The history of the Serbian state and various Serbian-led political and military movements includes episodes of severe violence, ethnic persecution, and war crimes that deserve careful historical examination. While the scale, context, and intent of these events differ across time, they should not be ignored or minimized.
Serbian tyrannical killings and ethnic cleansing stretched for over 2 centuries (1840-1999) which although differed in context, still resulted in the expulsion and death of hundreds of thousands of Albanians, Muslims, Turks. Later, in the years 1918 to 1939, expulsion of Albanians and Bosniaks continued, and oppression against Hungarians, Croatians, Macedonians and even Montenegrins were carried out.
Serbia was the first country in a modern Europe to commit mass killings and ethnic cleansing against Albanians in 1912-1913 in Kosovo, killing 50,000 Albanian civilians. These atrocities continued through the 1920s and 1930s. Similar crimes were committed in the 1980s and 1990s by Serbian aggressors against its neighbors.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conflicts involving Serbian governments, military forces, and nationalist movements resulted in the displacement, persecution, and killing of hundreds of thousands of Albanians, Bosniaks and Turks. In 1877-1878, Serbia’s military elite killed 70,000 Albanians and expelled hundreds of thousands of Albanians from their homes. During the Balkan Wars in 1912, the Serbian invader forces killed 150,000 Albanians. In 1918 the death toll reached 200,000 dead. Tens of thousands were killed between 1912 to 1939. Serb troops killed thousands of Albanians, Bosniaks and Croats in World War 2, and these atrocities were repeated in the 1980s.
The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and especially the Bosnian War and the Kosovo conflict, numerous atrocities were documented by international investigators and courts. Serbian forces killed 143,000 civilians in 3 neighboring countries. 78,000 Bosniaks and 12,000 Albanians. The massacre at Srebrenica, legally recognised as genocide by international courts, stands as one of the gravest crimes committed by Serbian aggressors and Serbia’s government in Europe since the Second World War.
These crimes demonstrate that Serbian extremist-nationalist regimes and military leadership, at various points in history, were capable of implementing policies of ethnic cleansing, systematic persecution, and mass violence. Such actions place those responsible alongside other regimes that employed terror and brutality against civilian populations.
Recognising these historical crimes does not mean assigning collective guilt to all Serbs, just as acknowledging Nazi Germany’s crimes does not imply that all Germans were responsible. Responsibility lies with the political leaders, military commanders, organisations that planned, ordered, or carried out these atrocities. We should also not forget the involvement of the Serbian Orthodox Church. At the same time, Albanian, Bosnian and Croatian victims deserve recognition, and historical accountability as a result of Serbian fascists.
History should remember the victims of Serbian tyranny, and the Serb governments that committed these grave crimes against humanity. Honest remembrance requires confronting these events without denial, glorification, or selective outrage.
Sources
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Hoare, Marko Attila. Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941–1943. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Judah, Tim. The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. 3rd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
Mojzes, Paul. Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011.
Ramet, Sabrina P. Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević. 4th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002.
Vullo, Maria T. “Prosecuting Genocide.” Chicago Journal of International Law 2, no. 2 (2001): Article 20.
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić Accused of Genocide Following the Take-over of Srebrenica. Press Release, November 16, 1995.
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Bridging the Gap in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Hague: ICTY.
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prosecution Case: Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Slobodan Milošević Trial).
Council on Foreign Relations. “Genocide, Memory, and Justice at Srebrenica.” July 2024.
