1. Bosnia was once part of the
former Yugoslavia.

2. During the Cold War, Yugoslavia was ruled by the communist
dictator, Tito.

3. Yugoslavia had been formed
in 1918 after World War I.
It was reformed after the Second World War. But
by the early 1990s, it was
falling apart.

4. its independence from Yugoslavia.
By 1992, Bosnia had declared
its independence from Yugoslavia.

5. While the majority of Bosnians
were Muslims, there was a
Serbian Christian minority.

6. The Serbs in Bosnia wanted to form a greater Serbia and
turned to the Serbian President
of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic,
who ordered an attacks on
Muslim civilians.

7. A program of “ethnic cleansing”
began as over 200,000 Bosnian
Muslims were killed.

8. Eventually, NATO peacekeeping
troops arrived in 1995 and by
2000, Milosevic was ousted from
power and turned over to a UN
war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

9. Milosevic was charged with
genocide but died in the
detention center before the
trial concluded.

10. But genocide was not confined to Bosnia. Between April and June
of 1994, over 800,000 Rwandans
were killed when the President’s
plane was shot down.

11. The President was a member
of the Hutu ethnic group. Hutus
accused Tutsis, a different ethnic
group, of the killing.

12. Hutus began killing Tutsis. Many innocent people
were killed.

13. Eventually, a Tutsi rebel group
took over the government and
the Hutu leaders fled.

14. In the Sudan, the government
was accused of favoring the
Arab pastoralists over the
black African farmers.

15. When rebel groups attacked,
the government responded
with violence.

16. The Janjaweed, gunmen on
horseback, have been accused
of trying to “cleanse” black
Africans from Darfur in western
Sudan.

17. Many Africans have been killed
in Darfur. In Darfur, Black
Africans are either Christian
or practice traditional religions.
Arabs practice Islam.

18. Religious and ethnic conflicts
continue to plague the world
and sadly, genocide sometimes
occur.