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The Siege of Srebrenica ((ボスニア語:Opsada Srebrenice), (セルビア語:Опсада Сребреницe)) was a three-year-long siege of the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina which lasted from April 1992 to July 1995 during the Bosnian War. Initially assaulted by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Serb Volunteer Guard (SDG), the town was encircled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) in May 1992, starting a brutal siege which was to last for the majority of the Bosnian War. In June 1995, the commander of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) in the enclave, Naser Orić, left Srebrenica and fled to the town of Tuzla. He was subsequently replaced by his deputy, Major Ramiz Bećirović. In July 1995, Srebrenica fell to the combined forces of the Republika Srpska and numerous paramilitary formations which included hundreds of Greek and Russian volunteers in what was codenamed Operation Krivaja '95. The subsequent massacre of the town's male population led to the deaths of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, and is considered the largest act of mass murder in Europe since the end of World War II. It was judged to have been a crime of genocide by international criminal courts. As a result, VRS General Radislav Krstić was found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of murder, persecution and aiding and abetting genocide, while VRS General Zdravko Tolimir was also convicted of genocide. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment. One of the indictments against Ratko Mladić, the commander of the VRS during the war, is for the massacre in Srebrenica. The commander of Bosniak forces in the enclave, Naser Orić, was found guilty of failing to prevent the mistreatment of VRS prisoners held in Srebrenica between September 1992 and March 1993. However, his conviction was overturned in 2008. == Background == Srebrenica is a small mining town in eastern Bosnia about fifteen kilometers from the Serbian border. According to a census held in 1991, 36,000 people lived in the municipality of Srebrenica, including 25,000 Bosnian Muslims (or Bosniaks) and 8,500 Serbs. This figure shows that about 75 percent of the municipal population was Bosniak and about 25 percent was Serb. The town of Srebrenica itself was inhabited by 9,000 people when Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992. That January, a Bosnian Serb state was declared, ahead of the 29 February–1 March referendum on independence. Later renamed the Republika Srpska, it developed its own military as the JNA withdrew from Croatia and handed over its weapons, equipment and 55,000 troops to the newly created Bosnian Serb army. By 1 March, Bosnian Serb forces set up barricades in Sarajevo and elsewhere and later that month Bosnian Serb artillery began shelling the town of Bosanski Brod. By 4 April, Sarajevo was shelled. In May 1992, the ground forces of Bosnian Serb state officially became known as the Army of Republika Srpska ((セルビア語:''Vojska Republike Srpske''), VRS). By the end of 1992, the VRS held seventy percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the outbreak of the war, eastern Bosnia, a Bosniak-majority territory before the war, was subjected to ethnic cleansing operations and numerous atrocities involving murder, rape on a massive scale, plundering, and forced relocation by Serb forces and paramilitary gangs. Taking place throughout the municipalities of Srebrenica, Vlasenica, Rogatica, Bratunac, Višegrad, Zvornik and Foča, the purpose of these operations was to create in eastern Bosnia a contiguous Serb-controlled land having a common border with Serbia. Located in the heart of what Bosnian Serbs considered their territory, Srebrenica was seized by the paramilitary Serb Volunteer Guard ((セルビア語:''Srpska dobrovoljačka garda''), or SDG) on 18 April 1992. According to a witness, "organized killings of the Muslim population began" on 21 April. On 6 May, a two-day battle between Serb and Muslim forces erupted in the town. Naser Orić, a one-time member of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs and former bodyguard of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, then assumed control of Srebrenica after helping local Bosniak forces drive the SDG and other Serb paramilitary units from the town by 8 May. Goran Zekić, the leader of the Serb population in the municipality, was killed in the fighting. In June, the Muslim population of Srebrenica established a local "war council". By December 1992, they had managed to gain control of up to 95 percent of the Srebrenica municipality and half of the neighbouring Bratunac municipality. By this time, Orić's forces had established a sixty-kilometer-long Bosniak enclave which stretched from Žepa in the south to the village of Kamenica in the north, however only to be surrounded and in dire need of food by February 1993 while the population of the enclave grew to almost 40,000 as refugees from the surrounding ethnically cleansed towns and villages sought refuge in the town. Indeed, most of the enclave's residents were not originally from Srebrenica, but from all around eastern Bosnia or Podrinje. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Siege of Srebrenica」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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