1980-2000
The rise to power of Slobodan Milosevic occurred following the death of Josip Tito, A socialist who ruled Yugoslavia from 1945 until 1980. Milosevic was a communist. In 1986, he was appointed head of the Serbian Central Committee. Three years later, he took office. Soon after, a crisis in Kosovo lead to the beginning of Milosevic’s terror. On April 24, 1987, Milosevic travels to Kosovo to hear the grievances of the Serb minority, responding “From now on, no one has the right to beat you. It is through this that he was recognized as a spokesman for nationalist Serbs. Only two years later, Milosevic was elected president of Serbia on May 8, 1989 and found the socialist party. Immediately after his election, Milosevic addressed the request for autonomy. Milosevic rescinded the autonomy, leading to the band of Albanians teaching schoolchildren their own language. In the following year, Milosevic dismantled the parliament, which lead to Kovosar leaders exiling themselves. He soon began muzzling the media and intimidating his opponents. This causes tensions to rise. Three main groups fought each other within the country: Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. On March 9, 1991, Milosevic sends tanks into the streets of Belgrade to end a student demonstration against his Government. He also ordered a Serb-dominated army to suppress secessionists. Soon after, he was elected the president of Yugoslavia in 1997. Milosevic lost power in 2000 and soon went on trial. During his time as a political leader, torture, killings, rapes, and forced expulsions, ran rampant. More than 600 victims and witnesses were interviewed for the trial. It is estimated that in 12 weeks, the Serbian and Yugoslav military, police, and paramilitaries expelled more than 850,000 ethnic Albanians form Kosovo, internally displacing several hundred thousand more. As early as May 1992, they had begun to segregate between Muslims and Croats in northwest Bosnia and to send Muslims to concentration camps. The most famous camp was called Omarska, near the town of Prijedor in Northeast Bosnia. The prisoners in the camp were beaten, denied food and water, housed in horrific conditions, sexually assaulted, tortured, and finally killed. In Trnopolje, a women-only camp, the women were regularly raped by police and army personnel. The first goal of the Serbs was to wipe out the educated, the intellectuals, the wealthy, and any other non-Serbs who actively opposed their rule. Other civilians were forced into closed train cars and sent to areas ruled by Bosnia. These actions caused a mass exodus of Muslims out of Northwest Bosnia. Out of an initial population of 550,000 Muslims and Croats, by June 1994 fewer than 50,000 remained in their homes. The area had been "purified."Often times, many were robbed and beaten as they were forced form their homes. Many homes were looted and burned. A multitude of women were raped and adult males were detained, many of which were executed, along with women, children, and the elderly. There were more than a dozen mass killings sites (1).