Settlements 36 Time zone CET (UTC+1) Local time Monday 8:12 AM | Elevation 242 m (794 ft) Area 264 km² | |
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Weather 11°C, Wind SW at 2 km/h, 85% Humidity | ||
Bojnik (Serbian Cyrillic: Бојник) is a village and municipality located in Jablanica District of the southern Serbia. It is some 20 km west from Leskovac. According to 2011 census, the population of the village is 6,688 while population of the municipality was 11,073.
Contents
Map of Bojnik, Serbia
History
Much of the population settled in after World War II because on 17 February 1942, Bulgarian occupation forces in one day killed all 476 inhabitants of Bojnik, including women, children and the elderly. The massacre was in response to the alleged sheltering of Partisans.
In the 1990s, during the Yugoslav wars, war crimes were again perpetrated in Bojnik. In 2007, Goran and Zoran Damjanović (brothers) were sentenced to a total of 22-and-a-half years in prison (Zoran to 10 years and 6 months of imprisonment; Goran to 12 years of imprisonment), when the Bosnian criminal code was used. Goran Damjanović's Defence team sent the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled, as later did the Bosnian Constitutional court, that the more lenient former Yugoslav court should have been applied, which was used at the time the crimes occurred. On 18 March 2014, the Appellate Chamber of the Court confirmed the verdict, resentencing the two brothers to a total of twelve and a half years in prison (six and a half years for Goran, and six years for Zoran), ten years less than the Bosnian criminal code by which the brothers were initially sentenced. The brothers were released on parole in June 2014.
Geography
Bojnik municipality is located in southern Serbia and it is surrounded by municipality of Medveđa in the south-west, municipality of Lebane in the south, municipality of Leskovac in the east, and municipalities of Žitorađa and Prokuplje in the north.
Ethnic groups
Ethnic composition of the municipality: