@@dylan-5287you'd think after the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia and all the others we'd know a genocide right at the start but nope. The US is currently helping fund one in Palestine.
I'm Bosnian, and the worst thing about this war and genocide is about how fresh it all is. My mother's best friend is a woman who came from a Srebrenica concentration camp. She was there when she was only 17, and while she never tells anything, she's a skinny woman with a ton of health problems, most of which center around PTSD and female reproductive organs. She says often "whatever I've lived through, it would have been fine if any of my brothers or my parents survived". Another mom's friend is from Brcko, a small city northeast of Bosnia. She was in a concentration camp too, and, same as the previous one, has a ton of similar health problems. At least she has her brother alive, she says. Neither of them can have children. You will notice that most of the victims of the genocide are men, and it might confuse you. Indeed, most men killed, especially in Srebrenica, were young, capable men. These men, however, were wholly unprepared, had no weapons, and were indeed civillians. As to why mostly men were targeted? Well, see, in Bosnia and Serbia alike, back in the 80s and 90s, the family line would continue by the male children, while girls would be married off into another family line- and when she does marry, she takes the surname of the new family, and completely moves into that family, calling her husband's parents her own (yes this is patriarchy at its finest, and it's changing a lot nowadays, but back then this was the case in most families). "Purity" before marriage was a big concept as well. So basically the plan was: kill off all the men and boys so the family line doesn't continue, assaulting girls for the fun of it, but also if she becomes pregnant, how great, she'll bear a Serbian child. Boys as young as 12 were killed, and many were saved only because their mothers managed to pass them off as girls somehow. "Pure" girls also were preferred by the soldiers, so they favored unmarried women. Women typically married at the age of 17-20 back then, especially in more rural places. There are only rare accounts of what women went through in this war, because of the shame culture- and when I say rare, I only ever heard of 3-4 from the entire country. One thing that Simon didn't mention is how, after the Srebrenica genocide in particular, there was a huge action by Serb military forces to cover up their traces, so they took some trucks and tried to scatter around the mass grave sites, to make the bodies more difficult to find. Years later, when the excavations started to give the victims a proper religious burial, bones of one individual person would be found in multiple mass graves. Some people would be buried with only a few bones, the rest of the body never found. I'd still like to point out, as a Bosnian, I feel like it's a responsibility of mine as well, that very little of what modern day Serbia and Bosnian Serbs are is responsible for this. Yes, there are still plenty of criminals who were never convicted, but outside of that, Serbia is a beautiful country and Serbs are generally hospitable people. It feels like whenever we talk about this, we have to preface that there is a difference between violent criminals and normal people who live in Serbia today, but this has to be mentioned and repeated. Serbia does not equal evil.
The little news coverage that made it all the way to Iowa deeply affected me. Seeing images of children who had never known a normal safe life especially. It made me wish I could scoop them all up in my arms and keep them safe. Thoughts like this still keep me awake at night if I don't take sleeping pills. All the little ones around the world who have never known what I took for granted growing up is so heartbreaking. I mean, the atrocities adults are subjected to disturb me as well but with the children it hits deeper, I guess. Hope that makes sense?
A woman taking her husband's family's name doesn't seem like patriarchy to me, or if it is it isn't automatically negative. The rest of that information is very important and interesting, so thank you for that also.
I was born in Srebrenica in 1994. The majority of my male family members were killed, including my father, grandfather, and three uncles. Even those who survived are still scarred to this day. The life was never the same for them, and it will never be.
@@LunarWolf-H8I'm not Bosnian but let me tell you something. Those serb war criminals are rotting in jail and Bosnia gained independence. I'm happy for justice.
@@Wolf-2210 you're not because you're brainwashed. We stopped another muslim state in Europe and another genoide against us on our soil. And they were the ones to start it and play the victim later. They had jihadist squads and camps for Serbs
Never be afraid to tell your story. Thank you for sharing this comment. It's a tragedy that you even can...but evil will always rise - good can curb it by remembering history and speaking up: quench the embers of hate before they burn people.
@@LunarWolf-H8 That you feel this way is sad - we're all brothers and sisters on this planet. Don't let ideology turn you into a perpetrator of hate. You can be so much more than that. But this line of thinking just reduces you into insignificance.
I saw it. Smelled it. My first deployment was to Bosnia in 1994. I've seen everything evil humans will do to. eachother. I've been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since. But my experiences in Bosnia has scarred me forever.
@@shinren_ In Iraq and Afghanistan it was a shooting war. That's easy. Being a UN soldier and having to watch neighbours rape, burn and displace each other because of religion, ethnicity and ancient grievances is horrible.
@@NICOLAI_VET grape happened in iraq too because of american soldiers villages got bombed that had nothing to do with the war a lot of atrocities commited in those countries too by the west
@@shinren_ Iraq and Afghanistan were failures. We should never have tried to push our way life down on the Iraqi or the Afghan people. But everything is crystal clear in hindsight. I fought the wars my government told me to. I have no regrets.
Simon, I was in Bosnia for a year with the U.S. Army at the end of the war. I saw the brutalism first hand. You are right, people are not taught what happened. I tell anyone who will listen.
The testimonies of firsthand witnesses are essential to learning what happened and trying to learn from this history so we can try to avoid it again. I am glad you share your story. I hope you will write it down. History needs first-hand stories like yours. Thank you.
Yugoslavia was such a shock in a modern Europe. The events that occurred were unthinkable only a couple years prior. I mean Sarajevo held the Olympics less the 8 years before it was besieged for years.
The unfortunate effects of the Cold War Yugoslavia stayed afloat and was prospering until they stopped getting funds from the Soviet Union and the US which led to hyperinflation that led. To a shitty economy that led to the rise of nationalism
@@gumpyoldbugger6944 Really? do tell. I suspect that the school you are protesting has failed you in that you clearly do not know the definition of genocide.
@@gumpyoldbugger6944Not that I disagree, but it's always a bit surprising to see some advocates for western interventions in the middle east coming back.
Hi I am serb from BiH, my fathers mother was captured and killed by bosnian muslim army, my mothers mother was indjured by bosnian muslim granate, my brother’s wife with her family was prisoned by bosnian muslim army for one year only because they were serbs ( she was 18 years old) . I know thousand such stories but we only hear one side?! And what about Croatia 1995?
@@Dr100k2Bosniaks had embargo, they had no guns yet alone a grenade. You need to understand that being the aggressor such as the Army of RS and being the army of defence and freedom fighter such as the Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was is not the same. It was not planned in advanced by the Bosniaks to fight it was a matter of survival. I do condemn each individual who committed a crime and you need to say where it happened how and what to prosecute individuals. But the grenade story… I am having a hard time believing that since Bosniaks went to defend the country in sneakers nobody had ammunition yet alone bombs.
My dad was being loaded onto one of those school buses when one of the guards told him not to get on. It was his childhood best friend. he spent about 6 months in one of the camps until the UN came and liberated them. He was 6'5" and weighed 46kg when he was rescued. His family all escaped physically intact but still has the psychological scars to this day. I'm glad to see a video about this because not many people know about this horror. He is currently raising money for Ukraine and Palestine because he knows genocide first hand. If this video upset you then please do the same.
I'm so sorry that your dad and your family went through that, my friend :/. I'm glad that they got out alive. I see that you play osrs, what level are you? If you need any help on osrs, feel free to respond, and we can connect on the game :).
Raising money for hamas, not Palestine... those criminals steal the food from their own peoples mouths and medicine from their hospitals while the virtue signallers continue to pour money into hamas so they can continue the war and murder of innocent civilians.
Second wife of my great-grandfather had 4 children, a Serbian woman. In spring 1942, in village near Prijedor city, all 4 children were brutally killed on her eyes by Ustashe Croat soldiers. Baby was taken from her arms and stick to bayonet. Most of people never made it to concentration camp, they were usually slaughtered in their villages (e.g. village Prebilovci). She survived a war, and lived and died in Belgrade after the war. She was deeply respected by our family.
@@Bigredfitnessmoshe😂 so white phosphorus on civilians is just regular war stuff too right, as well as the explicit use of starvation as a weapon on innocent women and children? Must be a fan of collective punishment too right? There are videos of the occupation shooting at a group of literal children and murdering them. What difference is their of a war and a genocide if the war is more brutal against innocence than a genocide ?
I was born during the tail end of this war. My father was an officer, therefore not only responsible for many soldiers, but also my mother and their family. My parents brought me into this world despite the risks, and thankfully most of us survived. The Dayton Accords were signed shortly after my first birthday, and we were eventually able to resettle in the US, where a relative happened to already be living. My parents & other family members, friends, and many others within our local diaspora all wished to move on from the war, as it had irrevocably changed their lives. They always did their best to not only shield me and others of my generation from the horror and their trauma, but also preserving our culture/traditions as we navigated a strange new world. In fact, in the years since our cultural identity has never been stronger, and we've never forgotten what brought us to this point. Fortunately, most of us have since become citizens in our respective new home countries and have been able to forge brand new lives out of our shared suffering. I've been fortunate enough to visit my homeland multiple times throughout my life so far, and from what I've seen I'm happy to report that, while not perfect, things have been steadily improving over the past few decades. It's easy to forget that whenever war breaks out, the people who suffer the most are civilians, just like you. Having almost everything you know and love taken from you is something no one should have to live through. When I was a kid, I once naively hoped that that was going to be the last war in human history, because I fundamentally couldn't understand why someone would choose to kill others based largely on arbitrary factors, regardless of their justification. I still don't.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to share this with us. Maybe one day we'll realise that god us within us all and hatred is the real hell. Living peacefully amongst your loved ones : that is heaven. Somehow hard to live in heaven with scars all over though...and no grenade is gonna get you there.
I had a coworker about 10 years back who actually lived thru this and spent almost a year in a refugee camp. said he was lucky to be alive and happy to be in America.
I live in south africa. I was in school in the early 90s and i recall a massive influx of Bosnian and Yugoslavian people. I made friends with lots of them and they told me of the horrors their families experienced. Some really sad stories. Thank you for the upload
I was born in '92, so thankfully the Bosnian kids I went w/ never had to live through that tragic stuff... They moved while they were still very young, or still in utero. They did talk about there being a war their families escaped from, but... Thankfully they were able to talk about it from a safe emotional distance & were grateful they were free/alive.
I've know a number of Bosnians who made it to my country during and after the war. One of the craziest things is that a lot of the enemies were their former neighbours and friends. How can you ever feel safe again anywhere or trust anyone after that?
Not sure what you fought over? Was it religions again? Language, just speak English. Colour BS again? Stop listening to old drunk uncles. Laws? Vote for changes and ask politicians if they support say abortion rights? Why the killing ... Get over the past make the world better.
I’m Dutch. Had to stay in a homeless shelter for a while. Here I met a Bosnian Muslim. I got to know him by playing basketball, he wanted to be a pro when he was young, but was recruited into a death squad. His hands never stopped shaking because of how much he used his automatic weapon, even 20 years later. He was an intimidating guy, I was only 19, but he turned out to be one of the only people that actually helped me get out of the situation. His stories were brutal and the frankness of how he told them disturbed me even more. This war was one of the most awful ever, neighbour fighting neighbour overnight
@@Ofhumanbondage-z5w thank you. Obviously. Till 1993 Bosnian Army which formed itself AFTER the aggression begun (after 6.april 1992 from civilians in frmr YU Territorial Defense, Bosnian police, street kids, and defected YU Army officers) had only light weapons and items won from defeated Serb aggressors. There were no bullets enough for defense! Only near 1994 some heavier weapons were allowed by EU and US to reach Bosnian Army defenders. The person he met must be Serb who participated in war crimes, possibly genocidal acts against captured civilians executed in mass graves and their homesteads.
I remember being in middle school and learning about it on the news. It’s amazing how often we say “never again” and it happens again somewhere else within a decade.
I was 3 years old when I became a refugee, my cousin and I together with our mothers had to flee during the night on a boat piloted by our grandpa, while our fathers stayed behind to defend the town.
I went to high school with a girl whose family had fled Bosnia during these events. (I live in Tennessee, USA) She never talked about it. I think she just wanted to forget and move on. Thank you for bringing this terrible tragedy to modern attention. May we never forget.
We got many Yugoslavian refugees to Sweden during the 90's. To hear their stories is heartbreaking. Thank you for talking about these "less popular" conflicts!
@@MonkeWithThaZa I disagree. Of cours you have the Yugo maffia and criminals too. But the once I have worked with were children when this happened and they are working hard to build a life here in Sweden.
@MonkeWithThaZa There are a lot of statistics showing how many and how fast the bosnian refugees were able to adapt to the swedish society, meaning language, work and education.
I had a good friend who had escaped Yugoslavia with her parents to Toronto. They were Jewish and she eventually relocated to California. Her name was Ruth and she made jewelry. I still have a necklace she made for me. Thank you for covering this horrific story. When will Humans learn to get along?
Unfortunately we will all never get along completely but hating a person because they were born on a different patch of dirt than yourself is just something I will never understand. Even sillier here in america where even being born in the same hospital isn't enough, it just comes down to how dark your skin is. :(
@@sennadesillva🎯 makes no sense to me either! “I’m better cause I was born here” It’s such a bull sh*t excuse but sadly it still happens, and sadly probably won’t stop anytime soon if at all.
@rwxz75 Agree, but there’s a lot more to it for me. Grew up religious and got punished for every little thing they could find. But also think that *IF* there is a god he’s a pretty crappy one to allow all this horrible sh*t to happen over and over again…
Disproportional wealth will always cause people to find reasons to “other”. It always comes down to who can get what and who has to lose for them to do so.
Over in North Carolina there are many Bosnian folks that came over as refugees back then. I've mostly met grandparents though, because their grandkids would need to translate for them at their appointments. The grandparents always seemed really stoic. Probably not very surprising.
Hi Simon, I've been following your channels for a number of years but I never thought I'd see a segment on the Bosnian genocide let alone the Višegrad massacres. Me and my family are originally from there. I lost several family members and relatives in the genocide, the youngest was my cousin, few months younger then me. I was lucky, he wasn't. On their behalf, thank you for drawing attention to the Bosnian genocide.
As a Canadian who grew up close to a military base, I know dozens of people who went overseas to peace keep in Bosnia. The stories I’ve heard are amazing and disgusting.
@@keca.4324 also a black mark in NATO history, because the US and France both refused to help the Dutch, even though they were very aware of what was going to happen.
As I was a child during the Bosnian Genocide, the parents and my grandparents did knowing about this about the daily news and the newspaper and from refugee who can flee from Bosnia.
My Uncle was a Canadian peace keeper during the war. His stories were horrible. I was only 12 when he told me them but I never forgot. He told me in one place they found the Serbs hung bodies on meat hooks in a smashed out butcher shop window. Another guy put heads in between his handlebars on his motorbike and would drive around... Looking back, I think I was too young to really understand what it takes to do this to another human. Thank you for covering this.
Remember when Canadians run away from my hometown and later were too afraid to come back....Problem is EU and USA put ARMS SANCTIONS on Bosnia so we did not have proper weapons to fight back and had to rely on Canadians,Americans and EU which caused deaths of 100,000 people.
Between 1945 and 1992 nothing resembling a genocide happened in Europe. The Ukrainian war is being fought much more "cleanly" than the Bosnian one, so in my opinion it doesnt qualify. And palestine / israel are not in europe.
@@JusufBideovic how it does not qualify? russians are taking children to reeducate them, destroy schools and churches, claim ukrainians have no real identity and our language is just an accent. Also, Holodomor
@@JusufBideovic That's because the Soviet Union and today's Russia don't keep any records. Russia fights clean? Civilian areas in Ukraine have been bombarded daily for the past 2 years. Now Russia has even law that any new-born children of non-Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine have to be taken by the Russian state immediately. Where do those stolen children end up? Nobody knows. No records are being kept. It's a bad idea to base truth on just ''Innocent until proven guilty''. Truth doesn't care about what we can or cant prove.
@@JusufBideovic The war Russia is waging on Ukraine is not being fought" cleanly", -(are any wars?) There are now hundreds of thousands of war crimes that have been committed by Russians, and the rhetoric on Russian television is definitely genocidal with commentators declaring Ukraine does not exist that , Ukrainian culture does not exist, and speculating on what percentage of the Ukrainian population need to be exterminated in order to teach the rest obedience to Russia. Have a look at Russian Media Monitor by Julia Davis. She puts on the most popular Russian talk shows with subtitles. .
I actually went to school with some Bosnian refugees in the 90s, I think I was in 1st grade. At the time, I was too little to understand what had happened, though. So sad.
If your only source of information about the whole thing is just this clip i'm sad to say that you still don't understand it, but if u whish to there are YT clips that explain the whole thing properly and objectively.
Same here. In my class we had I think 3 Bosnians and 2 Serbs for a number of years. We got told they had to move to my country because of a war, and we had to be extra nice to them and help them learn our language, because some of their families had died. You could tell there was mutual fear between the children in the beginning, but they soon became friends. I found it the most natural thing in the world that they would; they came from the same place, spoke the same language, and all had lived thru something horrible. I was too privileged to understand why the grown ups made it such a big deal. Why wouldn't we all be friends?
Days and weeks after the genocide, I still remember occasionally people showing up from the woods with horrific stories of how Serbian army hunted them like animals. You cannot even describe horror in their eyes. Not to mention stories of women who suffered in concentration camps, soldiers teasing them which one of their children they will kill next. There are 1st class nazis still in power in Serbia today, and EU makes deals with them. It is such a disgusting state of the affairs.
Theyre worse than nazis. At least german people recognized and accepted the horrific stuff their soldiers did and never came close to it again. Between serbian civilians this is seen as a great act of heroic deed and they refuse to accept they did anything wrong and would most surely do it again. There is one worse-than-nazi even in your replies, they cant hide their true genocidal colours and intentions.
My best friend & her family immigrated to Canada in 1998 from Bosnia. I never understood just how horrific the situation was over there. I heard stories but my brain could never comprehend just how bad it was.
Knew a Serbian woman that was a soldier back then, she removed her ovaries after the war when she came to my country, she said she didnt want to bring kids in this horrible world.She was so broken, worked as a bodyguard, 2 meters tall and muscular.
@@shinren_ There were Serb children in Bosnia, and attrocities on all sides. The vast majority commited by Serbs, for sure, but still thousands on civilians died on all three sides.
I went to Bosnia in 1995 under the UN Blue Hats, We were a Force that had their hands tied behind their backs... At the end of 1995 the Dayton Peace agreement was signed and the UN was then removed and replaced with NATO. I worked under IFOR, the killings didn't stop ! We located so many mass graves... It was terrible, and yet those perpetrators all went free...
In the mid/late 90s, I remember my elementary school having an assembly about the genocide (speaking about tolerance, with a guest speaker who was a Holocaust survivor and an Afghani woman who had also fled from war who became a teacher/aid(?) at my school). There was a group of Bosniak women who had moved into the area at the time and enrolled their kids in my school. I had never really thought about the fact that they were all women with female children who had moved into my neighborhood in a small town on the East Coast US, but now I understand why that probably was; it's sick and incredibly sad. Unfortunately, the few kids I had met didn't really get along with anyone in the area, either. At the time, I had no idea what kind of horrors they could have possibly been through, and on top of that, they were often bullied for being Muslim or just "different" in general. I hope those ladies are all doing alright now. It's good to learn about what happened, horrible as it is, as I was too young to understand at the time.
A very good friend of mine in Germany,survived these massacres as a toddler along with her parents,her grandparents and dozens of her relatives didn't survive
90s kid here 1st time I ever saw real war on TV was the yugoslav wars I didn't know what was going on at the time but when I saw images of the bodies my ww2 veteran grandfather told me "this is why we don't need more wars and don't you ever forget that you're are not better than anyone else because they're different from you."
I grew up on stories of this war from my grandpa who escaped yugoslavia as a child. Didnt realize it wasnt common knowledge until waaay later. Thank you for covering it!
Simon, thank you for covering this topic, the stories of the Bosnian war are not known to many. As a Bosnian I could not stop crying watching this video. All the best to you.
I wonder why Serbs used memories of WW2 to inflict horror on Bosnians. The fact that many Serbs still evoked their past horror endured during the WW2 to justify for their actions in Bosnia is shocking.
Every genocide I know of was committed from a position of a victim. The Germans killed Jews because they supposedly were the victims of international Jewry, the Turks committed genocide on Armenians because they supposedly wanted to protect themselves from Armenians working for the Russians, the Soviets committed genocide on Ukrainians to supposedly defend themselves from kulaks, fascists etc. No aggressors sees himself as the aggressor but the victim
@@Ivan-gp4trYou can't compare ww2 with Bosnian war in ww2 after Germans occupied Yugoslavia Croats wanted to kill 1/3 of Serbs 1/3 to expel and 1/3 to assimilate and then Serbs started making uprisings. Bosnian war started because Croats and Bosnians wanted independence from Yugoslavia and Serbs from Bosnia wanted to stay in Yugoslavia or to be independent. Then war and war crimes started happening and all sides did them.
@@milutinpetrovic7775 But why Croats wanted to do it? Im not excusing them. But you were constantly through out history claiming their land, and all together just claiming that they are in fact Serbs and that they have not the right for their country. Plus many other provocations. There was a reason for their crimes, (im not saying its justified, its not), but they didnt do it because they were bored...
Oh, I knew about it. My company was deployed to Hungary and my platoon was stationed in Slavonski-Brod. Just about every day I pulled security on the Bosnian side of the bridge on the Sava river. We would also conduct patrols into Bosnia and around Croatia up to the Hungarian border. We dealt with the locals on both sides, it was interesting times.
I lived as a refugee for 7 years in 3 different from ages 2 to 9. I have no direct memory of leaving Bosnia, so the first memory I remember as a child was the first camp I arrived too, a converted military barrack in Germany
Crazy how in the U.S schools this is never mentioned. I’m 23 now and I have a friend from Bosnia and talking to him has really made me learn more about the conflicts that happened in Eastern Europe.
people are horrible to eachother whenever they get the chance. distasteful and saddening. to quote shakespeare : "Hell is empty, and all the demons are here"
@@synaestesia-bg3ew Bell-end! Lots of people served in Bosnia for the UN, albeit how useless it mainly was, which is what the original comment was about.
I went to school with a girl who survived this (actually come to think of it, I went to school with a lot of survivors of genocides...) As a child of divorce I was already well versed in not asking where someone's father was, it wasn't until my mum ended up talking to her mum that I realised why she had no male family members.
If the event in Srebrenica were a genocide she would not have survived it. Women, children and the elderly were evacuated by the Serbs to the Muslim held areas of Bosnia. It was the men of the fighting age who died. Some were prisoners who were massacred but many were killed in combat while trying to break through to the Muslim held town of Tuzla. The breakthrough column suffered heavy artillery barrage. Nobody is denying that a POW massacre is a war crime. But labeling it a genocide is twisting facts for propaganda purposes.
@@nullv01d Ignore him. Just ignore him. You'll thank me later. He can't help himself. Its a doctrine to deny it. He was taught his whole life to deny it.
Was is it a genocide if only men in fighting age died? LIke similar stuff west do at Kosovo ,in Racak when 50 Albanian terrorist were killed ,West "tranform" them to "civlians" and it was reason NATO to attack Serbia but you go to Albania there is multiply statues off killed leader off that group with machine gun ,so that "civilian " has a statues with mashine gun in his hand
While I lived in Denmark I met a young Bosnian guy who had come to Denmark as a child refugee. His parents had been killed. One of my friends, a crew chief on a Marine Black Hawk, was there pulling kids out.
What this guy didn't tell you was the Dutch Soldiers commandeering Srebreniza told all Refugees( Bosnians) that the only way they can enter is turn in their weapons. Then when Srebreniza got surrounded, Those same UN troops surrendered and Fled leaving the Bosnians to be Slaughtered!!! United Nations troops ALWAYS cause more harm than good.
Please exclude Rwanda from your catch-all description of UN forces. The UN sent Canadian General Romeo Dallaire to Rwanda. Dallaire was given ZERO support and was not even given a mandate to prevent the genocide. He was left so impotent to act he ultimately had a breakdown and suffers from horrific PTSD. 1,000,000 people slaughtered in one month.🇨🇦❤️
The genocide in Bosnia claimed about 33,000 lives during the four-year conflict, while the one in Palestine claimed about 37,000 lives in nine months😢😢. ? sad reality
You don't mention that this was a genocide based on religion. The Serbs wanted to rid the area of the Bosniaks (Muslim Bosnians) to "right the wrongs of the Ottoman empire". I met many young Albanian and Kosavar Muslim men in the early 2000's who were refugees (I was a young man at the time too) and the few stories that they'd shared were unbelievable and they also had a strong hate for Bosnian Christians. Hard young men and as I get older the more I see why.
Then explain the fact that Serbs and muslims of Western Bosnia under Fikret Abdić were allies and that there was no war in Raška area of south of Serbia which has a large muslim population...
@@VersusARCHA few years ago I saw a piece on PBS about a school in Gaza where the children AND teachers were a mix of Palestinians and Jews. There will always be anomalies and outliers. With any luck, the anomalies and outliers will become the norm, and division and hostility will be severely frowned upon. ✌️
I lived through this genocide. It's a shame that some Serbs are still denying this genocide and are advocating for a new war. Europe and the West are looking away again. Sometimes this makes me a bit anxious.
If there was a genocide in Bosnia how are you still alive along with millions of Bosniaks while only a couple of tens of thousands of Bosniak civillians were killed during the entire 4 year long war?
@@VersusARCHbecause it was only 29 years ago; go to bosnia and see all the headstones, my uncle was kidnapped and they took him onto a ship and beat him nearly to death and then one guy said “he’s had enough” again what’s ur point?
Tko bi htjeo priznati da je izvrsio genocid? Jedini koji imaju obraz priznati da su genocidasi su njemci. Svi drugi se gicaju i traze opravdanje za svoja nedjela
@@VersusARCH the determening factor in a genocide is not number, surface area etc. It is intent. The intent was to sistematically cleanse an area of bosnia by killing civilians only because they are ethnic bosniaks. So for the love of god, stop with the revisionist history and accept the sins of your grandfathers. They do not define you. We will be waiting for you with open arms. Peace and love❤
Thank you, Simon. My mother's people are Tyrolean- they took in Yugoslavian refugees many times. Sometimes they intermarried. A Bosnian friend said that this brutality goes back about 800 years ago, when the Turks took children from each of the Yugoslavia groups, raised them with the Turkish codes of honor and vengeance, then returned them to Yugoslavia. It has been a bloodbath ever since. Most unfortunate. Thank you again.
Though American, my father is full Croatian, so we did know about this genocide. (His parents immigrated to American from Croatia in the 30s.) We have family members who weren't involved in the conflict, but certainly saw the aftermath. It was a horrific time for everyone, and we need videos like this to keep the information out there. Thanks for covering it.
Not really, armenians residents or native to Azerbaijan suffered a genocide too (massacres, erase of historical and cultural buildings, ethnic cleansing).
Worst thing is that Servians never recognise this crimes, never apologised, and they are recruiting young people and teach them to repeat all of this. Servia is only nation in history of mankind that had concentration camps for civilians in 3 consecutive wars. They keep getting away with things like that
Thank you for a very accurate description of everything that happened. I am from Bosnia and survived the war as a kid. The only thing we all have to make sure is that the genocide denial is defeated - but unfortunately serbs are not ready to go through catharsis to what they did to Bosniaks. Genocide is a fact , and thankfully it was widely accepted as such in UN. In any case, tides have turned and now the situation is different and we're more prepared to defend Bosnia in case they try again to erase us from existence.
Why skip the rape of women? It is one of the most important things about the war along with the genocide. It was the systematic rape of Bosniak women in the 90s that pushed for the recognition of rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity. It is estimated that around 20 000 to 50 000 women were raped. There is also Prijedor were Bosniaks and Croats were forced to wear white armbands in order to be recognized as non-Serbs.
Everyone likes to think that these atrocities are a thing of the past, when humanity was younger... Nope. This happened at the same time that I, and probably a few of you, was coming home from school and worried about playing the new Sonic game. I didn't even learn about this till my last year of high school, which was almost a decade later. Absolutely disgusting and reprehensible
@havocgr1976 To quote another song, 'it's sad, but true.' It's like even if you did hear about it on the news, it'll be presented in a way that greatly downplays the severity of what's going on. They'll also attempt to dehumanize & retard the intelligence of not only the perpetrators, but the victims as well. That way, it seems so distant and removed from us that most people don't question their leaders or politicians about their inaction on the issue, nevermind their culpability in the crimes. Someone smarter than me once said, 'All that's necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing'. Well, here's your case-in-point
Yes and the Nazis were gassing and burning millions of people in ovens a mere 33 years before I was born and I used to play sonic in the 90’s as well. This is not ancient history this is almost current in the long arc of time.
I live in St. Louis Mo and we had a HUGE Bosnian influx in the early 90s. I remember seeing signs that read "Urgently needed: Bosnian translators around Affton, Shrewsbury, South Side, and Bevo neighborhoods and a few yrs later the school I graduated from was almost 80% and had translators in every room. Good people, hard working and wonderful food culture!! Rakja is soooo yummy!! Most of the men I ended up working with in factories had the same story.... 8-10k slaughtered in their town/village. Every one I ever met had left family and friends behind either dead already or soon to be and that's the way it was. I was shown video of bullets striking the rear of a vehicle as one of my coworkers was fleeing his town. Totally fleeing under machine gun fire.. Never once heard any of the women speak of their tragedies, just the men. They have very much made their lives and futures her in STL and contribute wholeheartedly. I have befriended many in my different employments around town and I respect and regard them highly. The older ones have been through it so the young ones can have the lives they do and never know ethnic cleansing, bc we don't do that shit here in America. I feel for them in many ways for there is a distinct and general sorrow that comes with knowing the older ones and horrors survived.
Bosnian refugee here born in 94 came to stlouis in 96 and has been home ever since. Thanks so much for the kind words we work hard and are appreciate of the free world we were given here. I went and fought in ukraine and got wounded. .
Getting cheap labor out of Bosnia was one of the reasons the West tacitly allowed the war to happen. It's a new, convoluted way of reducing labor prices (it used to be achieved with slavery a few centuries ago).
US mostly outsources ethnic cleansing to foreign countries, except for that against our indigenous populations, of course, that we usually forget about, but there was also the massacre of the black community in Tulsa, OK in 1921.
We have one going on now courtesy of Israel. I was in Bosnia in 1997 as part of SFOR. It wasn’t a hot war at that time but it wasn’t peaceful either. The damage inflicted on the towns was severe…lots of fresh graves in the Muslim areas.
I've been following Simon for a very long time; and I've not heard him use the word "wicked" with such intensity (and so often) before in all my years of viewing.
He knows how to use drama and tone for virtue signaling. Too bad Simon, like most westerners lack any sort of objectivity, research and intelectual honesty to back it up.
I have family in bosnia and i know that many of the survivors know about more stories like these that were never documented because they are still afraid to talk about it. Dont forget this was only 30 years ago
This all happened when I was in my late teens/early 20s. It was a real eye opener for me at the time. I just didn't understand how the hell people could do these things to each other. We're all human... Thanks for covering this topic. Perfect material for Into the Shadows, and I've been waiting for the neutral'ish overview from this channel. :)
Bogus referendum implemented by Alija Izetbegović, who openly declared his intention to establish an Islamic Republic, thereby immediately alienating almost half the entire population (Serbians+Croats). Wasn't ever going to happen.
No referendum at that time was legitimate because all three constituent nations had to agree to independence and the dissolution of the state. That didn't happen and the Croats and Muslims are to blame for the war, and the war was caused by America, Britain and Germany.
For five years I used to work with a group of Bosnians and Croatians. Those that were adults in the 90s are the strongest people I've met. For one of these people whom I'm very close to, who was and is still like a mother to me, she smokes packs of cigarettes a day or she will be killed by anxiety. She has massive work ethic though, and does what she needs to provide for her children. She didn't talk much about when she lived there, and those stories she did tell send shivers down your spine, rivers literally running red with blood, bodies rotting in fields, spending weeks in the forest foraging for food. She also gave birth to her first child during this. But now she's settled down in America with her family and is beyond grateful for what this country has given to her. Her and her husband employed full time, her daughter an engineer in her 20s, she's proud and grateful. She'll give you the shirt off her back even if it meant her pain. Those times bred very strong people, and I feel for what they went through.
Video turned out to be shallow and one sided, so let's get into the details: -Why were the Croats not mentioned as also one of the sides in Bosnian civil war(in conflict with the other two until one point when they sided with Muslims)? -Why the mass killings of Serbs and Croats were not addressed ? -Why were the traumas of WW2 not mentioned as those played a great role in collective paranoia of Serbs particularly (not exclusively) -Why Prijedor ethnic cleansing wasn't mentioned? -Why inter Muslim civil war wasn't mentioned? -Collective presidency of Yugoslavia should've been given it's merit for war, while only individual members were briefly mentioned -Alija Izetbegovic(leader of Muslims) was not mentioned as one of the key player in this whole tragedy -Kosovo war was not mentioned as one of the wars for Yugoslav succession (only minor Presevo valley insurgency was referred to) -None of the Slovenian leaders were brought up as ,although less significant figures, still worth mentioning in broader picture I want to clarify that I don't support any of the sides in this tragedy, however what drives me nuts is when someone tries to simplify the matters in a shallow way like this(it can be simplified, though more objectively).
Simon often says something like “if you liked this or found it informative…” just for situations like this. You don’t have to feel like an AH for liking it. You appreciate the coverage. It raises awareness. Think of it that way.
That's great you used your platform to increase awareness about this genocide! Its so fucked how ignored it is, people might just care about the threat of fascism more if more people are taught about fascist stuff like this.
I was aware of that war, but i never heard about the massacres. Living in the US, I got the daily newspaper,watched the nightly news and thought i was well informed. Well, I now see I wasn't. Thank you,Simon.
You still aren't if this is the only video you watched as it is pretty one-sided, which is a bit surprising for one of his videos because they are mostly objective.
@@dorissonbass Propaganda. Serbs have created a lot of propaganda over the years to justify what they've done. It's very much along the lines of what Russians have used to justify the original invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the 2022 invasion, which means it's a few facts embellished into complete fiction meant to hide just how evil it all really was.
Labeling 30,000 Bosnian muslim civillians killed in a country of 4 million people during 4 long years of war a genocide and ignoring 10,000 Serbian civillians killed during the same period is nothing but propaganda. More people got killed (both proportionally and in absolute terms) in shorter time in Gaza (population only 2 million) in the last year than in Bosnia in 1992-1995. Where is the genocide resolution proposal about that? Where is US intervention against Israel? Ah yes - unlike the Bosnian Serbs, Israel is a US ally so the US-controlled media portrays it differently...
@@aleksandarmicke1996jebem ti boga there is no other side look at beograd and look at sarajevo you won’t see bullet holes in buildings but you will i’m bosnian land, mrs tamo
@@MrTexasDan really? What do you call upholding an illegal arms embargo on Bosnia while serbia had all the weapons they needed? Didnt that in fact help serbia? What do you say about sending un troops to Bosnia so the serbs had potential hostages thus making it very easy for serbia to attack srebrenica since nato could not bomb them. In the spring of 94 swedish un troops took over the siege of sarajevo following the markale massacre. The serbs regrouped to Gorazde and attacked in april killing a 1000 people. Moron
But why, why, why would USA then grant these monsters the land the stole and killed for!? Dooming Bosnia to never develop and prosper. Its like granting Germany more land after world war 2 dosen't make any senase
Even as a Bosnian I agree with you, however the land had to be distributed otherwise the genocide wouldn’t have stopped. But even now, I feel as though USA shouldn’t off medled with Bosnia, we would have won either way and would now claim all of Bosnia as ours.
Great victory for Bosnia and Herzegovina yesterday, as UN approved annual commemoration of 1995 Srebrenica and declares an international rememberance day, even tho Serbia tried everything to sabotage and prevent it from happening. They havent changed a bit in the last 30 years.
Bosnian here, got out in 97 to Sweden. Can just say that no side can say they won, everyone lost someone. Lost my father in 94 and recovered his bones in 2015 thx to forensic team from US. And people still suffer by coruption down there. All in all war is sh*t.
Sorry about your loss, couldn’t even begin to imagine what it’s like losing a parent whilst fleeing from your very home all whilst not understanding why people would want to commit such unspeakable actions against other people over ethnic differences.
Americans and their European allies won. They put Bosnia under their own military occupation (under the guise of UN peacekeeping) and turned it into a source of cheap and labor imports a new market for their exports, and they earned some money by covertly exporting arms and goods at inflated prices to the warring parties. All the while barely losing a soldier in the process since the locals, whom they helped antagonize against rach other, mostly fought each other.
@@VersusARCHrepublica Srpska was part of the conspiracy. They were on the side of the deep state and were ordered to massacre as many Bosniaks and Croats as possible
There actually has been another one since World War II, and it was against ethnic German civilians (not German citizens) from a number of countries that had been living across central and eastern Europe for centuries. As many as 14 million were expelled at gunpoint and as many as 2 million died, either through deliberate neglect or outright murder
My hometown has a rather large population of Muslim Bosnian immigrants that are first generation survivors of the war and the trauma of it is still felt in their children and grandchildren. The home that one of my friends grew up in was blown up in an artillery attack which is why his family immigrated.
I don't know what it is about this story I've watched you Simon choke down some of the most disturbing stories humanity has ever seen in a variety of contexts. Everything from war, murders, to serial killers. For some reason this story had me bawling my eyes out. I love your work these stories must be told
I grew up during the war in Bosnia. I witnessed a lot of horrible things that even now is hard to talk about, my dad was captured and taken to a concentration camp and for years we didn’t know if he was even alive and years later after his release we managed to Australia but even today it’s hard with people telling me it didn’t happen or it wasn’t that bad because the media only reports on what happened in Srebrenica which was horrendous but that was happening all over Bosnia and even today a lot of places in Bosnia are Serbian run. Just recently my auntie had to go and try to identify her husband and she only managed to because of the shoes he was wearing when the serbs came and took him she even told me that she tried to give him a jacket but the serbs said hes not going to need it where hes going.
I was 12 years old when it started in Slovenia and Croatia. We lived in Bosnia, my grandfather was a colonel in the YPA, and I remember him sitting in his chair in the living room, smoking cigarettes with Tito’s big portrait on the wall saying something like “This will set us back 100 years, and we all deserve no better, we voted for the people who will cause everything what was built from rouins to turn back to rouins, those in power are no different then those who voted for them”. Not long after, he retired from the army with the help of a doctor that was a family friend and he wrote that he is not fit for service anymore, and not long after that the shells started falling on our town. We luckily had a house in the village and that is where I spent most of the war with my grandparents, grandpa was broken that the army in which he served for 30 years was shooting at him and his family, sadly he did not live to see the end of war, he started drinking heavily and died in early 1995, watching him turn from someone that was respected and greeted in the street by everyone to a drunk was something that will haunt me forever. By the time war was over I had not seen my parents for over 2 years, and it was so strange for the first time, I could not believe it was them, they looked different from the outside, and even more from the inside. So many things I could write, like how I forgot how chocolate tastes, how since we got our clothes from donations, I was always thinking how did the person wearing the shirt that was on me looked like, did they have a family and were they happy… In one of the packages I even got a picture from the people who sent it, they were two boys (brothers) from somewhere in England, one was named Matthew, they even wrote the adress on the back and I wanted to write them a letter as soon as the war was over and thank them for the toys and clothes, but sadly the picture got lost somewhere in the house, and I don’t go there often, it’s too hard for me to re live those memories… but whoever they are, I wish to thank them, in the darkest of days that photograph was a reminder that normal life countinues somewhere behind all those burning towns and villages, and that it will return if I was patient enough. No matter the side, my heart goes out to everyone whose experiences were like mine, and there are probably millions, may it never happen again to anyone, older people forget that first victim of war is childhood. God bless you all.
I have watched probably a hundred videos across your different channels, covering many evil actions, but this is the first where I could see your (perfectly understandable) rage. Thank you for choosing to cover this nonetheless!
If you want the truth, this is not the truth….before Srebrenica 30.000 serbs women children, grandparents, fathers were killed butchered, massacred….in Srebrenica only bosniak soldiers were killed….serb army evacuated the women children and older also young men that didn’t want to stay and fight….the bosniak didn’t have mercy for serbian women or children….that is the truth….but Bosniak with the help of Germany nazi regime with the US Bill Clinton did everything to cover the atrocities committed by the Muslim to fulfill the agenda from Croatia and Germany
Sad fact is some people still celabrate general Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic as heroes and as i can recall in Serbia they have murals that glorify them
@@cassee2179 there are multiple displacements that happened most notably the Polish, Ukrainians, and Germans directly after WWII were expelled from eastern Europeans territories, were relocated from their homes, or outright killed during the mass transfer. it really depends on your definition of genocide but if you go by the UN these all count as them. yeah citing wikipedia isn't great but you can look this up on there under WWII evacuation and explusion, but these all happened post WWII.
I took the title to mean genocides that didn't happen as an immediate result of the conflicts of WWII, so that's why I was curious. I know there were multiple during and immediately following that eruption, but I wasn't aware of anything in Europe that wasn't connected directly to it.
as a Bosnian, thank you for this video Simon. you're an incredible man. p.s. 4:20 the unofficial date when war broke out here was April 1st, not April 6-th. on April 1st Serbian security forces (members of the DB) on direct orders from slobodan milosevic, led by the notorious war-criminal zeljko raznatovic arkan crossed the border and attacked Bijeljina, a small bordering town btw Bosnia-Serbia. pre-war Bijeljina was a multiethnic town, Bosnians and Serbs made up about 50-50% in terms of population, now there is less than 5% of Bosnians. just to add an interesting detail: my late grandfather (from Brcko, a town few dozen kilometres from Bijeljina) personally witnessed three members of the DB unit (he knew it was them because of their emblem on the uniforms) killing a woman on the street, took a photograph of the incident, but during that chaotic day while packing and rushing to escape from Brcko along with my mother and my brother, left it in the apartment that serb chetniks pillaged, robbed and burned to the ground along with his evidence of first mass crimes, slaughtering and ethnic cleansing of my people. but, to this day (i am 27 years old) i never hated or even insulted a single Serb citizen. i hate and despise the war criminals & the nationalism-orientated serbian government who still hasn't given up ambitions from Bosnia's territory, but i love normal and ordinary Serbs, and i consider them my brothers/sisters. ✌🏻
What kind of problem do you have with Serbia or with our government officials? You say "Serbia has ambitions on Bosnian territory"? Or is it that the Bosnian Serbs of Republika Srpska want their own Serbian half of Bosnia as sovereign and separate from their former enemies? What happened to the of Tuzla Serbs(17%), Zenica Serbs(15-20%), Sarajevo Serbs(33%), Mostar, Zavidovići, Goražde, Kakanj, etc.? While your ethnic government's military killed many Serbs all over its territory, majority escaped as refugees. Many of them to Bijeljina and that's why it's predominantly Serb city.
Just to be clear: I have absolutely nothing against you or other innocent Bosniaks, ordinary people. I do however have a lot against your ethnic political leadership which refuses to limit itself to its own Bosniak-Croat half of Bosnia and once and for all leave our Serbian half of Bosnia alone.
Both my father and mother lived through the war in Sarajevo. My father was on the front lines for the first few years. My uncle got his insides blown out to the point of losing much of his intestines and a kidney, barely surviving. My grandfather and great-grandfather were in concentration camps, both barely surviving. I was born right after the war and lived for 26 years on Grbavica (neighborhood in Sarajevo), which was under Serb control for most of the war. I know many people from Bosniak, Croat, and Serb communities that suffered, had to flee, fight, get injured, and had their family members and friends die. In a war, most, if not all, feel wronged, scared, and even justified in their actions. It is what happens afterwards that determines what people are actually like. Everyone committed crimes and I do not believe they can be compared in any sense. Yes, genocides are a special category of evil, but even one innocent human dying should be a tragedy and travesty, never to be repeated again. Looking at the current situation, it is sad knowing the war will start again in Bosnia and Herzegovina, sooner than later.
