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11 July 1995: Start of the genocide in Srebrenica

On 11 July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of Ratko Mladić entered the town of Srebrenica and began planning the deportation of women and children from the area.

Coffins ready for burial at Potočari © Richard Newell

The Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men left behind were to be subjected to ‘interrogation for suspected war crimes’. Over the following days, around 8,000 unarmed men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces. The Genocide at Srebrenica remains the largest act of mass murder in Europe since World War Two.

By 1991, the multi-ethnic Balkan state of Yugoslavia was disintegrating. Bosnia & Herzegovina, a state which emerged from the split, was immediately affected by conflict between Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs. The conflict was particularly intense in the eastern area of the country and by 1992, Bosnian Serb forces had ethnically cleansed Bosnian Muslims from much of eastern Bosnia. Srebrenica remained a Bosniak enclave within the region and large numbers of refugees fled there from surrounding areas, leading the UN to declare the town a safe area on 6 April 1993.

Despite the UN presence in the town, the Serb forces refused to demilitarise in the surrounding areas and began strangling the town of supplies. By the summer of 1995, following an order from Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić to ‘create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica’, the situation had grown so desperate that residents were dying of starvation.

On 11 July, Mladić entered the town and drank with the commander of UN forces in Srebrenica, Lieutenant-Colonel Karremans. Through negotiations with the UN, the deportation of women and children was arranged from the area. Despite their legal obligations to protect their civilians, the UN responded to threats from Mladić to harm French and Dutch prisoners by allowing Srebrenica’s population to fall into Bosnian Serb hands. General Mladić’s men were left free to carry out their campaign of extermination. Over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically murdered in the Genocide in Srebrenica.

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Hasan Nuhanović

Hasan Nuhanović

Hasan was an interpreter for the United Nations in Srebrenica and saw his family murdered when the town fell to the Bosnian Serb Army. In the years since he has campaigned for justice for the victims of Srebrenica.

Hasan Hasanović

Hasan Hasanović

Hasan was 19 when the town of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. He endured a 100 kilometre march through hostile terrain to escape the massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys that took place there.