Remembering Srebrenica

In June of 1995, the command of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army prepared "Krivaja-95," the military plan of attack against the Srebrenica enclave. On the afternoon of July 5th, VRS commanders received orders to put the plan into action.
At three o'clock in the morning on July 6th, 1995, the VRS began its attack on Srebrenica. Advancing from the south, they set fire to the Bosniak homes and villages in their path, forcing thousands of civilians to flee to the UN base in Potocari where several hundred Dutch peacekeeping forces were stationed.
Soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) were unable to prevent the Dutch troops from abandoning there posts, which fell one after another to the advancing Bosnian Serb Army (VRS). By July 9th, the VRS was poised just one kilometer outside the city center of Srebrenica. The next day the ARBiH launched a counterattack, briefly forcing the Serbs back to their starting positions. Their success, however, was short-lived.
On July 11th, General Mladic entered Srebrenica with his troops, and declared before a throng of assembled journalists, "We give this town to the Serb nation...the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region."
That same night, around 15,000 Bosniak men set off from the areas of Sunsnjari and Jaglic through the forests in an attempt to reach free territory. Well over two-thirds of the men who embarked on this journey--which would come to be known as the Death March--were eventually captured and killed by the VRS.
When VRS soldiers arrived to take control of the UN base in Potocari, they faced no resistance from the Dutch peacekeeping forces. Potocari had become completely overcrowded, with more than 6,000 civilians crammed inside the compound, and an additional 20,000 sheltering in surrounding building. Conditions inside the enclave were horrendous. In addition to the shortage of food and water, the Bosniak populations in Potocari faced unspeakable abuse at the hands of the VRS soldiers including torture, beatings, rape, and murder.
VRS troops soon began to separate Bosniak men from their families. The women, children, and elderly--numbering over 25,000-- were loaded onto buses and forcibly deported to Kladanj, while the men and boys were taken to detention centers in and around the town of Bratunac. The vast majority of these men and boys, over 8,000, would never be seen alive again.

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