Talha Ozturk
11 May 2020•Update: 11 May 2020
BELGRADE, Serbia
Bosnia and Herzegovina on Monday released a report on denial of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which over 8,300 Muslims were killed by Serbian forces.
The report, written by historian Monica Hanson Green, includes many details about the war in Bosnia in 1992-1995, subsequent war crimes trials, and the media outlets and people who deny the genocide.
Emir Suljagic, head of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, which published the report, said that the problem of genocide denial is very important.
"We took a new responsibility to raise awareness of the genocide. This report is the first step in this," said Suljagic.
He emphasized that all the data in the report is real and that the report in no way targets the Serbian people.
"The report mentions people and institutions that deny and defend genocide. The Srebrenica genocide is only part of the three-and-a-half-year systematic persecution of the Bosniak people and Bosnia and Herzegovina," said Suljagic.
The report, published in both Bosnian and English, describes the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the attempted ethnic cleansing, the war crimes committed, and the post-war trials in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
This is the first time such a study was done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the report will be sent to the international institutions, said the center.
In the early 1990s, Srebrenica was besieged by Serbian forces trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form their own state.
In the spring of 1993, the UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a "safe area." However, Serbian troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic – later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide – overran the UN zone.
The Dutch troops failed to act as Serbian forces occupied the area, killing about 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone. Some 15,000 Srebrenica residents fled into the surrounding mountains, but Serbian troops hunted them down and killed 6,000 in the forests.
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops meant to act as international peacekeepers.
