RATKO MLADIC'S SIEGE OF SREBRENICA

General Ratko Mladic is currently resting in his prison cell at the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He slaughtered thousands of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats who were loyal to the Bosnian government's fight for democracy and freedom. His troops killed at least 10,000 residents of the besieged Sarajevo, including many children. 

Two years before the Srebrenica genocide, Mladic's troops slaughtered children and youth in the elementary school in Srebrenica -- the event known as the 1993 Srebrenica Children Massacre. Many Bosniak civilians died of hunger in the besieged Srebrenica. In Winter of 1993, approximately 5,000 Bosniaks died of hunger in the besieged enclaves terrorized by Mladic's troops. In the first three months of the Srebrenica siege, Ratko Mladic's forces burned 296 Bosnian Muslim villages around Srebrenica -- and this was more than three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Dutchbat (Dutch UN Peacekeepers) prevented General Mladic from killing women and children of Srebrenica during the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, but they could not prevent rapes and other abuses. General Ratko Mladic ordered his troops to rape Bosniak women and girls in Srebrenica: "Keep the good ones over there. Enjoy them." He told the Bosniak men and boys the massacre awaits them: "There will be blood up to your knees." 

Mladic was at the scene of the massacre at Srebrenica when men and boys were lined up for executions. He also publicly admitted killing Avdo Palic, Bosnian army commander who negotiated cease-fire in the Zepa enclave.  

You can search our archive to learn more about Radovan Karadzic's and Ratko Mladic's war crimes in Bosnia. For now, we will turn our attention to the besieged Srebrenica. Here are some documents and testimonies you may wish to read:

Srebrenica Under the Siege: 
1. Prelude to Srebrenica Genocide: Mass Murder and Ethnic Cleansing of Bosniaks in the Srebrenica Region During the First Three Months of the Bosnian War (April - June 1992)
2. Testimony by Pierre Salignon, Doctors Without Borders
3. Testimony by Christina Schmitz and Daniel O'Brien, Doctors Without Borders
4. Srebrenica Under Siege: War Hospital (Edited by Daniel Toljaga)
5. Srebrenica War Presidency Appeal for Help: "You Have Sentenced Us to Total Annihilation"
6. Srebrenica War Presidency Appeal for Help: Hunger, Disease and Death
7. Srebrenica War Presidency Appeal for Help: "Srebrenica, Worse Than Hell"
8. Srebrenica War Presidency Appeal for Help: "The pictures were worse than in horror films -- piles of mutilated and shattered human corpses, spilled brains, scattered arms and legs, heads blown off. One scene: a mother with her two dead children, one headless, the other with half a body, next to a pile of mutilated corpses. This is a bitter denunciation of international inertia. People were identified only by their clothes."