Konjević Polje ( sr-cyrl, Коњевић Поље) is a village in the municipality of

Bratunac Bratunac ( sr-cyrl, Братунац) is a town and municipality located in easternmost part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As of 2013 census, it has a population of 20,340 inhabitants, while the town of Bratunac has a population of 8,359 inhabitants ...

, in the

Drina Valley Podrinje (Serbian Cyrillic: Подриње) is the Slavic name of the Drina river basin, known in English as the Drina Valley. The Drina basin is shared between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, with majority of its territory being located in ...

of northeastern

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...

. It practically merged with neighboring village ''Konjevići''.

Bosnian War

During the

Bosnian Serb Army The Army of Republika Srpska ( sr, Војска Републике Српске/Vojska Republike Srpske; ВРС/VRS), commonly referred to in English as the Bosnian Serb Army, was the military of Republika Srpska (RS), the self-proclaimed Serb ...

's campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1992, Konjević Polje became cut off from the main area of Bosnian government-held territory and was part of the enclave of

Srebrenica Srebrenica ( sr-cyrl, Сребреница, ) is a town and municipality located in the easternmost part of Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a small mountain town, with its main industry being salt mining and a nearby ...

. The expulsion of the Bosniaks from the area along the

Drina River The Drina ( sr-Cyrl, Дрина, ) is a long Balkans river, which forms a large portion of the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. It is the longest tributary of the Sava River and the longest karst river in the Dinaric Alps whic ...

had been the publicly-proclaimed goal of the

Republika Srpska Republika Srpska ( sr-Cyrl, Република Српска, lit=Serb Republic, also known as Republic of Srpska, ) is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is locat ...

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, the Bosnian Serb war criminal Miroslav Deronjić affirmed that 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 the children and often by detaining and killing the men. In the so-called "Deronjić Statement", he specifically referred to the "liberation of Konjević Polje" (paras. 154, 156). During the Bosnian Serb Army offensive of early 1993, the villages of Konjević Polje and

Cerska Cerska ( sr-cyrl, Церска) is a small town in the municipality of Vlasenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina located 12 kilometers from the town of Vlasenica itself and 11 km from the Serbian border. According to the 1991 census, Cerska had a tot ...

were captured. Their Bosniak residents fled to Srebrenica and added 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

and Konjević Polje was a key place in 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 their execution.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Konjevic Polje Villages in Republika Srpska

Bosnian War

See also

References