Intl administrator: Bosnia will adopt Law Against Genocide Denial next year

N1

Bosnia will surely adopt the Law Against Genocide Denial next year, amid the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, the international community's administrator in Bosnia, Valentin Inzko, exclusively told N1 on Thursday.

“I will absolutely advocate for the adoption of the Law Against Genocide Denial in the Bosnian Parliament and we will surely have such a law, next year, amid the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide,” Inzko told N1, adding that he is “already working on it.”

When asked if he expects resistance to his motion, the Austrian diplomat who serves as international community's High Representative charged with overseeing the civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, said that recognition of the genocide is a civilisational norm.

“Some wish that it (genocide) never happened – it's as if we were to say that the Holocaust never happened. There's no room for that in a civilised society,” he added.

“The people are forgetting that Ratko Mladic said that genocide is taking place in Bosnia,” Inzko said recalling the conversation between the war-time Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska (RS) Ratko Mladic and the then RS President, Radovan Karadzic regarding ethnic cleansing.

“Mladic asked ‘how will we explain this to the world, this is genocide, people’,” Inzko recalled, concluding that genocide culminated with the Srebrenica massacre on July 11, 1995, but it continues with its denial.

In April 1993, the UN had declared the besieged enclave of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica a safe area under UN protection.

However, in July 1995, the Dutch battalion soldiers failed to prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb forces and the massacre that followed.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the days following July 11, 1995, and so far the remains of more than 6,600 have been found and buried.

The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.

International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars. Those who the ICTY sentenced to life imprisonment are Ljubisa Beara, Zdravko Tolimir, and Vujadin Popovic. But the most well known alleged masterminds of what happened in Srebrenica are former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and ex Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and both have been sentenced for it but have appealed.

To date, Bosnian Serb leadership have never recognised the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide.