Srebrenica is a Bosnian town in the easternmost Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Srebrenica is a small mountain town, its main industry being salt mining and a nearby spa. Tour start from Sarajevo trough East Bosnia, where guests will enjoy in the most beautiful landscape all the way to Potočari-Memorial center.
Later afternoon, after visit of Srebrenica and lunch break, we will return back to Sarajevo. We can adjust the tour so that our guest have enough time during the visit in Memorial center. During the Bosnian War, the town was the site of a July 1995 massacre of the town’s Bosniak population, determined to have been a crime of genocide. Our guides will show you the region and point you the facts of the situation during this last war.
On the arrival to Memorial center guests will have some free time to explore center and later they will meet guides of memorial center, who survived this horrible war and experience from first hand how was it during the siege of Srebrenica.
NEVER FORGET SREBRENICA 11.07.1995.
The town of Srebrenica came to international prominence as a result of events during
the Bosnian War (1992–1995).
The strategic objectives proclaimed by the secessionist Bosnian Serb presidency included the creation of a border separating the Serb people from Bosnia’s other ethnic communities and the abolition of the border along the River Drina separating Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs’ Republika Srpska.
The Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak majority population of the Drina Valley posed a major obstacle to the achievement of these objectives. In the early days of the campaign of forcible transfer (ethnic cleansing) that followed the outbreak of war in April 1992 the town of Srebrenica was occupied by Serb/Serbian forces. It was subsequently retaken by Bosniak resistance groups. Refugees expelled from towns and villages across the central Drina valley sought shelter in Srebrenica, swelling the town’s population. The town and its surrounding area was surrounded and besieged by Serb forces. On 16 April 1993, the United Nations declared the Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak enclave a UN safe area, to be “free from any armed attack or any other hostile act”, and guarded by a small unit operating under the mandate of United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). Srebrenica and the other UN safe areas of Žepa and Goražde were isolated pockets of Bosnian government-held territory in eastern Bosnia. In July 1995, despite the town’s UN-protected status, it was attacked and captured by the Army of Republika Srpska.
Following the town’s capture, all men of fighting age who fell into Bosnian Serb hands were massacred in a systematically organised series of summary executions. The women of the town and men below 16 years of age and above 55 were transferred by bus to Tuzla. The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst massacre in post-Second World War European history to this day. In 2001, the Srebrenica massacre was determined by judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to have been a crime of genocide (confirmed on appeal in 2004). This finding was upheld in 2007 by the International Court of Justice. The decision of the ICTY was followed by an admission to and an apology for the massacre by the Republika Srpska government. Under the 1995 Dayton Agreement which ended the Bosnian War, Srebrenica was included in the territory assigned to Bosnian Serb control as the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although guaranteed under the provisions of the Dayton Agreement, the return of survivors was repeatedly obstructed. In 2007, verbal and physical attacks on returning refugees continued to be reported in the region around Srebrenica.
After visit of Memorial centar in Potočari, we will continue journey to Srebrenica town, where we will have a lunch break.
When we finish lunch we will start our drive back to Sarajevo.
