I'm sorry to hear about your experiences from the Balkan war. Horrible things happened and there was massacres from all sides.
But hypothetically, if one of the involved nations had decided not to even have guns, would all the massacres have occurred then? Probably not in that area. Would they have been free? Maybe not, but as long as they didn't make to much noise they'd be left alone. And when the war was over that nation would declare independence using diplomatic means. War will only be avoided if there are no people willing to kill. So if one side decides not to have any weapons, then no bullets will be fired. The citizens could make some kind of civil resistance, refuse to leave the area. Not many nations are willing to get the bad publicity caused from killing defenseless civilians. Especially if they only were in war with a nation that they didn't even recognize
our independence was declared by diplomatic means, but they decided that creating a Great Serbia is much more important then diplomatic fairness
if one of the involved nations had decided not to even have guns
we didn't have any guns, Yugoslavian army was stationed in Belgrade and therefore we had 0 aircrafts, 0 tanks, 0 everything
when they invaded, only thing left to defend with was the police, they were the only ones with guns
but they weren't spared, they massacred 12 officers right in my town, peeling off their skin shows how much they enjoyed it
other nations have forbidden selling guns to any of the Balkan nations but Serbia had the YNA 3rd strongest army in Europe and we were unarmed
but it has been a thousand years since the Croatian kingdom, we wanted independence so bad, we never even thought about surrendering even though we didn't have enough food,water and ammo, we didn't fight only for our country but for our families, the memories in our towns and basically for freedom
we didn't have any bombs so we threw gas cylinders from agricultural planes because we didn't have any aircrafts, we didn't have any army rifles so we used hunting rifles, it took time until we gathered money to gain some weapons but we gained them, that is why we won the war, the will for freedom
So if one side decides not to have any weapons, then no bullets will be fired
that might be true for our island, but here it wasn't as their plan was to establish a Great Serbia from the Mihailovic plans which stated that all unserbs should be removed from the area, that is what their soldiers did
if they couldn't kill everyone they would simply send them go home trough a mine field, some would come, some wouldn't
The citizens could make some kind of civil resistance, refuse to leave the area
the city was surrounded for almost 3 months
even if someone wanted to leave he couldn't
Horrible things happened and there was massacres from all sides.
not from our side, even if we wanted to we didn't have the equipment for massacres
what I learned is that the will for freedom is greater then any armed force in the world
but it costs lives
if we can we should build it in international waters where no lives will be lost