Srebrenica

This article covers the city. For the massacre, see Srebrenica massacre .

Srebrenica Сребреница
Basic data
State :	Bosnia and Herzegovina
Entity :	Republika Srpska
Municipality :	Srebrenica
Coordinates :	44 ° 6 '  N , 19 ° 18'  E Coordinates: 44 ° 6 '12 "  N , 19 ° 17' 54"  E
Height :
Area :	526.83  km²
Residents :	11,053 (2018)
Population density :	21 inhabitants per km²
Structure and administration (as of 2016)
Mayor :	Mladen Grujičić (Zajedno za Srebrenicu)
Website :	www.srebrenica.gov.ba

Panorama of Srebrenica

Srebrenica ( Serbian - Cyrillic Сребреница , German obsolete Silberin ) is a city in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina , near the border with Serbia . Since the Dayton Agreement , it has belonged to the Republika Srpska , one of two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The community had around 13,500 inhabitants at the 2013 census, which corresponds to a population loss of almost two thirds compared to 1991 due to the Bosnian War .

geography

The place is located in a narrow basin between the densely forested mountains of Eastern Bosnia, which rise here to around 1000 m. In the south, the Drina gorge forms the natural border between the municipality of Srebrenica and Serbia ; to the north is the town of Bratunac on the plain .

history

From the first mention to the 19th century

Srebrenica was first mentioned in 1376 under the name Srebrenik . At that time, however, it had already developed into an important economic and trading center of the western Balkan peninsula , the importance of which was based primarily on the rich silver mines in the area. The Romans already knew about the ore deposits and exploited them e.g. B. near their settlement Domavia . At the time Srebrenica was first mentioned, a larger Ragusan merchant colony had already established itself there, as they controlled the silver trade within Bosnia and exports by sea were almost exclusively carried out via the port of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). In the course of the 14th century, numerous German miners settled in the region, who continued to promote silver mining and, just as in Transylvania, were known as "Saxons".

After his Bosnian campaign, King Sigismund handed Srebrenica over to his vassal Stefan Lazarević in 1411 , which led to fierce fighting between Lazarević and the Bosnian King Tvrtko II over the rich city from the mid-1420s . The kingdom of Bosnia in particular found it difficult to cope with the loss of Srebrenica, whose mines, according to the sources at the time, brought in around 20,000 gold coins annually. The dispute over Srebrenica long prevented the Bosnian kings and Serbian despots from working together against the advancing Ottomans , rather the Ottoman sultans themselves were called for help from one side or the other.

With the first conquest of Serbia by the Ottomans in 1439, Srebrenica fell to the Ottoman Empire. After their retreat in 1444, Stjepan Tomaš took possession of the city and fought off attempts by Đurađ Branković to gain control of Srebrenica. Nevertheless, after an arbitration ruling by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II in 1451, he had to leave it to him. Branković's rule did not last long either, as Murad's successor, his son Mehmed II , set about the final conquest of Serbia (1458–59) and then Bosnia (1463).

With this, Srebrenica was also conquered by the Ottomans. The local Franciscan monastery was converted into a mosque , as in Jajce or Zvornik . However, the large number of “Saxons” and Ragusans, both of whom were predominantly Roman Catholic, meant that Islamization in Srebrenica was much slower after the Ottoman conquest than in most other cities in the country. With the dwindling influence of the Republic of Ragusa in Bosnia, which was now part of the Ottoman Empire, the economic strength and importance of Srebrenica and - due to the decline of the Ragusan and German colonies - the number of Christian inhabitants decreased.

Development from the 19th century to the 1980s

The Berlin Congress set in 1878, the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia, Herzegovina and the Sanjak of Novi Pazar administered by the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary . The provinces were formally annexed in 1908. During World War I, one of the region's main combat areas was in eastern Bosnia and the Drina, from where the Austro-Hungarian units advanced towards the Kingdom of Serbia . In the late summer of 1914, Srebrenica was taken by Serbian volunteers under Kosta Todorović . Shortly afterwards these were driven out by units of the dual monarchy; they killed the Serbian commander and, along with Muslim-Croatian legionaries, retaliated against the civilian population.

Srebrenica was also a theater of war during World War II. According to Smail Balić , 2000 Muslims died in Srebrenica as a result of Chetniks and other extreme Serb organizations. After the Battle of the Sutjeska in May and June 1943, the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army (NOV) lost control of Srebrenica and some other places for a few weeks. The Croatian Ustasha committed a massacre among the Serbian civilian population during this period; then the NOV retook Olovo , Srebrenica and Zvornik .

In the 19th century, the importance of the arsenic mineral springs of Guber, about two kilometers east of the city center, was recognized (the most famous being Crni Guber ). First the water was bottled and sent by Mattoni across Europe. Hotels and spa facilities were built in the 20th century. In 1980 the spa had more than 25,000 guests.

In the Bosnian War

Ruins of the Guber Spa

Srebrenica was attacked for the first time by Serbian paramilitary forces on April 17, 1992, eleven days after the start of the war in Bosnia . This resulted in looting and devastation. On May 6th, the Bosniak troops rallied to retake the city. On May 8, Goran Zekić, a leader of the Serbian community, was murdered in an ambush, after which the first Serbs fled the city or were expelled. On May 9th, Bosniak units under Naser Orić gained control of the city. In retaliation, several Serbian villages in the area were burned down and most of the Serbs left Srebrenica. The number of actual Serbian victims remains controversial to this day. In a documentation from the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation , reference to Serbian sources assumes at least 1000 Serbian civilians. The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo names 424 and 446 Serbian soldiers and 119 Serbian civilians, respectively .

The three-year siege of the city began in the summer of 1992 . It was not until March 1993 that the first UN aid convoy arrived in Srebrenica. In the meantime, the population had increased significantly due to refugees from the surrounding areas. On April 16, 1993, the UN Security Council declared Srebrenica to be a UN protection zone through Resolution 819 .

The city and the situation of the refugees in the Bosniak enclave - at that time a UN protection zone - received international attention in July 1995 when Bosnian Serbs under the leadership of General Ratko Mladić conquered the city, kidnapped over 8,000 men aged 13 and over and in the massacre of Srebrenica murdered.

After the end of the Bosnian War

After the end of the war, Bosniaks reluctantly moved back into the city and the surrounding area. In 2020, the Bosniak and the Serbian population were roughly equal. Unemployment, poverty and corruption remained widespread. In 2007 there was an attempt by Bosniaks to become independent from the Republika Srpska and to achieve a status that should be similar to that of the Brčko district . This initiative failed. In 2016, Mladen Grujičić was elected mayor of the city. He consistently denies the Srebrenica genocide.

population

In 1991 the municipality of Srebrenica had 36,666 inhabitants; 75% of them described themselves as Bosniaks , 23% as Serbs and 2% as members of other ethnic groups. The city itself had 11,673 inhabitants, 64% of whom were Bosniaks and 28% Serbs. Of the 80 villages in the municipality, 23 were mostly Serbian, the rest mostly Bosniak. Most of the villages were ethnically homogeneous, with a mixed population being the exception.

The population composition changed dramatically during the Bosnian War. Most of the Bosniak residents were displaced, fled or fell victim to the forces of the Republika Srpska . At the same time there were attacks by Bosniak troops on the Serbian villages in the region.

In the meantime, several thousand Bosniaks have returned to the community after the region was practically deserted after 1995, so that today there is again a Bosniak majority. The Serbs are mostly refugees from the suburbs of Sarajevo .

At the 2013 census, the municipality of Srebrenica only had 13,409 inhabitants, almost two thirds fewer than in 1991. 7,248 of these identified themselves as Bosniaks (54.1%), 6,028 as Serbs (44.9%) and 133 as members of another or none ethnic group (1%).

Personalities

• Selman Selmanagić (1905–1986), architect and lecturer
• Naser Orić (* 1967 in Potočari), commander of the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War
• Hamza Alić (* 1979), shot putter

literature

• Dragutin J. Dereko: Srebrenica . In: Drina. Geografsko-turistička monografija . Društva Fruška Gora, Novi Sad 1939, reprint: Čigoja, Belgrade 2004, ISBN 86-7558-299-4 . Pp. 203-214.
• Matthias Fink: Srebrenica. Chronology of a genocide or What happened to Mirnes Osmanović . Hamburg Institute for Social Research / Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86854-291-2 .
• Anton Rücker: Some things about lead and silver mining near Srebrenica in Bosnia . Vienna 1901 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://rzs.rs.ba/front/article/3630/ Updated population figures for 2018 from the Institute for Statistics of the Republika Srpska. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
2. ^ Konstantin Jireček: The trade routes and mines of Serbia and Bosnia during the Middle Ages: historical-geographical studies . Prague: Publ. Of the Kings Bohemian Society of Sciences, 1879
3. ↑ Mihailo Dinić: Za istoriju rudarstva u srednjevekovnoj Srbiji i Bosni. P. 46
4. ^ Noel Malcolm: A Short History of Bosnia. Macmillan, London 1994. p. 22
5. ^ A Short History of Bosnia. P. 53 ff.
6. ^ Marie-Janine Calic: History of Yugoslavia in the 20th century . CH Beck, Munich 2010. p. 72
7. ↑ cit. according to Hajo Funke, Alexander Rhotert: Under our eyes: Ethnic purity: the politics of the Milosevic regime… p. 52
8. ^ Marie-Janine Calic : History of Yugoslavia in the 20th century. CH Beck, Munich 2010, p. 204 , ISBN 978-3-406-60645-8 .
9. ↑ Thomas Schmid: The dead souls of Srebrenica In: Die Zeit , No. 28, July 7, 2005
10. ↑ UN report on the fall of the protection zone and the Srebrenica massacre: The fall of Srebrenica, short version. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 28, 2011 ; accessed on January 6, 2015 .  P. 13 section 34
11. ↑ Srebrenica - Reconstruction, background, consequences and analyzes of the fall of a 'safe' area (PDF; 26.3 MB)
12. ↑ Research and Documentation Center Sarajevo on the number of victims among the Serbs in the Bratunac / Srebrenica region between April 1992 and December 1995 ( Memento from May 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
13. ↑ Andrea Beer, Eldina Jasarevic: In the shadow of the genocide - A tour of Srebrenica. In: ard-wien.de. July 20, 2020, accessed July 27, 2020 . 
14. ↑ Simon Riesche: The great silence. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung # FAZ.NET . November 22, 2017, accessed July 27, 2020 . 
15. ↑ Lara J. Nettelfield, Sarah E. Wagner: Srebrenica in the aftermath of genocide , Cambridge University Press, New York 2014, p. 6 and p. 120-144, ISBN 978-1-107-00046-9 .
16. ↑ Monica Hanson Green: 2020 Annual Report on Srebrenica Genocide Denial . (Report on behalf of the memorial and cemetery for the victims of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica-Potočari). Srebrenica. 2020, p. 44 ( boell.de [PDF]).
17. ↑ po naseljenim mjestima.pdf 1991 census  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )
18. ↑ Agencija za statistiku Bosne i Hercegovine: Popis stanovništva, domaćinstava i stanova u Bosni i Hercegovini, 2013. Rezultati popisa. (pdf, 19.7 MB) Sarajevo, June 2016; P. 64

Web links

Commons : Srebrenica  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Audio feature about the UN protection zone Srebrenica on Bayern2Radio - radioWissen (MP3)