The Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IGC) issued a press release today regarding the comments of the Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milanko Kajganić, after rejecting 30 applications for denial of genocide, and stated that denying genocide in Srebrenica is a criminal act, not freedom of speech.
“Someone who denies the Holocaust does not do so in the name of freedom of speech, but in the name of glorifying war crimes and Nazism. The same should apply to the Greater Serbian deniers of genocide in Srebrenica, which after the Holocaust is the first legally verified genocide in Europe, which means that it has both legal and historical validity,” the statement said.
IGC believes that denying genocide in Srebrenica is a criminal act, not freedom of speech, and that “subsuming the glorification of genocide under freedom of speech is also a criminal act and complicity in the glorification of genocide.”
As it is further stated, “Serbian deniers of the genocide show that they do not recognize the international order and the Hague verdicts, that they develop a negation towards all those who do not fit into a ‘homogeneous’ ethnic group”.
IGC believes that attempts to deny the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina will only lead to new conflicts and interruptions of cooperation between independent countries in the Balkans.
IGC points out that the dignity of verdicts for genocide must be maintained and their truth defended, especially considering the extremely high threshold for making such a verdict.
