Do you remember Foca? – Never forget genocide in Foca

As long as they deny the genocide we will beat them with the scientific and judicial truth

This series, author professor Emir Ramic, Director of the Institute for Research of Genocide, Canada is based on scientifically verified knowledge and the essential results of scientific research, of the many eminent researcher institutions of genocide and other crimes against humanity and international law in Europe and the world.

Foča municipality is situated in the southeastern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, along the Drina river and at the very border with Serbia and Montenegro. According to 1991 census, Foča had 40,513 residents, of which 20,790 were Muslims (Bosniacs), 18,315 Serbs, 94 Croats, and 1,314 Others.

Foča had a special strategic importance for the entire objective of unification of “Serb states”, given that this municipality was in the center of the so-called Serb Autonomous Provinces, whose establishment and linking with the “Serb states” in Croatia, Serbian, and Montenegro was a primary objective of great Serbian ideology, and politics of the state leadership in Serbia and Montenegro.

On 7 April 1992, Yugoslav National Army, supported by the local Serb forces, attacked the town of Foča, after which the Bosniacs were systematically arrested, killed, and taken to concentration camps and other places of incarceration. After the occupation of the town, Serb soldiers continued with the brutal arrests, killing, and destruction of Bosniac religious and cultural facilities in all the surrounding villages.

Men and women were separated and deported to camps: former town prison in Foča, one of the biggest camps in the former Yugoslavia became the main concentration camp for Bosniac men, including invalids, minors, mentally ill and seriously ill people. Bosniacs in that camp were victims of the most brutal tortures, they were taken for forced labor, and they were used as human shield in mine fields. Until 5 October 1994, more than 1,360 Bosniacs went through this camp.

Women, girls, and juvenile girls were taken to special camps, where they were systematically and gang raped: town stadium, former town prison for women at Livade, town secondary school, former hydro electrical station Buk Bijela, hotel Zelengora, motel Bukovica, town sport hall Partizan, and many private houses and apartments. Women were kept for months in sexual slavery, and they were victims of forced pregnancies. Criminals kept telling the women that they have to give birth to Serb children. During the long periods of incarceration, women were used as white slaves and they were sold to soldiers from Serbia and Montenegro for money. This town was used as an example in the European soil, where sexual abuse and enslavement was qualified as a separate crime under the international criminal law.

All the facilities, which symbolized Muslim culture and tradition were systematically destroyed: 17 town mosques, including Aladža mosque from the 15th century, which was under the protection of UNESCO, were burnt and surfaced. After the destruction, the ruins were completely removed, as they tried to conceal any trace of these buildings.

After the crimes and the destroyed traces of Bosniac population and their culture, the Serb aggressor, as the final act of conquering this area, renamed the town to “Srbinje” (Serb town).

In the suburbs of Foča: Donje Polje, Aladža, Čohodor Mahala, Gornje Polje, Centar I, and Centar II, more than 500 Bosniacs were killed. In the suburb Brod, Bosniacs were first arrested then tortured, tied in pairs of two, executed, and then thrown from the bridge across the Drina river. In this settlement, 145 persons lost their lives in terrible pain. In the local community Dragočava, population managed to escape form their houses to the neighboring forests. Using the searching dogs, they organized pursuit, under the code name “Cleansing terrain from Turks”. They killed 52 people on the occasion. In the local community Godijeno, the criminal arrested villagers, separated young women and children, and they forced the elderly population to a house, previously splashed with gasoline, and then burnt the house. Women and children were taken to camps. They killed in total 63 people there. In the village of Jeleč, Bosniacs were executed and slaughtered in front of their houses. Teachers were brutally slaughtering their former students... Surviving family members, who found shelter in the neighboring forests, would come at night to bury their family members. In total, 205 Bosniacs were killed, including 50 women and girls. In the local community Miljevina, known by a large number of indictees charged with the gravest offenses, including four women who participated in the torture of Bosniac girls in the camp House of Karaman, 141 people were tortured and killed. In the local community Popov Most, villagers coming from dozens of hamlets managed to escape to neighboring mountains, and 4,500 of them tried to escape, using the paths of Partisans from the WWII, from the certain death. All the villages were burnt and their mosques were demolished, and 141 people were killed. In the local community Ustikolina, 325 people were executed and killed. In the local community, Čelikovo Polje, Bosniacs were killed in front of their houses, and there were many old people among them. There were 67 victims there. Crimes were also committed in other Foča local communities using the same pattern: 119 people were killed in the village of Jabuka, 75 in the village of Jošanica, 87 in the village of Kratine, 143 in the village of Kozija Luka, 47 in Slatina, 45 in Vikoč, and 49 in Zavajt.

Political and military leadership in the joint criminal enterprise were indicted for the crimes committed in the territory of the Foča municipality: Momčilo Krajišnik, Biljana Plavšić, Radovan Karadžić, and Slobodan Milošević, and local executors and commanders: Dragoljub Kunarac, Zoran Vuković, Radomir Kovač, Radovan Stanković, Dragan Zelenović, Milorad Krnojelac, and others.

Around 3,000 Bosniacs were killed in the territory of the Foča municipality, and the remaining Bosniac population was forcibly transferred, while their residential and other facilities were plundered and destroyed.

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Sources of scientific knowledge:
1.Institute for Research of Crimes against Humanity and International Law, University of Sarajevo
2.Institute for Research of Genocide, Canada
3.The International Criminal Tribunal for areas of the former Yugoslavia
4. The International Court of Justice