The Association of Genocide Victims and Witnesses has launched a new website designed to monitor and record all forms of genocide denial and war crimes committed on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Negatorigenocida.info platform, they say, was designed as a tool to fight against any form of relativization or glorification of crimes that have been judged before international or domestic courts.
“Any negation or glorification will be carefully documented and analyzed, and forwarded to the competent institutions, including the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for further action,” the Association announced.
Association President Murat Tahirović points to the insufficient work of judicial institutions in the context of the prosecution of genocide denial.
“For a long time, we have been waging a small ‘war’ with the Prosecution regarding the non-prosecution of deniers of genocide and other war crimes. We had statements that the prosecutors do not know how to work, we provided education through the high representative. Recently, it has been said that the number has decreased, and indeed it has, that they do not have a sufficient number of investigators, but that is no excuse for not prosecuting those responsible,” Tahirović said in a statement to Detektor.
He reminds that there is a law at the Federation level as well, which enables cantonal prosecutors’ offices to file indictments for this criminal offense.
Hamdija Kocić was sentenced before the Municipal Court in Sarajevo to one year of probation for insulting the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica because he committed the criminal offense of “causing national, racial and religious hatred, discord or intolerance”.
“We continue our fight against both perpetrators and deniers, as well as those who glorify criminals of the most serious crimes,” says Tahirović.
The Association invites citizens to contact them if they have information about denial of genocide or glorification of war criminals.
The resolution that was adopted by the United Nations (UN) in May 2024 and which marks July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide and the slowness of the judiciary in BiH in bringing charges related to the denial of war crimes, led to a tripling of the revisionist of narratives related to the genocide in Srebrenica, shows Detektor’s analysis of content in BiH and Serbia that contests the genocide in Srebrenica.
In the first half of this year, 305 cases of genocide denial were recorded in the Bosnian and Serbian media, which is three times more than in 2023, when a slight decrease was recorded, according to the data of the 2024 Genocide Denial Report of the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
Since July 2021, when the former high representative in BiH imposed changes to the Criminal Code, according to which the denial of genocide, crimes and the glorification of criminals are punishable, three indictments have been filed, two of which are evidence of the previous practice of the BiH Prosecutor’s Office of splitting indictments against one person on several of them, and the third one was rejected. Subsequently, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina combined two indictments against Vojin Pavlović for inciting national, racial and religious hatred, discord and intolerance into one case, which is currently being held in Sarajevo.
Through several judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was established by the UN, it was established that in July 1995, genocide was committed in Srebrenica in which more than 8,000 men and boys were killed.
