Draft:Genocide of Bosniaks in World War II

The Genocide of Bosniaks in World War II (Bosnian: Genocid nad Bošnjacima u Drugom svjetskom ratu) war a series of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Bosniak civilians in World War II, committed by the Chetniks from 1941-1945. The royalist Chetnik and their collaborators systematically murdered around 100,000 Bosniak Muslims trough torture, mass shooting, decapitation, live burning, forced deportation, forced conversion, rape etc. Trough this genocide, the Serbs wanted to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia that included the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosniak majority region of Sandžak.

Background
The Chetnik movement started as a guerilla movement established in 1902, they had strong anti-Ottoman, anti-Muslim and anti-Habsburg sentiments. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which controlled Bosnia collapsed and the local South Slavic states of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and the territory of Vojvodina were annexed into the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929). For a long period, during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia the Bosniaks were discriminated and attacked, by the words of the Bosnian Grand Mufti Džemaluddin ef. Čaušević to the French jounalist Charles Rivet, in the Le Temps newspaper he stated that 270 Muslim villages were attacked and robbed, thousand of Muslims killed, 76 women were burned alive and that he requests the protection of the French government. All of this happened from the creation of the Kingdom of SHS to the spring of 1919. Another case of Bosniak discrimination was the Šahovići massacre that took place in November 1924. The local Orthodox population of Kolašin and Bijelo Polje massacred the Bosniak Muslim citizens of the village Šahovići, located in Bijelo Polje (Sandžak).

World War II
Bosniak politicians like Mehmed Spaho attempted to bring awareness to the discrimination in political, social and religious life, Spaho was believed to be poisoned during his visit to Belgrade in 1939. As the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1941, and the royal Karađorđević family fled the country, the puppet state Independent State of Croatia was created which included the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Local independence movements formed, namely the Yugoslav Partisans, led by the Communist Josip Broz Tito and the Chetniks, led by Draža Mihailović. The Bosniaks were seen as traitors by the Chetniks, maily due to their Muslim faith, they were often seen as "Turks" or either as Serbs who betrayed their religion. These ideologies were not only rooted in the Chetnik ideology but also by many local political parties, such as the Serbian Radical Party. Mihailović organised the Chetniks and formed the Central National Committee as their advisory body, within this Comittee Mihailović grouped many other Serb cultural clubs. Many other Serb movements in Serbia and Croatia started to form with Chetnik ideologies, even Tito's Partisans were initially allies with the Chetniks but later came into conflict due to ideological differences and the Chetniks collaborating with the Italians and Germans.

Genocide of Bosniak Muslims
The Chetniks encomposated the idea of a homogenous and pure Greater Serbian state, to achieve this purely Serb state the Chetniks started murdering and killing all non-Serbs in their lands, namely the Croats and Bosniaks. By their own documents, we see cases of resettling, murdering, killing and burning of Muslim civilians, mainly in the area of Eastern Bosnia, Eastern Herzegovina and Sandžak. The first killings of Bosniaks happened in the area of Eatern Herzegovina, in summer in Avtovac near Gacko and notably in the Čavkarica Pit (near Bileća) where 468 Bosniaks were documented being thrown into the pit from August-September 1941. Estimates reach up to 700-1,000 due to majority of witnesses dying or being killed, and due to the fact entire families were murdered. Again in November of 1941 the local villages around the city of Višegrad were captured, the Chetniks killed women, children, elderly and civilians. People from the city escaped to the city where a famine happened, they only recieved food from Foča, Kalinovik and Mostar. Outside of Višegrad the Chetniks entered into the city of Foča and her surrounding villages, notably killings started taking place in Miljevina, Ustikolina, Kolun, Bujakovina, Dobratići, Kozja Luka, Derolovi, Smječa, Kruševo, Kratine and other local villages, the killings also took place in the Foča city proper. Alongside Foča, in Čajniče, Goražde, Rogatica, Prača, and even Srebrenica we see the same cases of mass killings, many of the victims were women and children. Outside of Eastern Bosnia, around Varcar-Vakuf, Jajce and Glamoč we see cases of killings of the Chetniks, notably it Pljevski Podovi where 10 Bosniaks were killed. Although the Partisans didn't target civilians during the war as much as Ustashe and Chetniks, in Prijedor and the village of Pašinac the local Partisan forced killed a total of 227 civilians, 138 of which were Bosniaks. 60 bodies were burried in a mass pit in Pašinac.

Casualties and demographics
Total number of Bosniak Muslim varies by estimates, it is known that the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina had the biggest total losses during the war, the biggest number of casualties were amongst the Serbs, then by the Muslims.