The Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide has launched a new website designed to monitor and record all forms of genocide and war crimes denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Lejla Memcic, October 2, 2024
A mourner at a funeral ceremony at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, July 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR.
An online platform has been launched to document instances where crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war are glorified or denied.
The Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide, the Bosnian NGO that launched the website, Negatorigenocida.info, said in a statement: “Any denial or glorification will be carefully documented and analysed, and forwarded to the relevant institutions, including the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for further action.”
Murat Tahirovic, the group’s president, said judicial institutions in the country have not done enough to prosecute genocide denial under legislation that came into force in 2021.
“For a long time, we have been waging a small war with the Prosecutor’s Office regarding the non-prosecution of deniers of genocide and other war crimes,” Tahirovic told BIRN.
“We are continuing our fight against both perpetrators and deniers, as well as those who glorify criminals who committed the most serious crimes,” he added.
In the first half of this year, according to data from the 2024 Genocide Denial Report by the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, 305 cases of genocide denial were registered in the Bosnian and Serbian media – three times more than in 2023.
The slowness of the Bosnian judiciary in bringing charges related to the denial of war crimes led to the surge in incidents, legal experts told BIRN in July this year.
Three indictments have been filed since the High Representative, the international official who oversees the implementation of the peace deal that ended the Bosnian war, imposed amendments to the criminal code banning the denial of genocide, war crimes and the glorification of war criminals in July 2021.
The Municipal Court in Sarajevo sentenced Hamdija Kocic to one year of probation for insulting the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica under the criminal offence of “causing national, racial and religious hatred, discord or intolerance”. Several judgments by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which was established by the UN, have established that in July 1995, genocide was committed against Bosniaks from Srebrenica.
Tahirovic noted that as well as the state-level law, there is a law in Bosnia an Herzegovina’s Federation entity that enables prosecutors to file indictments for genocide denial.
Earlier this year a UN General Assembly resolution agreed to mark July 11 as an International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide.
Copyright BIRN 2015