‘World’s Biggest Detention Camp’: Srebrenica Before the Genocide

Emir Suljagic fell "hopelessly in love" with his first-ever girlfriend in the summer of 1992, when the place in which he lived at the time - Srebrenica - was under siege.

"I used to walk from Srebrenica to [the nearby village of] Potocari every second day to see her and spend some time with her. I did not mind going back at midnight or 1am during the war," he recalled.

In 1992, thousands of Bosniak refugees from surrounding towns - such as Vlasenica, Visegrad, Brtaunac and Zvornik - which had been overrun over by Bosnian Serb forces took refuge in Srebrenica, sparking a humanitarian crisis. Suljagic was one of them.

The town was then besieged by Bosnian Serb forces in May 1992 - a situation that continued for over three years until the nominally UN-protected enclave fell in July 1995 and the mass killings of its Bosniak inhabitants began.

"There is no other way to describe Srebrenica at that time except as a ghetto and the biggest concentration camp under open sky, which does not mean there was no life in it… A new community was formed inside the enclave," he recalled ahead of the 24th anniversary of the 1995 massacres, which will be commemorated on Thursday.

Suljagic said that the first two years of the war were a "pure fight for survival" due to the scarcity of food. More than 60,000 Bosniaks - Bosnian Muslims - were living in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages at the time.

"It was only after the first year that people decided to start living. All sorts of things began happening - we were playing football… It is interesting how important football is for mental health. We played on every flat surface. Up there in front of the school particularly. That is where between 70 and 80 people got killed in an artillery attack in...