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Bosnia Ethnic Cleansing
by The Ovi Team
2010-07-15 08:11:48 |
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15th July 1995; Ethnic Cleansing by Bosnian Serbs in the "SAFE AREA" of Srebrenica with tales of rape, massacres and psychological torture, the 40,000 women, children and elderly people who were under the protection of Dutch peacekeepers have been forced to flee what was set up as a "Safe Haven" because peacekeeping forces did not have the mandate to stop Serb forces taking over the town. It is also believed but not yet confirmed that over 3,000 Muslim men have been shot and murdered during the ethnic cleansing, but Bosnian Serbian forces are refusing entry to journalists and international organizations to confirm reports.
 After a number of investigations by the United Nations mass graves were found and the number of men killed was estimated at over 7,000 Muslim men who were shot dead and buried in mass graves. The General in charge General Mladic was later indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal for genocide but is still at large.
In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judged that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was genocide. In the unanimous ruling "Prosecutor v. Krstić", the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in The Hague, reaffirmed that the Srebrenica massacre was genocide, the Presiding Judge Theodor Meron stating: By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.
About 30 people have been indicted for participating in genocide or complicity in genocide during the early 1990s in Bosnia. To date, after several plea bargains and some convictions that were successfully challenged on appeal, two men, Vujadin Popovic and Ljubisa Beara, have been found guilty of genocide, and two others, Radislav Krstic and Drago Nikolic, have been found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide, by an international court for their participation in the Srebrenica massacre. Four have been found guilty of participating in genocides in Bosnia by German courts, one of whom Nikola Jorgic lost an appeal against his conviction in the European Court of Human Rights.
On 29 July 2008 the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Milenko Trifunovic, Brano Dzinic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Milos Stupar, Slobodan Jakovljevic Branislav Medan and Petar Mitrovic guilty of genocide for their part in the Srebrenica massacre, and on 16 October 2009 the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Milorad Trbic, a former member of the Bosnian Serb security forces, guilty of genocide for his participation in the genocide in the Srebrenica massacre.
Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia, was the most senior political figure to stand trial at the ICTY. He was charged with having committed genocide, either alone or in concert with other named members of a joint criminal enterprise. The indictment accused him of planning, preparing and executing the destruction, in whole or in part, of the Bosnian Muslim national, ethnical, racial or religious groups, as such, in territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina including Bijeljina, Bosanski Novi, Brcko, Kljuc, Kotor Varos, Prijedor, Sanski Most and Srebrenica. He died during his trial, on 11 March 2006, and no verdict was returned.
The ICTY has issued a warrant for the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic on several charges including genocide. Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade on 21 July 2008, and was transferred into the ICTY custody in the Hague nine days later on 30 July. To date Mladic has evaded arrest and remains at large.
 While the majority of international opinion accepts the findings of the international courts, there remains some disagreement about the extent of the genocide and to what degree Serbia was involved. The Bosnian community assert that the Srebrenica massacre was just one instance of what was a broader genocide committed by Serbia.
The International Court of Justice veered away from the factual and legal findings of the ICTY Appeals Chamber in the Dusko Tadic case. In the judgment delivered in July 1999, the Appeals Chamber found that the Army of Republika Srpska was "under overall control" of Belgrade and the Yugoslav Army, which meant that they had funded, equipped and assisted in coordination and planning of military operations. Had the International Court of Justice accepted this finding of the Tribunal, Serbia would have been found guilty of complicity in the Srebrenica genocide. Instead it concluded that the Appeals Chamber in the Tadic case "did not attempt to determine the responsibility of a state but individual criminal responsibility". Paradoxical as it may be, the outcome of this legal suit filed back in March 1993 arrived too early for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Radovan Karadzic arrest came over a year after the ICJ gave its judgement, and Ratko Mladic, also accused of Bosnian genocide, has yet to be arrested. Slobodan Milosevic died during the trial and three trials of former Serbian officials have just started
Although the ICTY prosecutors had access to them during the trials, some of the minutes of wartime meetings of Yugoslavia’s political and military leaders, were not made public as the ICTY accepted the Serbian argument that to do so would damage Serbia's national security. Although the ICJ could have subpoena the documents directly from Serbia, it did not do so and relied instead on those made public during the ICTY trials. Two of the ICJ judges criticised this decision in strongly worded dissents. Marlise Simons reporting on this in the New York Times, states that "When the documents were handed over [to the ICTY], the lawyers said, a team from Belgrade made it clear in letters to the tribunal and in meetings with prosecutors and judges that it wanted the documents expurgated to keep them from harming Serbia’s case at the International Court of Justice. The Serbs made no secret of that even as they argued their case for 'national security,' said one of the lawyers, adding, 'The senior people here [at the ICTY] knew about this'.". Simons continues that Rosalyn Higgins the president of the ICJ, declined to comment when asked why the full records had not been subpoenaed, saying that "The ruling speaks for itself". Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, commented "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference." , and William Schabas, a professor of international law at the University of Ireland in Galway, suggested that as a civil rather than a criminal court, the ICJ was more used to relying on materials put before it than aggressively pursuing evidence which might lead to a diplomatic incident.
Some commentators believe that the Srebrenica massacre was not genocide. Typically, they cite that women and children were largely spared and that only military age men were targeted. This view is not supported by the findings of the ICJ or the ICTY. According to Sonja Biserko, president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, and Edina Becirevic, the faculty of criminology and security studies of the University of Sarajevo: Denial of the Srebrenica genocide takes many forms [in Serbia]. The methods range from the brutal to the deceitful. Denial is present most strongly in political discourse, in the media, in the sphere of law, and in the educational system.
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