A conference held in Belgrade under the title “Politicization of the war crime in Srebrenica,” organized by the so-called Eurasian Security Forum, represents one of the most serious and most explicit examples of public denial of the genocide in Srebrenica in recent years. The gathering provoked sharp reactions due to the open relativization and denial of a crime that has been legally established and proven before the highest international and domestic courts.
Despite the fact that both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as several national courts, have clearly and unequivocally ruled that genocide was committed in Srebrenica in July 1995 against more than 8.000 Bosniak men and boys, conference participants put forward claims that it was merely a “war crime,” not genocide. In doing so, they once again demonstrated a conscious disregard for judicially established facts and international law.
Particularly troubling is the fact that the speakers, among whom were retired military officials, politicians, and some academics, attempted to portray claims of genocide as a “political tool of the West,” allegedly directed against the Serbian people. Such rhetoric not only insults the victims and their families but also further deepens ethnic divisions and prevents genuine reconciliation in the region.
Israeli historian Gideon Greif, whose name has for years been associated with a report commissioned by the authorities of the RS entity, repeated theses that have already been widely disputed within the academic and legal community. His insistence that there was no “intent to destroy” in Srebrenica directly contradicts verdicts that have in detail proven the existence of the planned and systematic destruction of the Bosniak population. Precisely because of such views, Germany withdrew its decision to award Greif one of its highest honors, and his claims were labeled as revisionist.
According to his words, Srebrenica was deliberately chosen by those who speak of genocide as the most visible place in a protected zone, under great attention from the international community, in order for it to become an “example of vulnerability before Serbian forces for all Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).”
The statements of Forum director Mitar Kovac, a retired general, were also scandalous; he stated that the claim of genocide in Srebrenica distances Serbs and Bosniaks, emphasizing that the peoples of BiH cannot build a future on lies.
“There was a civil war there, crimes were committed by all sides, and the spiral of violence that began there long ago can only be stopped by the truth,” Kovac said.
Member of Parliament from the party We – Power of the People, Aleksandar Pavic, stressed that the claim of genocide in Srebrenica “was supposed to serve as a globalist sledgehammer in the time of a unipolar world, as a pretext for so-called humanitarian interventions around the world, and then was used as a slogan – ‘we must not allow another Srebrenica.'”
“They counted on the world remaining unipolar permanently, as a so-called international community controlled by Western centers of power. Their problem now is that this order is collapsing, and in the emerging multipolar world, it is necessary for us to be the first to expose what it served for in order to reach the real truth,” Pavic emphasized.
As he stated, “that unipolar project has done us a lot of harm; it wanted to keep us in a permanent position of criminals and a genocidal people, although we are not.”
“Srebrenica also served to permanently control and suppress the Serbian factor in the Balkans, to justify the NATO intervention against us. To keep us constantly on the defensive, to keep us fragmented within AVNOJ borders, and impose a sense of constant collective guilt. Such people can easily be controlled, subjugated, colonized, in which they partially succeeded, but the very fact that such conferences are being held means they did not fully succeed,” Pavic concluded.
In the same inciting tone, lawyer Branko Lukic assessed that the “politicization of Srebrenica is a strategy so that the situation can be controlled at any moment – they need a source of conflict, and if it suits them, to press a button and provoke conflict again.”
“They know that such a thing did not happen, they have reliable data, just as I do, but they still insist on genocide in order to demonize the Serbian side and to justify the bombing of the RS and Serbia in 1999; that is part of the project,” said Lukić, who was the lawyer of the commander of the Army of RS (VRS), Ratko Mladic, before the Hague court, where he was convicted of genocide.
He emphasized that “one of the parts of that project was also the Tribunal, which was supposed to place a judicial seal on that stigmatization of the Serbian people,” but that over time, the truth will come to light.
Claims that only several thousand “Bosniak soldiers” were killed in Srebrenica, and not civilians who were systematically executed after the fall of the United Nations (UN) protected zone, represent a gross distortion of historical facts. The number, structure of the victims, the manner in which the crimes were carried out, and the existence of mass graves have been thoroughly documented and proven through years of court proceedings.
In that context, it remains completely unclear – and deeply troubling – why gatherings are still being organized in Serbia that once again “re-thematize” an issue that has been legally, historically, and morally concluded. Instead of contributing to reconciliation, such conferences serve exclusively as a platform for political revisionism, denial of the suffering of victims, and normalization of discourse that offends international law and elementary civilizational values.
The denial of the genocide in Srebrenica is not a matter of opinion or political stance – it is a denial of judicially established truth. Every attempt to relativize that truth represents not only an insult to the victims and survivors but also a serious blow to the possibility of lasting peace and reconciliation in the region.
