Mladic Told Srebrenica Civilians ‘Survive or Perish’
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Mladic is charged with committing genocide against around 7,000 Srebrenica Muslims, as well as with the expulsion of a thousand women, children and elderly people in the days after the Bosnian Serb army seized Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.
The then officer of the Dutch UNPROFOR Battalion, Major Boering, was present at the meeting of General Mladic with commander of the Blue Helmets Thom Karemans and representatives of the Srebrenica Muslims in the Bratunac hotel Fontana on July 11 and 12, 1995.
Footage from the first meeting shows Mladic yelling at Karemans, asking why he ordered a NATO attack on the Army of Republika Srpska and asking him if he wanted to see his family again.
After saying that the goal of my operations are neither UNPROFOR nor the civilians, Mladic asked the UNPROFOR officer to bring the Srebrenica representatives. You can all leave, all stay, or all die, said Mladic on the tape.
Witness Boering said it was a pure threat.
At the third meeting in the Fontana in the morning of July 12, 1995, Mladic told the representatives of Srebrenica Muslims, among them a woman: You can survive or perish.
He specified that the condition for survival was that all armed Bosniaks lay down their weapons.
Then you can choose who wants to stay, and who wants to leave… If you want to leave, say so, said Mladic.
Boering said that at the time thousands of Muslims were crowded around the UNPROFOR base in Potocari, seeking protection from Bosnian Serb forces. Among them, the witness said, there were no armed fighters. Mladic, however, announced at the meetings in the Fontana he would separate all men aged between 16 and 60 and seek the war criminals among them.
The Dutch officer described how Bosnian Serb soldiers separated men from their families and locked them up in the White House, stripping them of their personal belongings and documents. They were then taken by bus towards Bratunac, from where, according to the indictment, they were moved to several locations around Zvornik and executed.
Boering testified that he escorted a convoy to the village of Tisce, where Serb soldiers separated the men and took them into the woods. He tried to follow them, but soldiers of the Bosnian Serb army returned him and instructed him to escort the Muslim women and children to territory under the control of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which he did.
Cross-examined by Mladics lawyer, Miodrag Stojanovic, Boering confirmed that the task of UNPROFOR was to disarm the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica, but that the Dutch soldiers had only managed to do it partially.
The defence showed footage from the Fontana in which Colonel Karemans told General Mladic that he knew there were a lot of weapons smuggled into the enclave.
Boering said that the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica took UNPROFOR soldiers hostages and that he himself had been among them.
Mladic is charged with expulsion of Muslims and Croats across Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo by shelling and sniping campaigns and taking international peacekeepers hostages between 1992 and 1995.
The trial will resume on April 19.
