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The UN will vote Thursday on a resolution to recognise July 11 as an international day of remembering the genocide in Bosnia’s Srebrenica.
The massacre in July 1995 of Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces during the country’s bloody inter-ethnic war has widely been considered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, and became a symbol of “ethnic cleansing”.
Here is a timeline of the events.
Shortly after the start of the siege of the capital Sarajevo at the beginning of the Bosnian war in April 1992, Bosnian Serb troops encircle the mainly Muslim town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
Other towns in the eastern Drina valley are also captured with the help of paramilitary groups who have crossed from neighbouring Serbia.
In April 1993, with the town coming under tank and artillery fire, the UN Security Council declares Srebrenica a “safe area” under the protection of UN and NATO forces.
But in July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overrun the peacekeepers’ positions, taking some 30 Dutch troops hostage.
On July 11, the Bosnian Serb army led by Ratko Mladic take Srebrenica, causing tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the Dutch force’s compound at Potocari on the town’s outskirts.
The peacekeepers and thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, retreat into the UN base.
Mladic orders the evacuation of all civilians, including women, children and the elderly, while all men of fighting age are taken prisoner.
In the following days, more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys are systematically butchered by the Bosnian Serb forces and their bodies dumped in mass graves.
The Serbs later dig many back up and rebury them in other graves to try to hide the evidence.
Survivors tell harrowing tales of murder, torture and rape by the Bosnian Serb forces for which Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic are indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
To date, around 7,000 victims of the massacre have been identified and buried — 6,751 in Potocari’s memorial centre and 250 in other Srebrenica area cemeteries. Some 1,200 people are still missing, according to the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
On November 21, 1995, the Dayton Accords, hammered out under international pressure, bring an end to the war.
They divide Bosnia into two entities, the Serb Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia, each enjoying a large degree of autonomy and united by weak central institutions.
Karadzic and Mladic go on the run and are only captured in 2008 and 2011, respectively.
They are put on trial separately in The Hague and both sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and other crimes.
In all, nearly 50 people have been sentenced by courts in The Hague, Sarajevo and the Serbian capital Belgrade for crimes related to the Srebrenica massacre.
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