Edibe Beyza CaglarThirty years ago, ethnic Bosnian Serb forces led by now-disgraced general Ratko Mladic entered Srebrenica and killed more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys.
This town, just a few hundred kilometres from today’s Sarajevo, was supposed to be a “demilitarised safe zone” under the protection of the United Nations during the Bosnian War.
Despite its UN-protected status, how did a genocide happen here – planned and executed with ruthless efficiency and in full sight of international forces?
Moreover, how is it that even after three decades, the exact number of victims is yet to be ascertained, and their mortal remains still have not been accounted for?
This is the story behind the questions, revealing chilling Serbian tactics to cover up the genocide?
The UN’s peace promise, and its failure
On July 11, 1995, Ratko Mladic recorded a video with his armed soldiers as they marched into Srebrenica.
“Here we are, on July 11, 1995, in Serbian Srebrenica, just before a great Serb holy day. We give this town to the Serb nation. Remembering the uprising against the Turks, the time has come to take revenge on the Muslims,” he was heard saying in the video.
Dutch peacekeepers under General Thom Karremans faced intense Serb shelling. Finally, the Serbs captured 55 UN troops, and Karremans agreed to hand over some 25,000 Bosniaks who had sought refuge at a UN compound in the village of Potocari, where they were told they’d be safe and protected.
Despite being mandated to protect Srebrenica as a UN-declared “safe zone,” the Dutch peacekeepers offered no resistance when ethnic Bosnian Serb forces arrived.
Instead, women and children were put on buses and sent away to Tuzla, about 120km away from Sarajevo. Men and any boy over 15 were left behind — to be executed and buried in mass graves.
Outnumbered and under strict orders not to resist, the UN peacekeepers watched as the Bosniak civilians were taken away to be massacred.
Engineering a genocide needs a concrete plan
Executing over 8,000 people in a matter of days required military planning, coordination, and resources.
Bosnian Serb forces organised the transport of Bosniak men using buses and trucks, moving them from collection points near Srebrenica to remote execution sites, including warehouses, fields, schools, and farm buildings.
At these locations, civilians were killed in groups of dozens or even hundreds. In one case, more than 1,000 men were shot in a single night. Heavy machinery—particularly bulldozers—was pre-positioned to dig mass graves quickly. Some sites were prepared in advance of the massacre.
Military engineers covered the graves fast to hide the evidence. Satellite images, intercepted communications, and witness accounts all confirm this was a carefully planned operation—not a chaotic slaughter.
After the war ended in 1995, forensic teams have since found over 90 mass grave sites. However, it was hard to identify the victims as the bodies were not whole.
This, as a part of the systematic genocide, comes forward as the third stage: secondary and even tertiary graves.
How the bodies were fragmented and hid
When international pressure mounted and NATO began conducting aerial surveillance after the fall of Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces initiated a large-scale cover-up.
In the weeks and months after the massacre, primary mass graves were reopened with bulldozers, the bodies exhumed, and the remains transported to new sites, often dozens of kilometres away.
This process fragmented and scattered the human remains, intentionally destroying forensic evidence and making victim identification much harder.
Forensic teams later documented more than 90 mass grave sites, many of them secondary or tertiary graves containing commingled, incomplete remains.
Victims’ bodies were buried, then dug up again and transferred by trucks and mechanical diggers to several “secondary” and even “tertiary” mass graves, each one further away from where they were originally buried.
Last stage of genocide: Breaking the family chain
The genocide against Muslim Bosniaks in Srebrenica was not limited to mass executions. Serbian forces used systematic sexual violence against Bosniak women as a deliberate tool of terror and ethnic cleansing.
Women were abducted, detained, and subjected to widespread rape in detention camps and makeshift prisons in and around Tuzla and other areas.
“For a person to be able to exist, they need to know that their life, mind, property, lineage, and faith are secure. When you look at these five dimensions, the Srebrenica genocide was an intentional act that targeted all areas of human existence,” Bosniak psychologist Semiha Bahadir tells TRT World.
“What made the Bosnian War, or the Srebrenica genocide, so distinct was its aim to prevent the continuity of a people.”
During the Bosnian war, Serbian forces forced Bosniak women to give birth, creating an imposed link to the perpetrator and destroying hope for the future, Bahadir says.
This deliberate use of sexual violence aimed to break the generational chain—leaving deep trauma and ensuring that even those who survived would carry the scars of genocide far into the future.
According to Bahadir, even today, asking those born during the war about their date or place of birth is seen as a form of “cruelty and oppression.”
“It is rarely asked, because such questions can carry painful, harmful messages,” she said.
Still no graves for over a thousand
The Bosnian War ended with the Dayton Agreement in December 1995.
The prosecution for the atrocities committed in Srebrenica could only begin after the war ended and systematic exhumations of mass graves began in 1996, providing the forensic evidence needed for trials.
Since then, the Hague Tribunal, Bosnia’s state court, and the courts of Serbia and Croatia have sentenced 47 people to over 700 years in prison, plus four life sentences, for genocide and related crimes.
Yet today, many families are still searching for even a single bone or finger to bury.
Thirty years on, burials continue each year.
Identifying remains relies on painstaking DNA analysis, as bodies were often scattered in secondary mass graves to conceal the crime.
Relatives hold onto the hope of finding at least part of their loved ones so they can finally bury them.
As a Bosniak mother Hajra Catic, says, “I live for the day when at least a little finger is found, so he can have his grave. If he does not have a grave, people will say he never existed”.
The mother had searched for her son Nihad Catic’s remains for the past three decades.
At this year’s 30th anniversary commemoration on 11 July at the Potocari Memorial Cemetery, seven victims will finally be laid to rest.
The seven to be buried this year are: Senajid Avdic, Hariz Mujic, Fata Bektic, Hasib Omerovic, Sejdalija Alic, Rifet Gabeljic, and Amir Mujcic.
The youngest among them, Senajid Avdic and Hariz Mujic, were only 19 when killed by Serbian forces.
The only woman, a mother, Fata Bektic, was 67.
