Višegrad massacre

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The Višegrad massacre was an act of ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Bosniak civilians that occurred in the town of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces of Milan Lukić at the start of the Bosnian War during the spring of 1992.

According to ICTY documents, some 3,000 Bosniaks were murdered during the violence in Višegrad.^[1]

1 The massacre
2 Aftermath
3 In the popular culture
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

[edit] The massacre

On 19 May 1992, the Yugoslav People's Army officially withdrew from the town. Upon their departure, local Serb leaders established the "Serbian Municipality of Višegrad" and took control of all municipal government offices. Soon thereafter, local Serbs, police and paramilitaries began one of the most notorious campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the conflict, designed to permanently rid the town of its Bosniak population.

The ruling Serb Democratic Party declared Višegrad to be a "Serb" town; all non-Serbs were evicted from their jobs, and the murders began. Serb forces (sometimes referred to as the "White Eagles" and "Avengers" and associated [1] with Vojislav Šešelj, leader of Serbian ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party) attacked and destroyed a number of Bosniak villages. A large number of unarmed Bosniak civilians in the town of Visegrad were killed because of their ethnicity. Hundreds ^[2] of civilians were killed in random shootings.

According to the survivors and the report submitted to UNHCR by the Bosnian government, the Drina river was used to dump many of the bodies of the Bosniak men, women and children who were killed around the town and on the famous historic Turkish bridge, as well as the new one. Day after day, truckloads of Bosniak civilians were taken down to the bridge and riverbank by Serb paramilitaries, unloaded, slashed or shot, and thrown into the river. In one instance, during the murder of a group of 22 people on June 18, 1992, the Lukić's group tore out the kidneys of several individuals, while the others were tied to cars and dragged through the streets; their children were thrown from the bridge and shot at before they hit the water. ^[3]

Many other victims were locked in a houses en masse and grenaded to death or burned alive. In one instance, 58 people (14 were men and the rest women and children) were identified as burned to death on June 27, 1992 on Pionirska Street, leaving one female survivor. In another incident, the Serbs forced approximately 65 Bosniak women, children and old men, mostly from Koritnik village, into one room in a house in the settlement of Bikavac, near Višegrad. There, after being robbed by their captors all, but six of those people were killed with an an incendiary device or shot; among the victims were several young children. ^[4]

Serb forces were also implicated in the widespread and systematic looting and destruction of Bosniak homes and villages; both of the town's mosques were completely destroyed.

[edit] Aftermath

Except for an apparently small number who escaped, all the able-bodied Bosniak men and youths of Visegrad who had not fled the occupiers were shot or otherwise killed, according to survivors. In all, about 14,000 people were put to death, detained in a concentration camps, or forcibly expelled.

Many of the Bosniaks who were not immediately killed were detained at various locations in the town, as well as the former JNA military barracks at Uzamnica, 5 kilometres outside of Višegrad; some were detained in the hotel Vilina Vlas or other detention sites in the area. Many of the women were serial raped.

In 1996, Milan Lukić, his brother Sredoje and Mitar Vasiljević were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for "extermination of a significant number of civilians, including women, children and the elderly." In his sentence the tribunal concluded that Lukić and his troops may have killed thousands of people in the period between 1992 and 1993.