Bosnian Genocide

The term Bosnian Genocide refers to either the massacre committed by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995 or the ethnic cleansing campaign that took place throughout areas controlled by the Army of the Republika Srpska during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War.

The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by units of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić.

The ethnic cleansing campaign that took place throughout areas controlled by the VRS targeted Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. The ethnic cleansing campaign included unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship.

In the 1990s, several authorities, along with a considerable number of legal scholars, asserted that ethnic cleansing as carried out by elements of the Bosnian Serb army was genocide. These included a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly and three convictions for genocide in German courts, (the convictions were based upon a wider interpretation of genocide than that used by international courts). In 2005, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring that "the Serbian policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing meet the terms defining genocide".

However, in line with a majority of legal scholars, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have ruled that, in order for actions to be deemed genocide, there must be physical or biological destruction of a protected group and a specific intent to commit such destruction. To date, only the Srebrenica massacre has been found to be a genocide by the ICTY, a finding upheld by the ICJ.

According to the UK-based Bosnian Institute,

To say that genocide took place 'only' in Srebrenica in July 1995 flies in the face of earlier judicial rulings. Four international judgments in the especially well-argued cases of Nikola Jorgić, Novislav Đajić, Đurađ Kusljić, and Maksim Sokolović clearly confirm that genocide took place in several municipalities outside of Srebrenica in 1992. All four trials were conducted in Germany — at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — to ease the caseload of ongoing trials at The Hague. All the relevant appeals have long been exhausted, so that judgments in these cases are final and binding.