As prime minister Charles Michel visits Kigali for the official ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, the justice committee of the federal parliament has approved a proposal to make it illegal to deny the historical fact of that massacre and another at Srebrenica in Bosnia.
The July 1995 genocide in Bosnia was carried out by Serbian troops, and led to the deaths of 8,000 people, mainly men and boys. At the same time as the killings, up to 30,000 women, children and elderly people were forcibly removed from the territory.
The new law, which justice minister Koen Geens said he expects to be passed by parliament after the Easter break, does not apply only to those two events, however. The proposal makes it a criminal offence to “deny, minimise, justify or approve of genocides, crimes against humanity or war crimes recognised as such by an international tribunal”, The Burussels Time reports.
