Kozluk (Zvornik)
Encyclopedia
Kozluk is a village located in the Zvornik
Zvornik
Zvornik is a city on the Drina river in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, located south of the town of Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The town Mali Zvornik lies directly across the river in Serbia, and not far north is Loznica.-History:Zvornik is first mentioned in 1410, although it was...

 Municipality, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...

. Kozluk is an ethnic Bosniak majority village.

Demographics

The 1991 census showed Divič had a total population of 1388.
  • 2565 Bosniaks
  • 302 Serbs
  • 3 Croats
  • 76 Yugoslavs
  • 71 others

Serbian aggression on Kozluk

Before the war, Kozluk was populated predominantly by Bosniaks. In the beginning of June 1992, Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 police officers in the Muslim village of Kozluk in Zvornik municipality were forced to surrender their uniforms and weapons to a Serb police officer.

Later that month, an attack was launched on the village. A large number of Serb soldiers, Territorial Defence, and paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....

 units entered Kozluk in tanks and other military vehicles. They informed the Muslim villagers that they had one hour to leave, or they would be killed. They also told them that they could not take any personal belongings with them, and forced them to sign statements surrendering their property. On the same day, a convoy of vehicles organized by the Serbs transported approximately 1,800 persons out of the municipality.

Investigations in 1999 led to a mass grave
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...

 being found near Kozluk containing the victims of the Srebrenica genocide.

The return

Return of Bosniaks to Kozluk began in 2001, and was mostly completed by 2003. Because the economy is poor in this region, however, some people from Kozluk work in Austria and other parts of Europe. Discrimination is part of the problem; in the nearby water-bottling factory, only 3 of 150 employees are Bosniaks. The rest are Serbs.

External links

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