Killing of civilians by Serb paramilitary groups in Bijeljina during Bosnian Civil War
The Bijeljina massacre involved the killing of civilians by Serb paramilitary groups in Bijeljina on 1–2 April 1992 in the run-up to the Bosnian War. The majority of those killed were Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). Members of other ethnicities were also killed, such as Serbs deemed disloyal by the local authorities. The killings were committed by a local paramilitary group known as Mirko's Chetniks and by the Serb Volunteer Guard (SDG, also known as Arkan's Tigers), a Serbia-based paramilitary group led by Željko "Arkan" Ražnatović. The SDG were under the command of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), which was controlled by Serbian President Slobodan Milošević.
In September 1991, Bosnian Serbs had proclaimed a Serbian Autonomous Oblast with Bijeljina as its capital. In March 1992, the Bosnian referendum on independence was passed with overwhelming support from Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats, although Bosnian Serbs either boycotted it or were prevented from voting by Bosnian Serb authorities. A poorly organized, local Bosniak Patriotic League paramilitary group had been established in response to the Bosnian Serb proclamation. On 31 March, the Patriotic League in Bijeljina was provoked into fighting by local Serbs and the SDG. On 1–2 April, the SDG and the JNA took over Bijeljina with little resistance; murders, rapes, house searches, and pillaging followed. These actions were described as genocidal by the historian Professor Eric D. Weitz of the City College of New York. Professor Michael Sells of the University of Chicago concluded that they were carried out to erase the cultural history of the Bosniak people of Bijeljina.
Around 3 April, Serb forces removed the bodies of those massacred in anticipation of the arrival of a Bosnian government delegation tasked with investigating what had transpired. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office were able to verify between 48 and 78 deaths. Post-war investigations have documented the deaths of a little over 250 civilians of all ethnicities in the Bijeljina municipality during the course of the war. After the massacre, a campaign of mass ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs was carried out, all mosques were demolished, and nine detention camps were established. Many deaths in Bijeljina were not officially listed as civilian war victims and their death certificates claim they "died of natural causes."
As of December 2014[ [update]], local courts had not prosecuted anyone for the killings, and no members of the SDG had been prosecuted for any crimes the unit carried out in Bijeljina or elsewhere in Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina. Milošević was indicted by the ICTY and charged with carrying out a genocidal campaign that included Bijeljina and other locations, but died during the trial. Republika Srpska leaders Biljana Plavšić and Momčilo Krajišnik were convicted for the deportations and forcible transfers in the ethnic cleansing that followed the massacre. Radovan Karadžić, the former President of Republika Srpska, was convicted for the massacre and other crimes against humanity committed in Bijeljina. Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović, Serbian intelligence officers, were also convicted. At the end of the war, fewer than 2,700 Bosniaks still lived in the municipality from a pre-war population of 30,000. The Serbs of Bijeljina celebrate 1 April as "City Defense Day", and a street in the city has been named after the SDG.
Background.
According to the 1991 census, the municipality of Bijeljina had approximately 97,000 inhabitants. The demographic proportions were approximately 59% Bosnian Serbs, 31% Bosniaks and 10% belonged to other ethnicities. The town of Bijeljina itself had 36,414 inhabitants, 19,024 of whom were Bosniaks (or 52% of the town's population), while the Serbs were the second largest ethnic group in the town.
During 1990, a group of Serb Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officers and experts from the JNA's Psychological Operations Department had developed the RAM Plan with the intent of organizing Serbs outside of Serbia, consolidating control of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), and preparing arms and ammunition. In 1990 and 1991, Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had proclaimed a number of Serbian Autonomous Oblasts with the intent of later unifying them into a homogeneous Serb territory. As early as September or October 1990, the JNA began arming Bosnian Serbs and organizing them into militias. That same year, the JNA disarmed the Territorial Defense Force of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (TORBiH). By March 1991, the JNA had distributed an estimated 51,900 firearms to Serb paramilitaries and 23,298 firearms to the SDS. Throughout 1991 and early 1992, the SDS heavily Serbianized the police force in order to increase Serb political control. In September 1991, Bijeljina was established by the Bosnian Serbs as the capital of the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Northern Bosnia, later renamed in November as the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Semberija, renamed again in December as the "Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Semberija and Majevica". In response, local Bosniaks established the paramilitary Patriotic League of Bosnia and Herzegovina, shortened to the Patriotic League.
In January 1992, the SDS assembly proclaimed the "Republic of the Serbian People of Bosnia and Herzegovina" and Radovan Karadžić, its soon-to-be president, announced that a "unified Bosnia and Herzegovina no longer exists". In March, the Bosnian referendum on independence passed with overwhelming support from Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats, having been boycotted by most Bosnian Serbs. The SDS, claiming that independence would result in the Serbs becoming "a national minority in an Islamic state", had used armed irregular units to block the delivery of ballot boxes, and dropped leaflets encouraging the boycott. Despite this, thousands of Serbs in larger cities did participate in the referendum and voted for independence, and several violent incidents were triggered across Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to historian Noel Malcolm the "steps taken by Karadžić and his party – [declaring Serb] "Autonomous Regions", the arming of the Serb population, minor local incidents, non-stop propaganda, the request for federal army "protection" – matched exactly what had been done in Croatia. Few observers could doubt that a single plan was in operation." Bijeljina was strategically significant because of its location, which enabled the easy movement of military personnel, weaponry, and goods into Posavina and the Bosnian Krajina where Serb forces were gathered.
Provocation, takeover, and massacre.
Željko Ražnatović ("Arkan"), leader of the Serb Volunteer Guard (SDG), spent a month in Bijeljina devising battle plans prior to the attack. On 30 March 1992, Blagoje Adžić, Bosnian Serb chief-of-staff of the JNA, announced that the army was "ready to protect Serbs from open aggression". Fighting broke out in Bijeljina on 1 April, after local Serbs and SDG personnel threw grenades into shops, including a Bosniak-owned cafe, provoking the poorly organized Patriotic League into an armed conflict. About a thousand SDG members and Mirko's Chetniks, a paramilitary formation commanded by Mirko Blagojević, were involved and captured important structures in the town. According to journalist and political analyst Miloš Vasić, Bijeljina was defended by 35 or 38 Bosnian policemen. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Bijeljina was the "first municipality of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be taken over by the Bosnian Serbs in 1992". Despite the pro-Serb activities of the JNA during the Croatian War of Independence, the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović apparently believed that the JNA would act differently in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and asked the JNA to defend Bijeljina against the SDG.
On 1–2 April 1992, the town was surrounded by JNA forces, ostensibly to keep the peace. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Serb paramilitaries wearing balaclavas took up positions around the city, including sniper positions in windows on the top floor of buildings. Meeting little resistance, the SDG, under JNA command and reporting directly to Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, swiftly captured Bijeljina. Artillery units shelled the town in coordination with the street fighting. According to photojournalist Ron Haviv, Serb forces struck first, with several busloads of soldiers arriving in the city, seizing the radio station, and forcing local Serbs to reveal the identities of the city's non-Serb residents. A paramilitary group led by Ljubiša "Mauzer" Savić, who was a founder of the SDS, also participated in the assault or arrived shortly after. Together with the SDG, they began a campaign of violence against local Bosniaks and some of the Serb population, committing several rapes and murders, and searching residents' houses and pillaging their property. Subsequently, Bosnian President Izetbegović tasked the JNA with occupying Bijeljina and stopping the violence. At Karadžić's trial, the former Mayor of Bijeljina Cvijetin Simić, testified that the only real fighting that took place in the town on 1–2 April happened around the city hospital, where the most fatalities occurred.
As the fighting progressed, the SDS and the Bosnian Serbs created the Ministry of Interior of Republika Srpska (MUP RS), an independent Serb police force. According to HRW, a pattern of violence, fueled by "the strive to create a Greater Serbia", developed in Bijeljina that was later repeated in other municipalities in north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina by similar paramilitary groups from Serbia. This pattern was described by the United Nations Commission of Experts in the following terms:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;First, Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces, often with the assistance of the JNA, seize control of the area. In many cases, Serbian residents are told to leave the area before the violence begins. The homes of non-Serb residents are targeted for destruction and cultural and religious monuments, especially churches and mosques, are destroyed. Second, the area falls under the control of paramilitary forces who terrorize the non-Serb residents with random killings, rapes, and looting. Third, the seized area is administered by local Serb authorities, often in conjunction with paramilitary groups. During this phase, non-Serb residents are detained, beaten, and sometimes transferred to prison camps where further abuse, including mass killings, have occurred. Non-Serb residents are often fired from their jobs and their property is confiscated. Many have been forced to sign documents relinquishing their rights to their homes before being deported to other areas of the country.
The exact number killed in the takeover is unknown. Several sources put the figure anywhere between several dozen and a thousand. According to the ICTY, at least 48 civilians were killed of which 45 were non-Serbs. Around 3 April, a local policeman was ordered to guard a hearse which was picking up bodies from the streets and houses of the town. The killings were eliticidal with the aim of erasing cultural history and included "political leaders, businessmen, and other prominent Bosniaks", but also included women and children. A number of Serbs who had attempted to stop the massacre were also killed. An investigation by the ICTY later stated that the victims had been shot "in the chest, mouth, temple, or back of the head, some at close range" and that none had been wearing military uniforms. According to the historian Professor Eric D. Weitz of the City College of New York, the killing of Bosniaks in Bijeljina was a genocidal act. The acts against civilians in Bijeljina and those carried out by the JNA and special forces that followed were an attempt to intimidate and sidetrack the Bosnian government and general public from pursuing independence.
Haviv, who had been invited by Arkan to take photographs, witnessed the killings and one of his pictures, which depicted an SDG member kicking a dying Bosniak woman, was later published in the international media prompting Arkan to put out a death warrant for Haviv. Meanwhile, the Serbian state-owned Radio Belgrade network reported that Bijeljina had been "liberated" with the help of "members of the Serbian National Guard of Semberija and Majevica, in cooperation with Serbian volunteers, Arkan's men, and the Serbian 'radicals'".
Bosnian delegation investigation and response.
Serb forces ordered the removal of the bodies of those killed, in anticipation of a delegation of high-ranking Bosnian officials due to arrive on 4 April. The delegation included Biljana Plavšić, a Serb representative of the Presidency; Fikret Abdić, a Bosniak representative; the Croat Minister of Defense, Jerko Doko; and the chief-of-staff of the JNA 2nd Military District, General Dobrašin Praščević. They were sent by Izetbegović for the purpose of investigating the alleged atrocities. On the same day, the JNA moved into Bijeljina, but the violence continued. On 4 April, the SDG established themselves in the local headquarters of the SDS. Local police, who were engaged in