On July 11th, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic began the systematic killing of nearly 10,000 Bosnian Muslim (sometimes referred to as “Bosniaks”) men and boys in the area of Srebrenica, a small town located about halfway between the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Widespread ethnic violence in what had been Yugoslavia led to the outbreak of the largest armed conflict in Europe since the end of WWII (since eclipsed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022). The horrific images beamed worldwide on news programs, newspapers, and magazines shocked the world, bringing back memories of the Holocaust and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, which began in the same region.

Along with the nearly four-year-long siege of Sarajevo, the massacres at Srebrenica reminded the world that despite its modernity and sophistication, Europe still struggled with its dark past, which was made worse with the most modern weapons and technology.

Welcome to a Day in History. Thank you for joining us. Today, we bring you the tragic story of the Srebrenica Massacre during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. 

You’ll sometimes hear a word on the news or history books... “Balkanization.” Balkanization occurs when a larger state breaks down into smaller states, usually hostile to each other. The Balkan Peninsula is the large region to the southeast of Austria across to the Black Sea and south to the borders of Greece and European Turkey. The Balkan countries are Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. Serbia claims Kosovo, but most nations around the world, except for Russia and its allies, recognize it as an independent state. Greece is sometimes listed as a Balkan country as well.

For centuries, warlords, kingdoms, and empires fought over the rugged landscape: Romans, Huns, Magyars, Turks, Russians, Germans; the list goes on and on. In the late 1300s, the Ottoman Turks began to expand into the Balkans and controlled much of the region by the last half of the 1400s. One of the lasting results of the Turkish occupation, which lasted in various forms until the late 19th century, was the conversion of many people in Bosnia to Islam, which, as you might imagine, brought religious conflict into the region. With tensions high between the westward looking and Catholic Croatians or Croats and the eastward-looking Orthodox Serbs, the introduction of a large number of Muslims in the area only increased tension in what was to become Yugoslavia in the early 20th century.

#srebrenica #genocide #history #bosniacmuslims

Music: Epidemic music

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