Mothers of Srebrenica: 2004 Srebrenica Report still legal

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Head of the Mothers of Srebrenica Association Munira Subasic said the 2004 Commission for Srebrenica’s Report remains legal for them, despite the RS Parliament’s rejection of the Report and its annulment. She also said she receives constant death threats for the work that she does.

“The (RS) Government had adopted the report. It’s been 14 years and if anything can be annulled, then we will annul everything from 1992 onwards. They know what they did, what they committed and now they’re on the defensive,” Subasic said. “There are all those verdicts and the world has finally realised what had happened and they have condemned it, so they (RS Parliament) can do whatever they want.”

She added that she receives constant threats, anonymous threats, phone calls, messages telling her she should not be alive, that she should be removed from the face of the earth.

“But I’m not afraid. I only fear God Almighty. My message to all those threats is that God is in charge of my destiny, no one else,” Subasic stressed.

Head of the Association of victims and witnesses of genocide Murat Tahirovic said that Bosnian victims have been under constant pressure from the Serb-dominated, semi-autonomous entity RS, from 1992 to date.

According to him, the war crimes that were proven by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and other courts are continuously being denied in the RS even today.

Commenting the RS Parliament’s decision to annul the Commission for Srebrenica’s 2004 Report, Tahirovic said that it is nothing new and that the aim of such decisions is to demonise the victims, Bosniaks and everyone else.

“Unfortunately, it is our sacrifice and we must live with that. However, we must point to certain facts that were proven by certain courts and experts, such as the fact that genocide was committed in Srebrenica,” Tahirovic noted.

He also pointed out that genocide could not have been committed by an unorganised group of people and that this act has been “done systematically.”

He concluded that the Association of victims and witnesses of will continue to state the facts that were already proven and they will try to correct the injustice made against the victims of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia.

Two international courts, The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 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.