Sjeverin

Сјеверин Sjeverin
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Basic data
State :	Serbia
Province :	Central Serbia
Okrug :	Zlatibor
Coordinates :	43 ° 35 ′  N , 19 ° 22 ′  E Coordinates: 43 ° 35 ′ 0 ″  N , 19 ° 22 ′ 0 ″  E
Height :	364  m. i. J.
Residents :	380 (2011)
Telephone code :	(+381) 33
License plate :	PB

View over the Lim to Sjeverin, in the background the Sutjeska Gorge

Sjeverin ( Serbian - Cyrillic Сјеверин ) is a district (mesna zajednica) of Opština Priboj in western Serbia . It lies on the left bank of the Lim , which forms the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina here. The place can only be reached on asphalt roads from the nearest Serbian town Priboj via Bosnian territory.

geography

Sjeverin is located in the far west of the Serbian Sandžak at the mouth of the Sutjeska river in the Lim, about two kilometers south of the Bosnian town of Rudo . The Bosnian-Serbian border runs in the middle of the Lim and turns to the west north of the town exit towards Rudo.

population

At the 2011 Serbian census, Sjeverin had 380 inhabitants. In 2002 there were only 337, of which 244 had identified themselves as Serbs (72.4%), 63 as Bosniaks (18.7%) and 25 (7.4%) as Muslims . This makes Sjeverin one of those districts of Priboj with a notable Muslim minority.

Infrastructure

The only road between Priboj in Serbia and Rudo in Bosnia runs through Sjeverin . In addition, the connection between Rudo and its eastern parts of the municipality Štrpci and Mioče runs through Sjeverin and thus across Serbian territory. Until the collapse of Yugoslavia , this demarcation was not a problem in practice. Sjeverin, like its neighboring Bosnian towns, was traditionally oriented towards Priboj as the local center.

There is a petrol station at the northern exit of the village, just before the border bridge to Bosnia. There are no border controls between Rudo, Sjeverin and Uvac in the Lim valley, but between Uvac and Priboj.

history

About two kilometers above the village, high above the gorge of the Sutjeska brook, are the ruins of Sjeverin Castle (now also known as Jerinin Grad ), which secured the Lim valley in the Middle Ages.

With the collapse of Yugoslavia, the border, which encloses Sjeverin on three sides, became de jure the international state border. De facto, however, it was hardly controlled during the Bosnian War , so that an exchange between the self-appointed Republika Srpska on the one hand and the rest of Yugoslavia on the other was still possible. Paramilitary groups like Milan Lukić's “Osvetnici” also used the road through Sjeverin as the shortest connection between Rudo and Višegrad .

On October 22, 1992 - in the course of the ethnic cleansing of the Lim valley on the Bosnian side - 16 inmates of a Serbian bus were kidnapped by paramilitaries under the command of Lukić in the Bosnian town of Mioče, about six kilometers east of Sjeverin. The bus was traveling on the Sjeverin – Priboj line across Bosnian territory. All of the abductees were Serbian citizens of Muslim nationality and on their way to their jobs in and around Priboj. They were later taken to the former Hotel Vilina Vlas near Višegrad and murdered. Their bodies have not yet been found. A similar crime occurred the following year in nearby Štrpci , when 19 Serbian citizens were kidnapped by Lukić's troops from a cross-border train on the Belgrade – Bar railway line .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stanovništvo prema starosti i polu po naseljima (xls file), accessed on July 5, 2016
2. ↑ BBC online: Serbs sentenced for war crimes. (September 30, 2003), accessed July 5, 2016.