Balkan Wars

Ethics (1)

10 December 2005

A Bloody Feud

Life is the most precious aspect of human existence. The vitality and grace of the human spirit is of utmost importance and is worth more than any earthly possession or idea. Yet the very sanctity of life was trounced and degraded to a burning ruin on July 11th 1995. The Serbian massacre in the town of Srebrenica was the most gruesome massacre of post-World War II Europe. The sanctity of life along with many other fundamental liberties were enumerated by the United Nations as basic human rights in order to combat this sort of massacre. The second article in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was designed to protect people of all, “race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,” and so on (UN Declaration of Human Rights, art. 2). This atrocity was a result of a complicated and bloody civil war that broke out within the Balkan nations as soon as the former Republic of Yugoslavia deteriorated. This atrocity was enacted as a form of ethnic cleansing which defies many of the basic human rights listed in the UN Declaration and therefore the culprits of this atrocity need to be brought to justice.

The Balkans had always experienced their fair share of ethnic turmoil. The Balkan states are composed of many different nations, ethnicities, and religions. Throughout history, the main ethnic groups, the Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Bosnians, and Albanians, had been in constant dispute over various issues, from property to nationality. These disputes festered and finally exploded when the former Republic of Yugoslavia was dismantled. The Yugoslavia had a system of rotating presidencies and had practiced it with much success for years. Yet when Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic refused to yield the presidency on March 17, 1991, the Yugoslav civil wars erupted (Bosnia-Herzegovina: Civil War 4). Ceasing the opportunity to dominate his current territory and that of his...