Višegrad massacres

'The Bridge on the Drina', Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, Višegrad, a scene of slaughter: "... But the bloodiest arena was the bridge itself. The structure is visible from almost every balcony and window in Visegrad, which climbs both sides of the valley. Its cobblestones are a stage at the foot of an amphitheatre; the executions were intended to be as public as possible. From her balcony, Fehida D. watched. She saw "Lukic, in his Passat, and the trucks behind, arriving on the bridge each evening". The gang would unload their human cargo, and the killing began. "We saw them by day or by the city lights, whether they were killing men that time, women or children. It took half an hour, sometimes more."

The Višegrad massacres also called the Višegrad Genocide was an act of ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Bosniak civilians that occurred in the town of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by Serb police and military forces at the start of the Bosnian War during the spring of 1992.

According to ICTY documents, based on the victims reports, some 3,000 Bosniaks were murdered during the violence in Višegrad and its surrounding, including some 600 women and 119 children. According to the Research and Documentation Center, 1661 Bosniaks were killed/missing in Višegrad.

The massacres

On 6 April 1992, the Yugoslav People's Army after a few days of fighting occupied Visegrad. Upon occupation they formed the "Serbian Municipality of Višegrad" and took control of all municipal government offices. On May 19 1992, the Yugoslav People's Army officially withdrew from the town. Soon thereafter, local Serbs, police and paramilitaries began one of the most notorious campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the conflict, designed to permanently rid the town of its Bosniak population. The ruling Serb Democratic Party declared Višegrad to be a "Serb" town. All non-Serbs were evicted from their jobs, and the murders began. Serb forces (sometimes referred to as the "White Eagles" and "Avengers" and associated with Vojislav Šešelj, leader of Serbian ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party) attacked and destroyed a number of Bosniak villages. A large number of unarmed Bosniak civilians in the town of Visegrad were killed because of their ethnicity. Hundreds of Bosniaks were killed in random shootings.

The Bridge murders

See also: Sjeverin massacre

According to the survivors and the report submitted to UNHCR by the Bosnian government, the Drina river was used to dump many of the bodies of the Bosniak men, women and children who were killed around the town and on the famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, as well as the new one. Day after day, truckloads of Bosniak civilians were taken down to the bridge and riverbank by Serb paramilitaries, unloaded, slashed or shot, and thrown into the river. In one instance, during the murder of a group of 22 people on June 18 1992, the Lukić's group tore out the kidneys of several individuals, while the others were tied to cars and dragged through the streets; their children were thrown from the bridge and shot at before they hit the water.

The Bikavac and Pionirska case

Many other victims were locked in a houses en masse and grenaded to death or burned alive. In one instance, 58 people (14 were men and the rest women and children) were identified as burned to death on the Serb holiday "Vidovdan" June 27 1992, on Pionirska Street, leaving one female survivor - Zehra Turjacanin. Zehra testified a couple of times at the Hague Tribual:

‘There were many children in that house, it’s so sad’, the witness said adding that the youngest child there was less than one year old. Most of the people were younger women with children, and there were some elderly men and women too. The Serb soldiers first threw stones at windows to break them, and then lobbed hand grenades. For a while, they fired shots at the crowd inside the house and they set the house on fire. ‘People were burned alive, everybody was crying out; I simply can’t describe what I heard then’, the witness said.

When the fire caught her clothes the witness and one of her sisters managed to get to the door, but it was blocked: a heavy iron garage door had been placed against it from the outside. However, she was able to somehow pull herself out through a small opening in the door; her sister remained inside. As she ran towards the houses in the Mejdan neighborhood, the witness saw Serb soldiers lying in the grass and drinking.

In another case, on June 14, 1992 the Serbs forced approximately 65 Bosniak women, children and old men, mostly from Koritnik village, into one room in a house in the settlement of Bikavac, near Višegrad. There, after being robbed by their captors,the house was set on fire and the civilians inside were burnt alive, leaving only six survivors.

Paklenik massacre

Main article: Paklenik Massacre

On 14 June 1992, dozens of Bosniak men were separated from an organized civilian convoy leaving Visegrad and systematically executed the next day by soldiers from the Bosnian Serb Army Visegrad Brigade, in what is known as the Paklenik Massacre. Around 50 Bosniak civilians were shot and their bodies dumped in the ravine called Propast(Downfall). The sole survivor Ferid Spahic, was a key witness in the Mitar Vasiljevic and Nenad Tanaskovic cases.

Bosanska Jagodina massacre

Main article: Bosanska Jagodina massacre

On 26 May 1992, the SDS-led Municipality organized buses to deport Bosniaks from Visegrad to Macedonia. Near Bosanska Jagodina, 17 men, Bosniak civilians were taken off the bus and murdered in front of eye witnesses in what is known as the Bosanska Jagodina massacre. Their bodies were found in a mass grave in Bosanska Jagodina in 2006.It is believed that this war crime was most probably carried out by paramilitary forces "Avengers" led by Milan Lukic, under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska.

Barimo Massacre

In August 1992, the Bosnian Serb Army, officially known as the Republic of Srpska Army attacked Barimo, burnt down the entire village and religious buildings.[1] A total of 26 Bosniak civilians were massacred.A large number of them were women and children. The oldest victim was Halilović Hanka, born in 1900 and the youngest was Bajrić Fadila Emir, born in 1980.

Eliticide in Visegrad

Eliticide is defined as the systematic killing of a community’s political and economic leadership so that the community could not regenerate. After the Yugoslav People’s Army occupied Visegrad, the Serb Crisis Committee (”krizni stab” led by Serb Democratic Party) took control of the municipality. Leading Bosniak intellectuals, political leaders and activists, members of the Islamic Religious Community (Islamska Vjerska Zajednica) and Police officers were expelled from work, arrested, jailed, called for “informative talks”, or kept under house arrest. Serb Police officials gave Serb paramilitary groups lists of Bosniaks who possessed firearms, who then went individually man to man and asked them to turn in their firearms Bosniak intellectuals were systematically murdered, these intellectuals included Safet Zejnilovic – Doctor; Fejzo Šabanija – Secretary at Party of Democratic Action (Bosniak political party); Zihnija Omerovic – leading member of the Territorial Defense; Himzo Demir – well- known Principal of Secondary School “Hamid Besirovic”; Salko Suceska – Engineer; Halil Ahmedspahic – Engineer; Behija Zukic – well-known owner of several businesses (Milan Lukic murdered Behija and her husband, stole her red Passat and drove it over the next couple of years); Tufo Tankovic – Principal of “Hasan Veletovac” School (This school would soon become a concentration camp); Safet Efendija Karaman – Imam (Muslim religious priest) at a mosque in Visegrad.

Aftermath

Except for an apparently small number who escaped, all the able-bodied Bosniak men and youths of Visegrad who had not fled the occupiers were shot or otherwise killed, according to survivors. In all, about 14,000 people were allegedly put to death, detained in concentration camps, or forcibly expelled. However, according to the 1991 census, Gorazde's town had a total population of about 7,000 people, with under 4,000 being Bosniaks.

Every day Bosniak men, women and children were killed on a famous bridge on the Drina and their bodies were dumped into the river. Many of the Bosniak men and women were arrested and detained at various locations in the town. Serb soldiers raped women and inflicted terror on civilians. Looting and destruction of Bosniak and Croat property occurred daily and mosques in Visegrad were destroyed. Serb forces were also implicated in the widespread and systematic looting and destruction of Bosniak homes and villages. Both of the town's mosques were demolished.

Many of the Bosniaks who were not immediately killed were detained at various locations in the town, as well as the former JNA military barracks at Uzamnica, 5 kilometres outside of Višegrad; some were detained in the hotel Vilina Vlas or other detention sites in the area. In 1996, Milan Lukić, Sredoje Lukić and Mitar Vasiljević were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslaviain The Hague for the "extermination of a significant number of civilians, including women, children and the elderly." In his sentence the tribunal concluded that Lukić and his troops may have killed thousands of people in the period between 1992 and 1993.

Dragutin Dragićević is serving a 20-year sentence, Đorđe Šević was convicted to 15 years, while two others were sentences to 20 years in absentia, Milan Lukić, who was in the meanwhile arrested and extradited to the Hague Tribunal and Oliver Krsmanović, remains a fugitive. The Hague Tribunal sentenced Mitar Vasiljevic to 15 years for Crimes against Humanity. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is processing or has processed the following for war crimes in Visegrad:

• Milan Lukić (Life)
• Sredoje Lukic (30 years)
• Boban Šimšić (14 years)
• Željko Lelek (13 years)
• Momir Savić
• Nenad Tanasković (8 years)
• Novo Rajak (14 years)

On 11 August 2005, journalist Ed Vulliamy described the situation of Visegrad in The Guardian:

For centuries, although wars had crisscrossed the Drina, Visegrad has remained a town two-thirds Bosnian Muslim and one-third Bosnian Serb. The communities entwined, few caring who was what. But in the spring of 1992, a hurricane of violence was unleashed by Bosnian Serbs against their Muslim neighbors in Visegrad, with similar attacks along the Drina valley and other parts of Bosnia. Visegrad is one of hundreds of forgotten names . . . As elsewhere, the pogrom was carried out on orders from the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadic and his military counterpart General Ratko Mladic, both still wanted for genocide."

On 8 February 2008, American Congressman John Olver, called for the remembrance of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and specially paid attention the war crimes in Visegrad:

As we commemorate the 13th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, perpetrated by nationalist Serb forces predominantly against Bosniaks, Bosnian Muslims, it is time to pay tribute to the tragic episodes not only in Srebrenica, but also in other less-known places in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the spring of 1992, a deliberate, centrally planned, and well-organized campaign of ethnic cleansing, mass murder, rape, torture, and intimidation terrorized the civilian population throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and took the lives of 200,000 men, women, and children. Out of those, 8,000 perished in Srebrenica alone during a period of less than five days in July of 1995. In the end, 2 million Bosnians were displaced from their homes, and the country’s rich cultural and religious heritage and monuments were deliberately destroyed. Shattered state institutions remain dysfunctional from the chaos and are struggling to cope with the significant loss of Bosnia’s population. Today, survivors are battling post-traumatic stress disorder, orphans are still searching for their parents’ remains, and new mass graves continue to be discovered. The entire western Balkans region has still not fully recovered from the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. The human tragedy that befell Bosnia and its citizens in places less known such as Bihac, Zepa, Gorazde, and Visegrad needs to be revisited and marked in its proper place in the memory of human experience and history. If the international community had possessed the will to protect the UN-designated "safe haven" of Srebrenica, it would have prevented the tragic outcome and thousands of innocent lives would have been with us here today. The world had said "never again" to genocide, only to abandon the people of Bosnia to an unspeakable nightmare. Today, let us remind ourselves of the consequences: Srebrenica was the worst single atrocity in Europe after World War II. We cannot pretend that Bosnia’s struggles are simply in the past, nor that the country has fully stabilized. The people of Bosnia are still trying to rebuild their country, to reform the institutions that were responsible for the genocide, and to move beyond ethnoterritorial divisions into a functional democratic state. As we mark July 11th, we must always remember the innocent people who lost their lives while the international community failed to act. We must acknowledge that justice will prevail only when General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are apprehended, and we must never forget the horrors that befell the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In popular culture

An account of the massacre is depicted in the journalistic comic Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco.

See also

• Uzamnica camp
• Paklenik Massacre
• Bosanska Jagodina massacre
• Srebrenica massacre
• Bosnian genocide
• Višegrad
• Željko Lelek
• Momir Savić
• Milan Lukić
• Nenad Tanasković
• Boban Šimšić
• Mitar Vasiljević

Further reading

• Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass

There is an interesting novel (2006), written by Sasa Stanisic, a young Bosniak, with the original German title 'Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert'. The author lived in Visegrad and was 14 years old in 1992. His account of the situation in Bosnia and of the 1992 genocide, through the eyes of a child, is original, funny and dramatic all together. Reference: ISBN 978 90 414 1211 9

External links

• Genocide in Visegrad
• Bloody trail of butchery at the bridge by Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, March 11, 1996
• 'The river took him' by Roy Gutman, Newsday, July 3, 1992
• The warlord of Visegrad by Ed Vulliamy and Nerma Jelacic, The Guardian, August 11, 2005
• War Crimes in Visegrad