Konjević Polje

During the Bosnian Serb Army's campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1992, Konjević Polje became cut off from the main area of Bosnian government-held territory, forming part of the enclave of Srebrenica. The expulsion of the Bosniaks from the area along the Drina River had been the publicly proclaimed goal of the Republika Srpska from the start of the war. Two of the “strategic objectives or priorities of the Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina” were to “Establish State borders separating the Serb people from the other two ethnic communities;” and “Establish a corridor in the Drina River valley, that is, eliminate the Drina as a border separating Serb States.”

In his 25 November 2003 statement to the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian-Serb war criminal Miroslav Deronjić affirmed this goal and referred to it as “liberation”. He described the “liberation” of the area of eastern Bosnia along the Drina corridor as involving a two-part plan devised in 1991 and 1992 involving the Bosnian Serbs first taking power in the municipalities in the Podrinje and then expelling the Bosniak population by force: specifically by forcibly transferring the women and children and often by detaining and killing the men. In the so-called 'Deronjić Statement' he referred specifically to the “liberation of Konjević Polje” (paras. 154, 156).[1]

During the Bosnian Serb Army offensive of early 1993 the villages of Konjević Polje and Cerska were captured. Their Bosniak residents fled to Srebrenica, adding to the town's already swollen refugee population. Refugees from Konjević Polje and Cerska were sheltering in the Srebrenica elementary school when it was shelled on 12 April 1993.

After the fall of Srebrebnica the road between Bratunac and Konjević Polje was a key point at which the Bosnian Serb Army forces attacked and broke the column of refugees fleeing towards government territory. Many of the refugees were killed and captured in localities in the vicinity. The school at Konjević Polje was used to hold detainees before execution.

• Fata Orlović