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Srebrenica

Coordinates: 44°06′N 19°18′E / 44.100°N 19.300°E / 44.100; 19.300
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Not to be confused with Srebrenik.
Srebrenica
Сребреница
Coat of arms of Srebrenica
Coat of arms
Location of Srebrenica within Bosnia and Herzegovina
Location of Srebrenica within Bosnia and Herzegovina
Country Bosnia and Herzegovina
Entity Republika Srpska
Settlements81
Government
 • MayorOsman Suljić (Alliance of SDA and Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina) [1]
Area
 • Total
527 km2 (203 sq mi)
Population
 (2012)
 • Municipality
6,500
Time zoneUTC+1 (CET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (CEST)
Area code56
Websitewww.srebrenica.gov.ba
Panorama of Srebrenica

Srebrenica (Cyrillic: Сребреница, pronounced [sr ̏ɛbrɛnitsa]) is a town and municipality in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska. Srebrenica is a small mountain town, its main industry being salt mining and a nearby spa.

Demographics

In 2005 there were about 4,000 Bosniaks in the municipality, about a third of the population.

Year of census total Muslims Serbs Croats Yugoslavs others
1991 36,666 27,572 (75.19%) 8,315 (22.67%) 38 (0.10%) 380 (1.03%) 361 (0.98%)
1981 36,292 24,930 (68.69%) 10,294 (28.36%) 80 (0.22%) 602 (1.65%) 386 (1.06%)
1971 33,357 20,968 (62.85%) 11,918 (35.72%) 109 (0.32%) 121 (0.36%) 241 (0.72%)
1961 29,283 14,565 (49.74%) 12,540 (42.82%) 71 (0.24%) 1,967 (6.71%)
1953 46,647 23,545 (50.47%) 106 (0.45%) 22,791 (48.86%)
1948 39,954 20,195 (50.55%) 52 (0.13%) 19,671 (49.23%)
1931 35,210 17,332 (49.2%) 17,766 (50.5%) 103 (0.29%)

The borders of the municipality in the 1953 and 1961 census were different. In 1953, Muslims by nationality had been yet to emerge as an ethnicity leading Slavic Muslims to identify as Yugoslavs. As Yugoslav was itself not adopted in 1948, they were all classified as other.

The town of Srebrenica

Year of census total Bosniaks Serbs Croats Yugoslavs others
1991 5,746 3,673 (63.92%) 1,632 (28.40%) 34 (0.59%) 328 (5.70%) 79 (1.37%)

Economy

Before 1992, there was a metal factory in the town, and lead, zinc, and gold mines nearby. The town's name (Srebrenica) means "silver mine", the same meaning of its old Latin name Argentaria.

Before the war Srebrenica also had a big spa and the town prospered from tourism; nowadays, Srebrenica has a pension (boardinghouse), a motel, and a hostel http://hostelsrebrenica.com/ which together have fewer than 100 beds.

Local communities

The municipality (општина or opština) is further subdivided into the following local communities (мјесне заједнице or mjesne zajednice):[2]

History

The earliest reference to Srebrenica was in 1376, by which time it was already an important centre for trade in the western Balkans, based especially on the silver mines of the region. The existence of ore was already known at the time of the Roman Empire, and the settlement of Domavia was near a mine. By the time of the first reference to Srebrenica, a large number of merchants of the Republic of Ragusa were established there, and they controlled the domestic silver trade and the export by sea, almost entirely via the port of Ragusa (Dubrovnik).[3] During the 14th century, many German miners moved into the area.[4]

In the middle of the 1420s, the army of King Tvrtko II of Bosnia fought to gain control of the town, which was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1440.[5] The Franciscan monastery was converted into a mosque, but the large number of Catholics, Ragusa and Saxon, caused the transformation of the town to Islam to be slower than in most of the other towns in the area.[6]

With the town in the Ottoman Empire and less influenced by the Republic of Ragusa, the economic importance of Srebrenica went into decline, as did the proportion of Catholics in the population.

In early January 1941, the Chetniks entered Srebrenica and killed around a thousand Muslim civilians in the town and in nearby villages.[7]

During World War II, the Croatian Ustaše massacred hundreds of Serbs in villages surrounding Srebrenica.[8]

War, genocide and demographic transformation

Main article: Srebrenica massacre

The town of Srebrenica came to international prominence as a result of events during the War in Bosnia (1992–1995). The strategic objectives proclaimed by the secessionist Bosnian Serb Presidency included the creation of a border separating the Serb people from Bosnia's other ethnic communities and the abolition of the border along the River Drina separating Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs' Republika Srpska.[9] The Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak majority population of the Drina Valley posed a major obstacle to the achievement of these objectives. In the early days of the campaign of forcible transfer (ethnic cleansing) that followed the outbreak of war in April 1992 the town of Srebrenica was occupied by Serb/Serbian forces. It was subsequently retaken by Bosniak resistance groups. Refugees expelled from towns and villages across the central Drina valley sought shelter in Srebrenica, swelling the town's population.

The town and its surrounding area was surrounded and besieged by Serb forces. On 16 April 1993, the United Nations declared the Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak enclave a UN safe area, to be "free from any armed attack or any other hostile act", and guarded by a small unit operating under the mandate of United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR).

Srebrenica and the other UN safe areas of Žepa and Goražde were isolated pockets of Bosnian government-held territory in Eastern Bosnia. In July 1995 despite the town's UN-protected status it was attacked and captured by the Army of Republika Srpska. Following the town's capture, all the men "of fighting age" who fell into Bosnian Serb hands were massacred in a systematically organised series of summary executions. The women of the town and men below 16 years of age and above 55 were transferred by bus to Tuzla.

The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst massacre in post-World War II European history to this day.[10]

In 2001 the Srebrenica massacre was determined by judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to have been a crime of genocide (confirmed on appeal in 2004).[11] This finding was upheld in 2007 by the International Court of Justice. The decision of the ICTY was followed by an admission to and an apology for the massacre by the Republika Srpska government.[12]

Under the 1995 Dayton Agreement which ended the Bosnian war Srebrenica was included in the territory assigned to Bosnian Serb control as the Republika Srpska entity of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although guaranteed under the provisions of the Dayton Agreement the return of survivors was repeatedly obstructed. In 2007 verbal and physical attacks on returning refugees continued to be reported in the region around Srebrenica.[13]

Fate of Bosnian Muslim villages

In 1992, Bosniak villages around Srebrenica were under constant attacks by Serb forces. The Bosnian Institute in the UK has published a list of 296 villages destroyed by Serb forces around Srebrenica three years before the genocide and in the first three months of war (April - June 1992)[14]:

More than three years before the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, Bosnian Serb nationalists - with the logistical, moral and financial support of Serbia and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) - destroyed 296 predominantly Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) villages in the region around Srebrenica, forcibly uprooting some 70,000 Bosniaks from their homes and systematically massacring at least 3,166 Bosniaks (documented deaths) including many women, children and the elderly.

According to the Naser Orić trial judgement:[15]

"Between April 1992 and March 1993, Srebrenica town and the villages in the area held by Bosnian Muslims were constantly subjected to Serb military assaults, including artillery attacks, sniper fire, as well as occasional bombing from aircrafts. Each onslaught followed a similar pattern. Serb soldiers and paramilitaries surrounded a Bosnian Muslim village or hamlet, called upon the population to surrender their weapons, and then began with indiscriminate shelling and shooting. In most cases, they then entered the village or hamlet, expelled or killed the population, who offered no significant resistance, and destroyed their homes. During this period, Srebrenica was subjected to indiscriminate shelling from all directions on a daily basis. Potočari in particular was a daily target for Serb artillery and infantry because it was a sensitive point in the defence line around Srebrenica. Other Bosnian Muslim settlements were routinely attacked as well. All this resulted in a great number of refugees and casualties."

  • Panorama of Srebrenica
    Panorama of Srebrenica
  • The franciscan Catholic chapel
    The franciscan Catholic chapel
  • The White Mosque
    The White Mosque
  • Fast Food Seka, on the place of a pre-1990s-war mosque (tombstones on the right)
    Fast Food Seka, on the place of a pre-1990s-war mosque (tombstones on the right)
  • The main road toward west
    The main road toward west
  • The main road from west toward the centre
    The main road from west toward the centre
  • The old town (Stari Grad)
    The old town (Stari Grad)
  • Ruins of Mount Guber thermal centre
    Ruins of Mount Guber thermal centre
  • Potocari Genocide Memorial
    Potocari Genocide Memorial
  • Potocari Genocide Memorial
    Potocari Genocide Memorial

See also

References

Notes
  1. ^ Official BiH elections site, www.Izbori.ba
  2. ^ [1][dead link‍]
  3. ^ Konstantin Jireček: Die Handelsstrassen und Bergwerke von Serbien und Bosnien während des Mittelalters: historisch-geographische Studien. Prag: Verl. der Kön. Böhmischen Ges. der Wiss., 1879
  4. ^ Mihailo Dinić: Za istoriju rudarstva u srednjevekovnoj Srbiji i Bosni, S. 46
  5. ^ Noel Malcolm: A Short History of Bosnia, Macmillan, London 1994; S. 22
  6. ^ A Short History of Bosnia, S. 53 ff.
  7. ^ Hoare, Marko Attila (2006). Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks. Oxford University Press. pp. 143–147. ISBN 0-19-726380-1.
  8. ^ Paris 1953, p. 104
  9. ^ http://www.icty.org/x/cases/tolimir/ind/en/tol-ii050210e.htm
  10. ^ "Srebrenica reburies 308 victims of massacre". msnbc.com. 2008-07-11. Retrieved 2009-07-11.
  11. ^ "Krstic - Judgement". International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 2004-04-19. Archived from the original on July 10, 2008. Retrieved 2009-07-11.
  12. ^ "Serbs sorry for Srebrenica deaths". BBC. 2004-11-10. Retrieved 2009-07-11.
  13. ^ "7th Session of the UN Human Rights Council" (PDF). Society for Threatened Peoples. 21 February 2008. p. 2.
  14. ^ Bosnian Institute UK, the 26-page study: "Prelude to the Srebrenica Genocide - mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks in the Srebrenica region during the first three months of the Bosnian War (April-June 1992)", 18 November 2010.
  15. ^ Naser Oric Trial Judgement, ICTY

44°06′N 19°18′E / 44.100°N 19.300°E / 44.100; 19.300

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