UN Soldiers Watched While 8,000 Men Were Executed

[00:00:00]40,000 people were hiding in Srebrenica.

[00:00:02]The United Nations said they would be safe. They were not. In July 1995, a small Dutch peacekeeping force was stationed in the town to protect Muslim civilians sheltering from the Bosnian War. They had weapons. They had a mandate. They were the only thing standing between those civilians and Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladić. When Mladić's army arrived, the Dutch commander surrendered without firing a single shot. What happened next took 5 days. Serbian soldiers moved through the crowd and began pulling men and boys aside.

[00:00:34]Fathers, teenagers, some as young as 12.

[00:00:38]The Dutch peacekeepers watched. Some even helped direct the lines. 8,000 people were taken to fields, warehouses, and ravines and executed. The bodies were buried in mass graves, then dug up and moved to hide the evidence. It would later be ruled a genocide, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, and the United Nations safe zone made it easier because it kept the victims in one place.