On this day, the world remembers the nightmare in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces invaded Srebrenica - a town in the safe zone guarded by Dutch UN peacekeepers. Women, children and the elderly were loaded onto buses and driven out of the city. 8,000 men and boys remained.
Bosnian Serb soldiers give chocolates to Muslim children to calm them down. They had previously separated them from their fathers.
They were killed and buried in mass graves scattered around Srebrenica. The Dutch Blue Helmets became passive witnesses.
The conflict began in mid-1992, when ethnic Muslims from Srebrenica started a civil war. They declared themselves for the creation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, the nightmare came in 1993,
when the Serbian army besieged the city. For 2 years, the enclave lacked food, medicine and running water, as the Serbs destroyed the water supply. The disastrous situation did not change when the UN declared Srebrenica a "safe zone" and sent a military contingent of 600 people there, equipped with small arms. The enclave remains surrounded by parts of the "Drina" Corps, which progressively limit the ground access of humanitarian aid.
Various international organizations provide food drops from helicopters. Until the tragic year of 1995 for Bosniaks comes. Srebrenica was captured in six days in July 1995 by the Serbian corps. In their escape, the inhabitants of the enclave split into two - one column of 10-15,000 men sets off through the forest in an attempt to reach the Bosnian army zone. The remaining 20-25,000 people remain pushed into the northernmost parts of the enclave and are surrounded by burned-down houses and the Bosnian Serb army.
Two days of terror, mass selective executions, massacres
and outrageous for the 1990s, killings and rapes. The Bosnian Serbs separate the men from the women and put the youngest children on buses with their mothers. They take them to “Muslim” zones. Most of the deportees survive.
Only the men and boys over 13 years old remain in Srebrenica. Their mothers repeat the same sentences today: "they snatched him from my hands", "that was the last time I heard his voice". On July 14, Dutch troops patrolled the area and found no living Muslims. The massacre of 8,000 men and children was ordered by Ratko Mladić. According to recently discovered documents, the decision of France, Britain and the United States to stop bombing without warning the Dutch authorities probably paved the way for the Srebrenica massacre. The Srebrenica massacre also showed the UN's inability to deal with conflict situations. Gen. Ratko Mladić managed to take 14 Dutch blue helmets hostage. They were used as "human shields" against possible Western intervention during the massacre of civilians.
The massacre provoked the intervention of the United States and NATO,
which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Dayton Agreement was signed. It divides the country of just under 4 million people into two parts - the Bosnian - Croat federation, populated mainly by Muslims, and the Republika Srpska. Bosnian Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Croatian Catholics continue to view each other with distrust.
The country has been in constant political chaos, which has blocked reforms needed for EU membership for years. Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with unemployment rates of over 40%.