The Srebrenica genocide
- Date
- 11–22 July 1995
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Balkans
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
In July 1995, during the final stages of the Bosnian War, units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under General Ratko Mladic overran the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, which the United Nations had declared a 'safe area' protected by lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers.
After the enclave fell on 11 July, Serb forces separated men and boys from the rest of the population and, over the following days, systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys, burying them in mass graves that were later disturbed to conceal the crime. Meanwhile some 25,000 to 30,000 women, children and elderly people were forcibly expelled. It was the worst mass killing on European soil since the Second World War. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice both ruled the massacre constituted genocide, and senior commanders including Mladic and the Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic were convicted. The atrocity, occurring under UN protection, became a searing emblem of international failure and accelerated NATO intervention that helped bring the war to an end.
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Empires active in 11–22 July 1995
Related military & conflict events
- The Bosnian War and the breakup of YugoslaviaApril 1992 – December 1995
- The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi7 April – 19 July 1994
- The September 11 attacks11 September 2001
- Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
- Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero1975
- Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine24 February 2022
Further reading
The wider story
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.
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