Srebrenica Twenty Years after Genocide: Ethnography, Human Rights and Everyday Life in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract
This July will mark 20 years from the time when Eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica became unforgettably part of history due to the armed conflict in Ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Despite the fact that Srebrenica was on April, 16 1993 pronounced the "UN Safe Area", in July 1995 the town has subdued the heavy military offensive of Armies of Republika Srpska (VRS).
This lead to an event titled as "Srebrenica massacre", that has later International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in Haag marked as the worse mass atrocity after the WW2 (ICTY, Facts about Srebrenica). Massacre and subsequent cover operations were planned and well organised.
On basis of these findings the ICTY has classified the event as genocide (ibid.) Genocide (unlike massacre) is an intentional and systematic attempt to destroy targeted group of people, it features identifiable phases and shows a specific internal logic (viz Zwaan, 2003). This opens up many questions that are not relevant only in "times of war", it is important to discuss them also in "times of peace".
This paper, thus, focuses on contemporary political division of BiH in the context of national, ethnic, religious and at the same time also "lived" identity with an emphasis on the situation in Srebrenica.