genocide: Europe’s Only Genocide Since WWII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqnfU4w23R4)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Irene_Shashar%2C_a_Holocaust_survivor_of_the_Warsaw_ghetto%2C_addressed_MEPs_in_a_plenary_session_in_Brussels%2C_Belgium_on_International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day_at_the_European_Parliament_on_25_January_2024_-_3.jpg) by European Parliament / openverse, by.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/bosnian-genocide-europe-only-genocide-since-wwii.md canonical: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/bosnian-genocide-europe-only-genocide-since-wwii datePublished: 2026-06-28 dateModified: 2026-06-28 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://intotheshadows.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Into the Shadows image: "https://media.intotheshadows.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/dqnfU4w23R4/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: a9c9b982443ce7e3b8f6282e9a2d4a67c666029f63d126bfa8baa728b7b611e9 tokens: 6215 summaryUrl: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/bosnian-genocide-europe-only-genocide-since-wwii.md.summary.md --- Tragically, Europe is no stranger to genocide. From the Harrying of the North in the 11th century, in which up to 75% of the population of Northern England was either killed or displaced, to the Holocaust of the 20th century, in which up to 20 million minorities met their end at the hands of the wicked Nazi Empire. A small, ever so slight silver lining to this cloud most dark, however, is the fact that we are better than that nowadays — "never again," and all that… or so we like to tell ourselves anyway, because actually, the spectre of genocide continues to rear its wicked head over European soil even in the modern day, as exemplified by the Bosnian Genocide, which ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. It is a tragically unknown event in the modern zeitgeist, and today, we shall be doing what we can to right that wrong, by presenting to you a primer on how it played out, right from its early nascent beginnings to its brutal zenith. Oh, and fair warning before we get going… this is a heavy one. ## Background The Bosnian Genocide occurred within the wider context of the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the many wars that broke out among the former members of the Federation, which included Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia. Tensions had always existed within multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, but Josip Broz Tito, who ruled as President from 1953 to 1980, had managed to by and large keep a lid on these tensions, particularly during the autumn years of his rule. But following his death, later leaders such as Lazar Koliševski, Petar Stambolić, and Raif Dizdarević completely failed to nurture any sense of 'Yugoslavian-ness' like Tito had before them, and thus, lacking any sense of collective identity, it wasn't long until the people of Yugoslavia were identifying primarily with their ethnic identities, something that naturally made a multi-ethnic federation such as Yugoslavia… 'volatile,' to say the least. And then, just to pour petrol onto a well stacked bonfire, ethno-nationalist leaders who exploited these divisions to consolidate power began to rise, with examples being Slobodan Milošević from Serbia, Franjo Tuđman from Croatia, and Radovan Karadžić from the Serbian minority within Bosnia — and remember him in particular… he'll become important later in the story. Figures such as these manipulated ethnic identities, rewrote historical narratives, and stoked fears of the "other" as they consolidated power, and as a result, when Yugoslavia finally collapsed, it wasn't exactly a clean breakup, and armed conflict commenced almost immediately, under the umbrella moniker of the 'Yugoslav Wars,' which would rage from 1991 to 2001. Within that expansive umbrella were old fashioned wars of independence such as the Slovenian War of Independence and Croatian War of Independence, which raged for 10 days in 1991, and between 1991 and 1995 respectively. Nothing too complicated here, they wanted out, Yugoslavia wanted to keep them, and so war ensued, with both prior examples winning their independence after their respective conflicts. There were also 'insurgencies' such as the 1999 to 2001 Preševo Valley Insurgency in what is now Serbia, and the 2001 Macedonian Insurgency. These were caused by the fears of various minority groups who were, for want of a better description, 'left behind' as Yugoslavia collapsed, and feared for their safety in ethnically orientated states that weren't their own. In both of those examples the minority in question were Albanians — a minority which hadn't got a nation of its own during the breakup, and understandably, didn't see why it should have to up sticks and flee to Albania proper just for a basic guarantee of safety and prosperity. This brings us to the Bosnian War, the war in which the foul events of the Bosnian Genocide occurred. It was one of the former such independence wars, and broke out following the 1992 Bosnian independence referendum, which returned a 99.71% result in the aye direction, and led to Bosnia and Herzegovina formally declaring independence on the 3rd of March 1992. Bosnian Serbs however were furious about this turn of events, and so they in turn immediately declared independence from the newly independent nation, creating the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the leadership of Radovan Karadžić. They then immediately asked for aid in securing their independence from what was left of the Yugoslav Central Government, which was still dominated by Serbs, and only too happy to oblige. The war's exact start date is still contested, but it is typically given as the 6th of April 1992, the day that Bosnia and Herzegovina's independence received international recognition, and as for the genocide, that is typically agreed upon as starting on the same day, with massacres organised from both the top down and bottom up beginning almost immediately. ## The Genocide The genocide itself was made up of a plethora of individual acts and instances of Serb-perpetrated, Bosnian-targeted ethnic violence, and as a result, if we wish to get our heads around it, we are better suited to 'jump' around the story somewhat, so that you can get a general impression of the wicked violence that overtook Bosnia and Herzegovina during the genocide, rather than worrying too much about a strict 'timeline' of the violence as we otherwise might. So, with that said, let's begin with the Markale Massacres. They were two separate mortar attacks launched against the marketplace at the centre of Sarajevo's old town. The market had no strategic value, and no Bosnian military presence, and instead was full of nothing but innocent civilians simply trying to get on with some semblance of a normal life as their country burnt around them. Serbian Forces were fully aware of those facts and nonetheless targeted the market specifically — to them it was simply a handy opportunity to quickly kill a large number of Bosnians. The first attack occurred on the 5th of February 1994, and consisted of a single 120mm mortar round being fired at the market. It landed dead on a heavily crowded fruit stand, and as a result, despite being only a single round, the toll it wrought was nothing short of horrific, killing 68 outright, and wounding a further 144 — all of whom were left with permanent life-altering wounds. The second attack occurred on the 28th of August 1995, and saw five mortar rounds launched on the market. Mercifully, despite the greater intensity of the barrage, none of the rounds managed to strike a target as crowded as in the first attack, but they still killed 43 outright, and wounded a further 75. Serbian forces vehemently denied responsibility for both attacks, and even suggested that they were false flag attacks carried out by the Bosnian Government in order to drum up sympathy for their cause in order to increase the odds of NATO entering the war on their side. Needless to say, such claims have long since been debunked and proven to be complete nonsense. There was also the Tuzla Massacre. The atrocious event occurred on the 25th of May 1995, and saw the Serbs set up a battery of 130mm artillery guns outside of the town of Tuzla and proceed to hammer it with relentless fire throughout the night. Their primary target was Kapija Square, a leisure quarter popular with the city's youth, and it once again had absolutely no strategic value or military presence — and of course, yet again, the Serbian forces were perfectly aware of this fact. 71 were killed, and 240 were injured in the attack, nearly all of whom were between the ages of 18 and 25. At the time, Serbian forces claimed the attack was legitimate, as a convoy of nearby evacuating troops were ambushed by Bosnian troops in violation of an agreed withdrawal, and thus as far as they were concerned the town was a legitimate military target. This ambush did indeed happen, but their specific targeting of civilian areas in response was deemed to be a nonsense response by international observers — they were angry and wanted to vent by slaughtering civilians, and there was nothing more to it than that. Incidents such as those, tragically, represent the smaller end of the scale when it comes to attacks carried out against Bosnians. On the larger end, you have horrific incidents such as the Višegrad Massacres. They occurred during mid-1992 and saw the entire town of Višegrad emptied of Bosnians, either through murder or deportation, in what the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia called "one of the most comprehensive and ruthless campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian conflict." It began on the 6th of April, when Serbian forces occupied the town following several days of fighting in the local vicinity. To formalise their control over the area, the Serbian Municipality of Višegrad was then incorporated, which centred on the town, after which the Serbian Army proper withdrew, and control was handed to Serbian police and paramilitary forces. The killing started immediately after the handover, with those aforementioned controlling forces taking their guns, spanning out, and shooting at anything Bosnian that moved. They began by roaming the streets, clearing them out as they roamed, and then moved on to a house-to-house search, where they spanned the entire length of the town, kicked open every door they found, and if Bosnians happened to be on the other side of it, they emptied their magazines and moved on. The only pause in the shooting came when Serbian Forces found a young woman, because often, they weren't killed, and instead were dragged off for wicked reasons we're sure you really don't need us to go into details on — we stress the young part as well, there was no lower age limit on who would be dragged off. Many Bosnians did attempt to flee when it became apparent what was going on, but barely any escaped — those who dallied and tried to pack possessions were found and shot before they left their homes, and those who took unfortunate turns as they fled were shot before they could escape the town. The exact numbers of survivors is unclear, but we're talking a couple of hundred, max. When the massacres finally ended in August 1992, the town which used to be 63% Bosnian and 33% Serbian, was now 100% Serbian. Events such as these give you a general 'feel' for how the Bosnian Genocide played out; brutal war was waged between the Bosnians and the Serbians, and while that played out massacres of all kinds were committed against the Bosnians — from small scale ones such as at Tuzla and Sarajevo, to larger scale systematic ethnic cleansing as at Višegrad. So, now that we have a general understanding of how the genocide played out, let's now bring this chapter to a close, and move on to deepen our understanding by zooming in further still and having a look at a single massacre in depth; the single worst one of the entire genocide, at least by numbers — the Srebrenica Massacre. ## The Srebrenica Massacre In 1992, as the war waged on, tens of thousands of Bosnians fled to the relative safety of Srebrenica. The mid-sized town faced unrelenting assault by Serbian forces, but the Bosnians were holding, at least for now, and so the town, with its reasonable infrastructure and connections to aid networks, seemed like a sensible enough place to find refuge — at least compared to remaining in outlying settlements, where at any time Serbian forces could sweep through and massacre everyone. Eventually however, as the Serbian assault eventually remoulded into a full-blown siege, the situation in the town began to deteriorate. The now 60,000 people crammed inside, many of whom were forced to find shelter in stairwells, corridors, bus shelters; anything that offered some semblance of cover from the elements, were now all but cut off from the outside world. Aid packages, which now had to go through the Serbians, were more often than not stolen for their own use. In response to what was gearing up to be a humanitarian disaster, the UN Security Council declared the town a 'safe area' and negotiated a unilateral cease fire in April 1993. A small contingent of 600 lightly armed Dutch troops were dispatched to enforce this, and a humanitarian corridor was opened out of Srebrenica to allow the evacuation of the wounded, and the delivery of desperately needed supplies. This was by no means ideal to be sure, but the situation was at least stable — the people inside could survive. This situation persevered for 23 months, until Radovan Karadžić, fuelled partly by rabid racial rage, and the realisation that the 600 lightly armed Dutch soldiers stationed there were, in real terms, powerless to stop him, snapped, and issued 'Directive 7,' which ordered the Drina Corps of his Army to, quote: > "By planned and well-thought-out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for inhabitants of Srebrenica." Said operations began on the 12th of July 1995. They quickly took control of Potočari, an outlying village to the north of Srebrenica, and then they immediately began separating the male and female inhabitants of the village. The women were loaded up onto buses and transported further back into Serbian held territory, and as for the men, they were rounded up in a building in Potočari known locally as 'the white house.' Their personal belongings were torn from them, piled up outside, and torched… "you won't be needing them any longer," the brave few who dared to ask questions were told. The following day, Srebrenica itself fell, and the separation of men and women continued. When no one else in the town could be found, 15,000 of the men and boys in their custody were formed into a lengthy column ten kilometres long, and marched off in the direction of Tuzla, which Serbian forces then held. As for those who remained, they began to be loaded up onto buses, and driven north to Bratunac, a large town a few kilometres north of Srebrenica — they were given no food or water, and those who expressed their distress over this fact were beaten mercilessly. And then, when people began arriving in Bratunac en masse, the killing started. The majority of the detained were being held at the local high school. No food was provided, and occasionally a bucket of dirty old rainwater was hurled into the rooms packed shoulder to shoulder with people. Those who needed to use a bathroom were among the first to die. They were only allowed to go if escorted by Serbian soldiers, and those soldiers, disgusted by the task, beat them with the butts of their rifles the entire way — several were also shot in fits of rage on the part of their captors, their corpses then simply being kicked into the side of the hallway to get them out of the way. From there the killing only escalated, as sporadic Bosnian prisoners began to be dragged out of the school and shot for the slightest of imagined infractions against their captors — about 50 were killed in these spontaneous ways before the intentional mass killing began, which wouldn't take long. On the afternoon of the 13th of July, prisoners began to be transferred to Kravica Warehouse, a small one-story building not too far away — either by bus or being forced to march there on foot. Come 5pm, the warehouse was rammed so tightly that many had already suffocated to death… and then the shooting started. Serbian forces had surrounded the warehouse and they all opened up in unison, dumping magazine after magazine, and belt after belt into every door and window the warehouse had — pausing only to give the soldiers the safety needed to approach a window and throw in a grenade, or dump a magazine more closely. The shooting quietened come nightfall, at which point over 1,000 innocent Bosnian men had been killed. But tragically, that was just the start. The following day prisoners began to be loaded up onto buses and taken to the school in Orahovac, another village in the surrounding area. When it was full later that day, men and boys were blindfolded and taken from the school by the truck full, driven 800 metres down the road to a nearby meadow, where they were then unloaded from the trucks and shot without hesitation. This continued for a little over two hours, at which point at least 839 men and boys had been killed, their bodies left where they fell in the meadow. Elsewhere on the 14th, other prisoners began to be taken to the school in Petkovci, which once again was filled until it was crammed shoulder to shoulder. In this instance, the Serbian soldiers chose to add greater humiliation to their barbaric routine, forcing unloaded prisoners to sing patriotic Serbian songs as they were pushed into the school, and then, when inside, a Serbian officer took to the stage that used to be used for wholesome school assemblies, and had them repeat in chorus "This is Serbian land and will always remain so" over and over again, all the while sporadic bursts of gunfire could be heard as prisoners were occasionally dragged outside and shot. Come dusk, with the officer leading the forced chorus getting bored, those prisoners who had survived until that point were slowly bused down the road to Petkovci Dam, where they were immediately shot. At least 815 men and boys were killed during this ordeal, with only two being known to have survived. The following day Vujadin Popović, Chief of Security of the Drina Corps arrived on site to see how the execution of Directive 7 was coming along, and he ordered that a new approach be taken — now the prisoners were to dig their own graves to expedite the cover up. Make no mistake however, Popović was a demon the likes of which have barely trampled European dirt before, and so his want to see bodies expediently covered was not the result of some lingering shred of humanity that tugged away at the furthest reaches of his psyche and reminded him that what he was doing was wrong, oh no, he was just a pragmatist, and was well aware that with the whole world firmly taking Bosnia's side in the war, his team likely wasn't going to emerge victorious, and thus he wanted to ensure that evidence was properly buried; as much as possible, as quickly as possible, rather than just being left out in the meadows and warehouses to be easily found. True to his order, that was exactly what was done for the next mass killing, as that afternoon, some prisoners were taken to a site adjacent to the Drina River, and after digging an enormous hole by hand, they were subsequently pushed into the hole and shot. Only to then have their remains covered by more victims, who were transported out on trucks, tipped out in the hole, and then shot while clamouring over the remains of the last victims. All in all, a further 809 victims met their end in that hole. Two more further mass killings were then carried out before the massacre came to an end, another on the 16th, in which around 1,200 were killed at the Branjevo Military Farm, and another at Pilica Cultural Centre in which around 500 were killed. All that was to be done then was to sweep the area for survivors, of which the Serbian Forces found four at Baljkovica, two near Snagovo, 39 in Bišina, and six around Trnovo by the 31st of July. All of those found were killed, no exceptions, some were killed while bound by rope, some while blindfolded, and some were humiliated on film for the soldiers' enjoyment before meeting their end — and with that, the Srebrenica Massacre was over. We ultimately have no idea how many were murdered for certain, and even the figures we presented should be taken as provisional, because new exhumations constantly reveal the remains of new victims who previously went undocumented, and so the tragic tally ticks ever upwards. As things stand however, at the time of writing, the number of known victims rests at 8,372. ## Conclusion The genocide was only stopped by the end of the Bosnian War itself, which was brought to an end by the signing of the Dayton Agreement on the 14th of December 1995 — an agreement that saw the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina abandon its claims of independence, its forces lay down its arms, and its allies from Serbia proper (Yugoslavia having fully disintegrated in 1992) withdraw their forces back across the border. As for the final death toll, for much the same reasons as we couldn't fully commit to a number in the last chapter, we cannot commit to the one for the whole genocide, but as of the time of writing, the provisional figure stands at 33,071. Mercifully, extensive efforts have at least been made to bring the perpetrators to justice, with the UN founding the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia exclusively for that very reason. This saw Radovan Karadžić be handed a 40-year sentence in 2016, Vujadin Popović receive life imprisonment in 2010, and Novak Đukić, the lead perpetrator of the Tuzla Massacre, get 25 years in 2009 — not that any length of time behind bars can ever truly heal the wounds their actions created. Such wicked violence can never be allowed to happen again, and we can only hope that for once, when Europeans all join hands and declare "never again," that we actually mean it this time. ## Key Takeaways - The Bosnian Genocide occurred during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, following the collapse of Yugoslavia. - Ethnic tensions and nationalist leaders fueled the conflict, leading to widespread violence against Bosnians. - The genocide included systematic ethnic cleansing and massacres, such as the Srebrenica Massacre, which resulted in over 8,000 deaths. - The Dayton Agreement in 1995 ended the Bosnian War and the genocide, with efforts made to bring perpetrators to justice. - The final death toll of the Bosnian Genocide is estimated at over 33,000, with ongoing efforts to document and honor the victims. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was the Bosnian Genocide? The Bosnian Genocide was a series of atrocities committed against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and other non-Serbs by Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Serbian government and military, during the Bosnian War in the 1990s. ### When did the Bosnian Genocide start? The Bosnian Genocide is typically agreed upon as starting on April 6, 1992, the same day Bosnia and Herzegovina's independence received international recognition. ### What were the Markale Massacres? The Markale Massacres were two separate mortar attacks launched against the marketplace in the center of Sarajevo’s old town, killing and wounding hundreds of innocent civilians. ### What was the Srebrenica Massacre? The Srebrenica Massacre was the single worst massacre of the Bosnian Genocide, where over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically killed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. ### What was Directive 7? Directive 7 was an order issued by Radovan Karadžić to the Drina Corps of his Army to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity for the inhabitants of Srebrenica, leading to the Srebrenica Massacre. ### What was the Višegrad Massacre? The Višegrad Massacres occurred during mid-1992 and saw the entire town of Višegrad emptied of Bosniaks, either through murder or deportation, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. ### What was the Tulza Massacre? The Tulza Massacre occurred on May 25, 1995, when Serbian forces targeted Kapija Square in Tulza with artillery fire, killing 71 and injuring 240, mostly young people. ### What was the Dayton Agreement? The Dayton Agreement, signed on December 14, 1995, ended the Bosnian War and the Bosnian Genocide. It saw the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina abandon its claims of independence and its forces lay down their arms. ### What was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia? The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was founded by the UN to bring the perpetrators of the Bosnian Genocide to justice. It handed down sentences to key figures like Radovan Karadžić and Vujadin Popović. ### What was the final death toll of the Bosnian Genocide? As of the time of recording, the provisional figure for the death toll of the Bosnian Genocide stands at 33,071, though this number may increase with new exhumations. ## Sources - [Original Into the Shadows video: The Bosnian Genocide: Europe’s Only Genocide Since WWII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqnfU4w23R4) - [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Irene_Shashar%2C_a_Holocaust_survivor_of_the_Warsaw_ghetto%2C_addressed_MEPs_in_a_plenary_session_in_Brussels%2C_Belgium_on_International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day_at_the_European_Parliament_on_25_January_2024_-_3.jpg) by European Parliament / openverse, by. ## Related Coverage