Foča was Genocide: In a 1997 judgement against the Serb commander Novislav Djajić, the Bavarian Appeals Chamber ruled that the killings in the Bosnian municipality of Foča in which he was involved in June 1992 constituted acts of Genocide.
The above aerial photo (Exhibit P56B, in Karadzic’s case) was taken by CIA drones in 1992 and later given to the Hague Tribunal. The image shows the practice of “selective ethnic cleansing.” On the left-hand side you can see Bosniak section of the town of Foča where genocide took place (the section is destroyed by Serbs); on the right-hand side, you can see undamaged Serb section of the town.
The Foča Genocide was a series of mass murders committed by Serb military, police and paramilitary forces against the Bosniak civilians in the Foča region of Bosnia and Herzegovina (including the towns of Gacko and Kalinovik) from April 7, 1992 to January 1994. In a 1997 judgement against Novislav Đajić, the Bavarian Appeals Chamber ruled that the killings in which he was involved in June 1992 constituted acts Genocide.
The Foča Genocide also included the sexual component. Thousands of Bosniak women and underage girls were kept in various detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions and were repeatedly raped and mistreated. There are 25,000 documented cases of rape committed against Bosnian Muslim women and girls in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague rule that Serb forces used “rape as an instrument of terror” in their ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaign.
Before ethnic cleansing, Bosniaks constituted the majority population of this municipality. Not anymore. Here are some of the mass graves that were excavated on a territory of Foča municipality between 1996 and 2000 (mass graves excavated after 2000 were not included in this map)
Bosnian Genocide (Foča genocide in eastern Bosnia): Chart showing exhumations carried out between 1996 and 2000 in the Foča municipality, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Photograph provided courtesy of the ICTY).
