![]() ![]() As the war in BiH raged on, there were growing calls for ‘something to be done’, and the idea of creating an international criminal tribunal began to take shape. Yet while it was easy to gloss over the multiple and complex causes of the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia, it was impossible to ignore the scale of atrocities and human rights violations occurring on a daily basis – massacres, ethnic cleansing, rape and sexual violence, torture. Outsiders struggled to understand the conflict and too often fell back on simplistic stereotypes and misconceptions about the Balkans as an inherently violent part of the world. Formerly peaceful towns were besieged and relentlessly shelled paramilitary forces looted, pillaged and terrorized their victims neighbours and friends turned on each other and politicians planned and calculated their next moves. After first engulfing Slovenia and Croatia, war spread to Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH) in 1992. Unlike the break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1989, the disintegration of Yugoslavia was violent and bloody. In 1991, the teetering Yugoslav edifice finally crumbled but there was no ‘Velvet Revolution’. Yet there was a side to Yugoslavia that tourists never saw: mounting foreign debt, increasing tensions between the six republics, growing nationalist sentiment. Every year, thousands of tourists would flock to Yugoslavia to swim in the Adriatic Sea, to take in the breathtaking scenery and to sample the local cuisine.
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