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Srebrenica massacre

The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War. The killings were perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of Ratko Mladić. The Scorpions, a paramilitary unit from Serbia, who had been part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, also participated in the massacre. Before the massacre, the United Nations (UN) had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, a "safe area" under UN protection. However, the UN failed both to demilitarize the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) within Srebrenica and to force withdrawal of the VRS surrounding Srebrenica. UNPROFOR's 370 lightly armed Dutchbat soldiers were unable to prevent the town's capture and the subsequent massacre. A list of missing or killed people during the massacre compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,372 names. As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims had been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves; as of July 2021, 6,671 bodies had been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potočari, while another 236 had been buried elsewhere. Some Serbs have claimed that the massacre was retaliation for civilian casualties inflicted on Serbs by Bosniak soldiers from Srebrenica under command of Naser Orić. These 'revenge' claims have been rejected and condemned by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and UN as bad faith attempts to justify the genocide. In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on the case of Prosecutor v. Krstić, the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY, located in The Hague, ruled that the massacre of the enclave's male inhabitants constituted genocide, a crime under international law. The ruling was also upheld by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2007. The forcible transfer and abuse of between 25,000 and 30,000 Bosniak Muslim women, children and elderly which accompanied the massacre was found to constitute genocide, when accompanied with the killings and separation of the men. In 2002, following a report on the massacre, the government of the Netherlands resigned collectively, citing its inability to prevent the massacre. In 2013, 2014, and again in 2019, the Dutch state was found liable in the Dutch supreme court and The Hague district court of failing to do enough to prevent more than 300 deaths. In April 2013, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić apologised for "the crime" of Srebrenica, but refused to call it genocide. July 11 is the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, established by the UN.