The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as Srebrenica Genocide, was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak males, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić during the
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Bosnian War. In addition to the Army of Republika Srpska, a paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the "Scorpions" participated in the massacre.
The Srebrenica massacre is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II.[7] In the unanimous ruling "Prosecutor v. Krstic", the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in The Hague, ruled that the Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide, the Presiding Judge Theodor Meron stating:
By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks], 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.
The Srebrenica massacre was also confirmed as a case of genocide in the ICTY judgement "Prosecutor v. Blagojevic " and in the International Court of Justice judgement "Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro".
The United Nations had previously declared Srebrenica a UN protected "safe area", but they did not prevent the massacre, even though 400 armed Dutch peacekeepers were present at the time. The massacre included several instances where preteen children, women, and elderly civilians were also killed. The list of people missing or killed in Srebrenica compiled by the Federal Commission of Missing Persons so far includes 8,373 names.
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