Today is the Day of Remembrance of the Murdered Children of Sarajevo.
At least 1601 children in Sarajevo were killed, and more than 14 thousand were wounded. They were mostly targeted in the playgrounds in front of the buildings, where shrapnel often ended their childhoods forever.
In 2019, the Sarajevo Canton Government adopted the decision that May 5 will be the Day of Remembrance for the Murdered Children of Sarajevo. Since February 2020, the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been collecting personal items of children killed during the siege of Sarajevo, which are displayed in the memorial ‘White Room’.
The siege of Sarajevo lasted 1,425 days, and attacks on civilians from the positions of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), according to the judgments of the Court in The Hague, took place everywhere and at any time of the day or night.
Stanislav Galić was sentenced to life imprisonment before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague for the siege of Sarajevo, while Dragomir Milošević, both former commanders of the Sarajevo-Romanian Corps who besieged Sarajevo for 44 months, received 29 years in prison.
Life sentences were handed down to Radovan Karadžić, former president of Republika Srpska (RS), and Ratko Mladić, former commander of the RS Army, for terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo. So far, 12 people have been prosecuted before domestic courts for crimes committed in the besieged parts of the city.
The former president of the Republic of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, was also accused of crimes in Sarajevo before the Hague Tribunal, who died during the trial in March 2006, after which the process was suspended.
The former president of Republika Srpska, Biljana Plavišić, pleaded guilty to participating in the crimes in Sarajevo and other crimes, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison before the judges of the Hague Tribunal.
Until now, no one has been held accountable for crimes against children during the siege of Sarajevo.
