What exactly is ethnic cleansing?next page

You might be tempted to think that ethnic cleansing refers to widespread murder and slaughter. That is part of it. But in reality it refers to many other tactics, too.

The attempt to ‘cleanse’ a territory is a political project AND a military project. It is designed to expel whatever people are considered ‘impure.’ This means forcing them to flee: through intimidation, the trauma of rape, terror, murder... and also to destroy all possibility that they might ever return.

A project like this needs to dismantle their spirit and the symbols of their pride: destroying homes, schools, holy places, and famous architecture. It can even mean outlawing a specific language or religion.

All of these tactics happened in Bosnia-Hercegovina.


film clip: ICTY Outreach Programme (0:52 sec)

 

next page

 

What was happening in the Balkans?next page

There were many groups fighting in the Bosnian war, not simply two countries. Rumors and accusations of ethnic cleansing abounded on every side.

small reference map where Croatian forces were active in the war

Proof emerged that Croat nationalists were brutalizing Serb and Bosniak prisoners in concentration camps in the southwest region near the Croatian border.

  and

small reference map where Bosniak forces were active in the war

Serbs accused Bosniak soldiers of murdering civilians after they won battles in certain towns. This was proven in some instances. In the city of Bugojno, it was proven that city leaders abused and tortured local Croat prisoners they had rounded up.

  and

small reference map where Serb forces were active in the war

Indisputable evidence now shows that Republika Srpska set up death camps to try and create a ‘pure’ state where only Serbs would live. People were forced to use the Serbian alphabet. Property was seized from non-Serbs. A common slogan painted onto buildings was: THIS IS SERBIA!

In addition, Serb paramilitaries directed attacks against any kind of non-Serb population: Muslims, Ukrainians, Romanians, and others who lived in BiH. In the Krajina region, they persecuted the Croat minority. And in Kosovo, it was against the ethnic Albanians living among Serbs.

 

next page

 

What did the commanders know about it?

One important distinction of ethnic cleansing, vs. war crimes more generally, is whether the actions are part of an official policy as opposed to brutality done by soldiers intermittently in the fog of war.

For example, Mr. Karadžić issued Directive No. 7. He specifically ordered his army to make life unbearable for Muslims in the town of Srebrenica, so they could not possibly stay and survive.

close-up of a document dated March 8, 1995 coming from THE SUPREME COMMAND OF ARMED FORCES OF REPUBLIKA SRPSKA, and signed at the bottom by its SUPREME COMMANDER, Radovan Karadžić image courtesy of the ICTY

‘Peace’ is a relative term in Sarajevonext page

Embed from Getty Images

The capital city, Sarajevo, endured the longest of capital city sieges in modern warfare. It is difficult to make sense of 3½ years of massacre and sniper fire that threatened a city’s very existence. Mortar shells were hurled down on civilian targets. Tens of thousands of Sarajevans were killed. One particular street was a favorite for sharp-shooters to fire at passers-by... It came to be called “Sniper Alley.”

Some European countries contributed to an airlift to supply Sarajevo. Residents had to survive with shortages of fuel and supplies, limited food and fresh water, while being bombed on nearly a daily basis.

 

 

 

Note: Our museum has chosen to limit the war images shown in our exhibit, but many photojournalists did capture the truly horrific nature of this war. For mature audiences who seek to further understand the level of violence, we can recommend these resources:

The UN: to intervene or not intervene?next page

Some two years later, in February 1994, NATO established a 12.5-mile exclusion zone for heavy-weapons around the city. It was the international response to a Serb mortar shell that killed 68 civilians. NATO insisted that Bosnian Serbs put their guns under UN control.

But the exclusion zone quickly began to collapse.

photo of a soldier with a machine gun

A British soldier keeps watch atop of an armoured carrier as it escorts convoys of firewood into Sarajevo. © IWM (BOS 65)

As the massacres continued, local disappointment only grew in the UN and NATO’s promises.

There were periodic NATO bombings on Bosnian Serb positions in the hills. To some Sarajevans, the NATO action seemed nothing more than “pinpricks” — and did nothing to actually hurt the forces that were hiding out in bunkers. Their hope of rescue was diminishing. But for other desperate residents, the belated NATO bombers inspired daydreams, that these bombs could mark the beginning of the end of the war...?

 

The shifting rhetoric in the US:

photo of Bill Clinton in 1992

“We cannot afford to ignore what appears to be a deliberate and systematic extermination of human beings based on their ethnic origin. I would begin with air power, against the Serbs, to try and restore the basic conditions of humanity.”

Candidate Bill Clinton • 6 Aug 1992
photo by Kenneth Zirkel, CC-BY-SA

 

but then...

“There may be some potential down the road for something to be done in connection with a peace–keeping operation, but I think it’s something we have to be very skeptical about. We don’t want our people in there basically in a shooting gallery.”

Newly-President Clinton • 21 May 1993
photo by Bob McNeely, Public domain

 

photo of Bill Clinton in 1993
photo of Bill Clinton in 1995

“It’s tragic. It’s terrible. But their enmities go back 500 years.... Do we have the capacity to impose a settlement on people who want to continue fighting? ...We cannot do that here. So I believe we’re doing the right thing.”

President Clinton • 5 June 1995
photo by Marya.Dubovnickaya, CC-BY-SA

 

A 12-year old refugeenext page

Kenan Trebinčević was 12 years old when the war broke out. His family were Bosniaks (recall that this refers to Bosnians who are Muslim). He witnessed the destruction of his society.

His father and his older brother were arrested and sent to labor camps twice, although both times his family was able to have them freed. Kenan eventually escaped to the United States.

Come visit the Peace Museum to hear excerpts from The Bosnia List, Kenan's memoir of these times.

a poloroid family photo showing 5 people, but each of their faces has been scratched out of the photo

Giving witness, musicallynext page

photo of Vedran Smailović playing the cello

Vedran Smailović, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera, decided to stand up to fear after a mortar shell in May 1992 massacred ordinary people waiting in a bread line. The very next day, Smailović dressed in his formal wear for a classical concert and carried a chair and his cello out into that courtyard, and he began to play. He knew that sitting still outside opened up the risk of a sniper killing him. Yet he repeated his performance in the square every day, for 22 days — one performance for each civilian who had been killed.

Visit the Peace Museum to find out the details of his heroic acts and to hear him play the selection he is most famous for!

A newspaper refusing to close

Oslobođenje (“Liberation”) started out as an anti-Fascist newsletter during the WWII, then became a Communist Party mouthpiece when Tito led the government of Yugoslavia. By 1990 it was led by editor Kemal Kurspahić, who re-focused the journalism on facts, not editorializing. He made a point to hire staff members of all of Bosnia's ethnicities.

Come to our museum to read how they defied the shelling that nearly destroyed their building. Oslobođenje managed to publish their paper every single day of the war, except one.

photo of the severely damaged building where the newspaper Oslobođenje had its offices photo courtesy of Al Wolf

What caused the tide to change?

Little changed in the dynamic of the war until August, September, and October of 1995. In those few months, three major things happened:

1.

First, the Bosniak and Croat armies started to work together. They won major battles in August and September that started to regain territory that was lost to Serb forces. Meanwhile, the European Community and the USA had finally had enough of the massacres in Sarajevo. NATO was authorized to use massive airstrikes on Republika Srpska, and for the first time, Serb forces started to lose.

illustration of three fighterjets flying over the map of mountains surrounding Sarajevo NATO’s “Operation Deliberate Force” from late Aug-Sept 1995 sent 400 aircraft to bomb Serb positions who were laying seige to Sarajevo. It was the largest military strike in NATO’s history.

2.

So the Serbs were willing to entertain a negotiation. They even agreed to be part of a shared delegation with Serbia to participate in talks. This was a major new development: as Serbia’s top leader, President Milošević suddenly had the ultimate authority to negotiate for the Bosnian Serbs!

3.

Then the US diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, made a demand that went beyond mere diplomacy. He took a moral position: that Mr. Karadžić and General Mladić could not participate in Dayton peace talks. If they set foot in the USA, Holbrooke warned, they would be arrested immediately for war crimes.

The table was set for a break in the fighting. But could peace prevail?

 

 

a map of Bosnia-Hercegovina