Dehumanization and Organization: Steps in the preparation of genocide

The genocidal campaign against Bosniak Muslims that began in the spring of 1992 required organized institutions and agencies to jointly implement this criminal project. That process was reflected in the Serb Democratic Party’s, establishment of parallel government structures at the local and regional level throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the eve of the aggression against RBiH in 1991. They planned the way these so called institutions operated in places where Serbs were both majority and a minority. What connected the perpetrators of genocide is, among other things, the ideology of “living space”, according to which those who do not fit into a certain space racially, religiously and ideologically should be eliminated. The genocide was preceded by the dehumanization of Muslims from the beginning of the 80s of the 20th century, in which the anti-Muslim narratives of earlier Serbian writers were evoked, as well as Serbian mythology. In 1992, previously formed autonomous areas were constituted to create the Serbian Republic of BiH, on whose territory plans were prepared and criminal genocidal ideas were to be implemented.