Srebrenica: A Chronology—From 1992 to the Present
Every July 11 marks the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, the most serious war crime in Europe since World War II. Anyone who wants to understand what happened back then and what has happened since will find the key dates here—from the start of the siege in 1992 to the present day. It is a chronology of the crime, but also a chronology of the struggle for truth: with moments of hope, such as the official apology in 2004—and setbacks, such as its retraction in 2018.
April 1992: – The Bosnian War begins. Serbian forces attack the Drina Valley (Podrinje); Srebrenica becomes a besieged enclave into which tens of thousands of displaced people from the region flee.
April 16, 1993 – The UN Security Council, through Resolution 819, designates Srebrenica as the first UN safe area in history. UN peacekeepers are deployed—most recently the Dutch battalion “Dutchbat,” based at the battery factory in Potočari.
July 6, 1995 – The Army of the Republika Srpska, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb forces, launches an offensive against the safe area. On July 11, Mladić personally marches into Srebrenica.
July 11, 1995 – Srebrenica falls. Thousands flee to the UN base in Potočari. About 12,000 to 15,000 men and boys set out through the woods toward Tuzla—the “death march” begins.
July 12–17, 1995 – Women, children, and the elderly are deported; men and boys are systematically singled out. More than 8,000 Bosniaks are murdered in mass shootings and buried in mass graves.
Fall 1995 – To cover up the crimes, the perpetrators use heavy equipment to open the mass graves and scatter the bodies among secondary graves. The remains of some victims are later found in up to five different graves.
December 1995 – The Dayton Peace Agreement ends the war. From then on, Srebrenica is part of the Republika Srpska.
1996 – The first mass graves are exhumed; the Hague Tribunal’s investigations begin. In the years that follow, the world’s largest DNA identification operation is launched.
August 2, 2001 – The Hague Tribunal convicts General Radislav Krstić, commander of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, which carried out the attack on Srebrenica: For the first time, an international court classifies the crimes committed in Srebrenica as genocide.
April 2002 – The Dutch government resigns en masse following the release of the investigative report on the failure of Dutchbat.
March 31, 2003 – First mass burial in Potočari: 600 identified victims. On September 20, 2003, former U.S. President Bill Clinton officially opened the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center.
2004 – Under pressure from High Representative Paddy Ashdown, the government of the Republika Srpska is forced to establish a commission of inquiry—after an earlier RS report denying the crimes had been rejected internationally. In its reports from June and October 2004, the commission officially acknowledges for the first time that approximately 7,800 Bosniaks were executed after the fall of Srebrenica and identifies 32 mass graves, eleven of which were previously unknown. In a televised address, RS President Dragan Čavić admits that Serbian forces killed several thousand civilians in violation of international law—describing Srebrenica as a “dark chapter” in Serbian history. On November 10, 2004, the RS government, under Prime Minister Dragan Mikerević, officially apologizes to the victims’ families: It shares the pain of the families of the Srebrenica victims and sincerely apologizes for the tragedy. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressly welcomed the apology a few days later—noting that the authorities of the Republika Srpska had set an example of how to confront the painful past of the war.
July 2005 – The first Marš mira: Since then, the Peace March has followed the route of the Death March in the opposite direction every year—from Nezuk to Potočari. The few hundred participants in the early years have since grown to more than 6,000 who regularly take part, coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina and all over the world.
February 26, 2007 – The International Court of Justice confirms that genocide was committed in Srebrenica. Serbia is not found directly responsible, but is found to have violated its obligation to prevent the genocide. That same year, High Representative Christian Schwarz-Schilling enacts the law establishing the Memorial Center.
2008 / 2011 – After years on the run, the two main perpetrators are captured and transferred to The Hague: Radovan Karadžić (2008), the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs and wartime president of the Republika Srpska, and Ratko Mladić (2011), the commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb Army. In 2011, the “Gračaničko keranje” association also introduced the Flower of Srebrenica.
2013 – The youngest victim is laid to rest: the newborn Fatima Muhić. She was born on the night of July 12–13, 1995, at the UN base in Potočari and died that same night. She was not identified until 2012; she was given her name at her burial—eighteen years after her death, her mother’s wish to name her Fatima was fulfilled. She rests beside her father, who was murdered during the death march.
July 2015 – On the 20th anniversary, a UN resolution on the genocide is blocked by a Russian veto.
2016–2021 – Karadžić and Mladić are definitively sentenced to life in prison for genocide in Srebrenica. In 2021, High Representative Valentin Inzko makes the denial of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina a criminal offense.
August 2018 – A Relapse into Denial: The Parliament of the Republika Srpska rejects the 2004 Commission report and calls on the government to declare it null and void. The apology made at that time is thus effectively withdrawn. The UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, calls the move a step backward for Bosnia and Herzegovina—noting that the Commission’s findings have long since been confirmed by rulings of international and national courts.
2019 – The Supreme Court of the Netherlands upholds a ruling that the Dutch government bears partial liability for the deaths of approximately 350 men who were sent away from the UN base in Potočari.
November 2022 – Ramiz Nukić, the “bone collector of Kamenica,” dies at the age of 63. Over the course of more than two decades, he had found the remains of about 300 people in the woods.
May 2024 – The UN General Assembly designates July 11 as the International Day of Commemoration of the Srebrenica Genocide.
To this day —more than 6,700 victims are buried at the Potočari Memorial Center, and about 250 more in local cemeteries. The victims were exhumed from 150 sites, including 77 mass graves. The search continues for approximately 1,000 missing persons. Fifty-four perpetrators have been sentenced to a total of 781 years in prison and five life sentences—and every year on July 11, newly identified victims are buried in Potočari.
This chronology never ends. Every year, new entries are added: new funerals, new court rulings—and, unfortunately, new denials as well. This makes it all the more important to know the facts. For historical revisionism is powerless against documented facts.
Continue reading on Lela’s World:
– Why the whole world should visit Srebrenica
– What You Should Know About Srebrenica – The Key Facts
– Hatidža Mehmedović on the Srebrenica Genocide
– Christian Schwarz-Schilling on Srebrenica
– About the Flower of Srebrenica
Sources (selection): Judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Krstić 2001, Karadžić 2016/2019, Mladić 2017/2021); Judgment of the International Court of Justice dated February 26, 2007; Amnesty International, “Srebrenica: Still Waiting for the Truth” (EUR 63/003/2005); RFE/RL, “Bosnian Serbs Apologize for Srebrenica Massacre” (November 10, 2004); UN Press Release SG/SM/9591 (November 15, 2004); UN Office on Genocide Prevention on the annulment of the Commission’s report (2018); Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Memorial Center Srebrenica-Potočari.
