America's Role In The Bosnia Genocide

After the First World War country was united with other Slav territories to form Yugoslavia. At the time, the population of Bosnia consisted of over 1,300,000 Serbs which were Orthodox Catholic Christians, million Muslim Bosnians and around 700,000 of Croats. They all were strong attached to this land by the historical and local claims. After the death of Josip Broz Tito, elections in 1990 brought nationalists to power in Slovenia, Macedonia and Croatia, which declared independence in 1991 and were recognised internationally. The Leader of Bosnia’s, Alija Izetbegovic called for independence too, and the country was recognised as independent by the USA and the EU in 1992. However, Bosnia’s Serbs weren’t happy because they wanted to be part of “Greater Serbia”. a Serbian named Slobodan Milosevic, a former Communist responded to Bosnian’s declaration of independence by attacking and bombarding the capital city, Sarajevo. Serbs shot down civilians in the streets, including over 3,500 children.

Another similarity between the two genocides was that both were started due to past hatreds between the two conflicting factions. The Rwandan Genocide was ignited due to hatred of Tutsi by the Hutu when the former were still in power. The Bosnian Genocide due to long-lasting hatred between the Serbs and Croats. When Rwanda was first colonized Tutsi were considered to be above the Hutu, but the balance of power was shifted between the two groups when Belgium abandoned the state due to revolution. When the Tutsi were in power, the Hutu were always treated inferior to the Tutsi. The hatred of the Tutsi by the Hutu lasted long enough that the Hutu took revenge on the Tutsi in the form of genocide. In the Bosnian Genocide the animosity and the hatred began even earlier. It began in the Croatian War from 1991 to 1995. Serbian would occupy 30% of Croatian land. However the Croats in the displaced territory were abused by the Serbs, and when Croatia received full independence in 1992, the Croatians took revenge on the Serbs. In the same year, the Bosnian War began between the Serbs and Croats over the newly declared independent Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In an act of revenge for the loss of the Croatian War and the aftermath from it, the Serbs took revenge in the form of

In simpler words, we people are evil and automatically judge others by their characteristics with absolutely no mercy. Of course not everyone goes as far as performing mass killings, but people do evaluate others on the most minute and basic features a person obtains. Classifying others by their appearance is what eventually leads to massacres and ‘ethnic cleansing.’ ‘Ethnic cleansing’ is a softer term used in replacement of ‘eliminating a portion of an ethnic group to get others to evacuate.’ Bosnia is one country guilty of committing this act. “(...) genocidal acts were used to attempt to instill the fear and devastation necessary to get the Muslims to leave their land and take refuge elsewhere, but that complete extermination was never the goal,” said by Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University. Another wicked performance of genocide was the ‘Tutsis in Rwanda’ debacle. The Tutsis is one of the many ethnic groups that are located in Rwanda. Basically, if you were just chilling like a villain and a government official thought you were Tutsi, you would need to present an identification card representing you as a Tutsi or not. If you were Tutsi or regretfully not carrying your card, you were generally killed on the spot. Overall, people are cruel and brutal for killing numerous people based on their ethnicity, but

Genocide is the systematic annihilation of a group (“Bosnia”). Many have lost their entire families, including children, belongings, and opportunities. The Bosnian genocide is a tragic event that led to the death of 8,000 men and boys. Bosnia's current population is 3.8 million with a 48 percent of Bosnian muslims, 14 percent of Croats, and a 37 percent of Serbs. Those responsible for the genocide focused on what they deemed as “ethnic cleansing”. It is important to share this horrific event with the world, so it does not happen again, as it has occured in so many other nations.

They occur and we neglect to notice the unearned inequity. Even though genocide is difficult encounter as actuality it is. The Bosnian genocide was a heartbreaking event that caused misery and loss of lives to 100,000 with 80,000 being of the Bosnian culture (Bosnia-Herzegovina). March 1, 1992-December 14, 1995 35 dreadful months for the Bosnians. If you think of all the terrifying things done to them they would sometimes rather be dead than alive. Could imagine being in so much agony you would wish you were dead. The perpetrators, the Serbians were making an effort to exterminate the Bosnians. They were stopped by the Bosnians who fought for their lives. This would be recognized as genocide because it shares several characteristics with

A genocide is a intended killing upon a large group of people, especially upon a certain ethnic group. The genocide in Bosnia, also known as The Bosnian War started in 1992 after Bosnian government declared independence from Yugoslavia. Bosnian Serbs did not like the idea of a free nation with majority of the citizens being Muslim. Serbs killed approximately 100,000 croats and muslims. The Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina is similar to the Holocaust because both involved the murders of certain cultures. This was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust (Bosnia-Herzegovina).

This meeting may have been what inspired the Serbs to launch an ethnic cleansing campaign in which they killed as many as 50,000 Bosniaks. The ethnic cleansing was the largest atrocity since the holocaust in Europe and much like the holocaust, concentration camps, mass grave, rape camps, and many other psychological factors were utilized by the Bosnian Serbs during this time period.

The genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina marked the first genocide in Europe since the Holocaust during the Second World War. Bosnia-Herzegovina was originally from the former Yugoslav republic. It became an independent state in 1992. After the death of communist ruler Josip Broz Tito the country fell under oppression. Religion played a significant part in the animosity of religious hatred between religions. Bosnian citizens were identified as either Orthodox Serb, Catholic Croatians, or Bosnian Muslims. The citizens of Bosnia all spoke the same language, had more or less the same Slavonic tongue, but their written language and cultures reflected their religious affiliations. Those who did not follow any religious preference during the war were

The Genocide in Bosnia was the outcome of misleadership and late intervention by the world. The Bosnian conflict was a war that led to the death of over 100,000 soldiers and civilians(War Crime). The war consisted consisted of two sides: the Bosnian-Serbs and the Bosnian-Croats. The conflict was handled improperly. It even came close to home as one american soldier was stranded in Bosnia in the middle of the war witnessing all that the UN and the government of the Bosnian-Serbs would pronounce to be false.

Lasting from 1992 till 1995, the Bosnian Genocide erupted after the ruination of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was a communist government that was formed in 1929 from several

The worse of them took place at Srebrenica, where seven thousand men and boys were murdered. The women were and children were separated; sending the women to rape camps where they were raped and tortured for months until pregnant. This all occurred in a town that was a “safe haven” according to the UN’s standards but, to most, never was but merely under the “weak” protection of the UN. The victims, which consisted of men, women, and children from as young as an infant to as old as the elderly were not spared. It is estimated that over one-hundred and forty thousand people were killed, twenty-thousand women were raped and over four million people were displaced. Till this day the bodies and location of those who disappeared are still being searched for throughout the state of Bosnia with around eight thousand people still missing from the war.

In 1997, the world witnessed the second most horrific crime in eastern Europe since the Holocaust: The Srebrenica massacre. Throughout the course of 11 days, over 8,000 Bosniak –Bosnian Muslim- males, specifically those who were of age to join the military, were rounded up, and killed by the Bosnian Serb army. The army’s defense for their actions was that they were trying to reunite Serb territory after the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina became its own state. Despite this claim, the ICTY still charged Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, two of the men who spearheaded the ethnic-cleansing campaign in Bosnia, with war crimes including genocide. However, scholars debate whether Srebrenica, albeit horrible, and other instances like itself, being labeled a genocide is a misapplication of the term. Due to the technical legal definition of what constitutes as a genocide, many crimes like Srebrenica that would morally be viewed as one, may not be in the

check for the signs. All these Bosnian people were dragged from their homes and into

The Bosnian Serbs separated the civilians at Srebrenica the woman were raped and sexually assaulted, while the men and boys were killed immediately or they were sent on busses to mass killing sites. There were approximately 7000 to more than 8000 basins killed by Serb forces at Srebrenica.

Another definitive cause of the Yugoslavian breakup was the nationalism of ethnic groups in the early 1990s. Nationalism replaced communism as the dominant ideology in the country. Slovenia and then Croatia were the first to break away, but this caused Serbia to become hostile towards the two nations. Consequently, the war in Croatia led to hundreds of thousands of refugees and also brought back memories of the harsh acts of the Nazis in the 1940s. By 1992 a further conflict had broken out in Bosnia, which had also succeeded from Yugoslavia. The Serbs who lived there were determined in remaining within Yugoslavia and to help build a more homogenous Serbia. They received strong backing from radical groups in Belgrade. Muslims were driven from their homes in carefully planned operations that become known as "ethnic cleansing". By 1993 the Bosnian Muslim government was besieged in the capital Sarajevo, surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces who controlled around 70% of Bosnia. In Central Bosnia, the mainly Muslim army was fighting a separate war against Bosnian Croats who wished to be part of a greater Croatia. The presence of United Nations peacekeepers was required to contain the situation. The idea from culminated in the Yugoslav Peace Conference,