#croats

The son of this city Natko Nodilo 1834-1912 dedicated his mind and heart to the unity of Croats and Serbs.

Her Majesty Queen Maria of Serbia, Croatia, & Slovenia 

“Mignon”, as she was called, was the daughter of King Ferdinand I of Romania and Queen Marie [Princess of Edinburgh]. She married Alexander I, second King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in 1922. After which, she adopted the Serbo-Croatian name of Marija Karađorđević [Марија Карађорђевић in Serbian Cyrillic]. 

In 1929, the three states were unified under one name — Yugoslavia. Maria then became titled “Queen of Yugoslavia”. She was the mother of Yugoslavia’s last monarch King Peter II.

Yugoslavia, a communist country which was not part of the Soviet bloc, broke apart in the 1990s. The breakup was accompanied by a series of particularly ugly wars.  

Perhaps the worst of those was the Bosnian War. There were three sides in that conflict -- all were Slavs and spoke more or less the same language.

Although it is usually not framed as a religious war, the three sides were defined by their religions: The Serbs were Eastern Orthodox, the Croats were Catholic, and the Muslims (of course) were Muslims. The Bosnian Muslims are usually referred to as Bosniaks.

Most of the fighting featured the Serbs against the Bosniaks. The Croats sometimes fought against both of the other two sides but were occasionally aligned with the Bosniaks.

The genocide took place when Bosnian Serb forces overwhelmed Dutch peacekeepers and took over the Bosniak enclave of Srebrenica. Over a two week period the Bosnian Serb forces murdered approximately 8,000 Bosniak men and boys as young as 12.

Now some Bosnian Serbs are either downplaying the genocide or claiming it didn’t happen.

It did happen and it began 25 years ago today. And only a relatively small number of perpetrators such as leaders Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić were punished for their crimes against humanity.

Five years ago the BBC did a report on the 20th anniversary of the genocide.