Beginning on this day in 1995, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica became the site of the first genocide on the European continent since the Holocaust. Over a period of three weeks, over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed in a genocidal massacre at the hands of the Army of Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, or VRS) led by General Ratko Mladić. Proclaimed amidst the break up of Yugoslavia, Republika Srpska was a Serb secessionist republic within the newly independent Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The massacre at Srebrenica was part of a years-long campaign of ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity perpetrated by the VRS and other Serbian paramilitary forces that targetted the Bosnian Muslim – or Bosniak – community in the territory controlled by Republika Srpska. The three-year period of violence, which took place during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995, is now recognised as a genocide by a number of bodies including the United States Congress and the EU Parliament.
In July 1996, Channel 4 News travelled to Srebrenica to report on the ongoing efforts to collect the harrowing evidence of the events of the previous year. As mass graves were being uncovered, the survivors of Srebrenica were wrestling with the dilemma of recovering the bodies of those lost. At the time, prospects for identifying the dead were uncertain, and the bereaved struggled to balance the possibility of closure with the finality of knowing the fate of their loved ones.
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