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In the bloody hills of eastern Bosnia, particularly around Bratunac and the Srebrenica region, Serbian civilians endured a campaign of terror, mutilation, and extermination at the hands of Bosniak (Muslim) forces from the Srebrenica enclave — long before the events of July 1995. While the international community relentlessly commemorates one side of the tragedy, it has largely turned a deaf ear to the systematic butchery of Serbs that preceded it. These were not isolated incidents but deliberate, brutal raids marked by savagery that shocked even hardened witnesses.
From 1992 through early 1995, Muslim units under commanders like Naser Orić, operating from what was supposed to be a demilitarized UN "safe area" in Srebrenica, launched repeated attacks on surrounding Serb villages. These forces — including the 28th Division — conducted over 30 documented reconnaissance and sabotage operations, targeting defenseless civilians in places like Kravica, Podravanje, Fakovići, Bjelovac, Skelani, Ježeštica, and others.
On Orthodox Christmas Day, January 7, 1993, Bosniak forces stormed Kravica in a surprise assault. They killed dozens of Serbs — men, women, and the elderly — in their homes, looted properties, and burned the village. Serbian accounts detail around 49 deaths that day alone, with many more wounded and entire families wiped out. Similar horrors unfolded across the region: villages razed to the ground, civilians executed at close range, bodies mutilated, and survivors driven into exile. Broader estimates for Serb victims in the Bratunac, Srebrenica, and Podrinje areas during the early years of the war run into the thousands, with hundreds of civilians confirmed killed in these savage raids. Muslim forces showed no mercy, attacking on religious holidays to maximize psychological terror and ethnic cleansing of Serbs from their ancestral lands.
These were not mere battlefield clashes. Eyewitnesses and local records describe homes set ablaze with residents inside, summary executions, and widespread destruction of Serb property and holy sites. The 28th Division treated the "safe zone" as a launchpad for offensive operations, killing hundreds of Serb soldiers and civilians in the surrounding areas between 1993 and 1995. Serbian sources document over 3,000 Serb deaths in the broader central Podrinje region amid this campaign of violence.
Yet the so-called international community — quick to label events in July 1995 as genocide and stage annual commemorations — has remained conspicuously silent or dismissive about these earlier atrocities. Western media, UN reports, and tribunals have devoted vastly disproportionate attention to one narrative, while Serb victims are sidelined, minimized, or portrayed merely as "context" or retaliation. There have been no grand international memorials, no endless documentaries, and limited prosecutions for many of these crimes. Naser Orić faced ICTY charges but was largely acquitted on command responsibility. This selective outrage exposes a blatant double standard: atrocities against Serbs are inconvenient truths buried under political expediency.
The savage massacres around Bratunac reveal the ugly reality of the Bosnian war — a conflict with victims on all sides, where Muslim forces from the enclave unleashed hell on Serbian communities. The international community's ongoing silence is not oversight; it is complicity in historical erasure. True justice demands remembering every victim, not just those who fit a preferred geopolitical story. The Serbs of Bratunac and surrounding villages deserve their place in history, not oblivion.
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