Many of the alleged victims of the Srebrenica massacre are “still alive,” claimed the leader of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, speaking to lawmakers in the Serb-ruled entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina on Aug. 14.
The ultra-nationalist Dodik called on the deputies to reject the report adopted by the entity’s government in 2004, which had been the first to admit the scale of the crime that took place during the closing months of the Bosnian war in the town of Srebrenica.
The report listed 7,806 names of Bosniak men and boys who were executed by Serb forces over several days in July 1995. The number has since been revised up to nearly 8,400.
On Tuesday, however, Dodik dismissed the massacre as an “arranged tragedy” that caused extreme vilification of Serbs and ensured “realization of plans of some western countries to put collective guilt on the Serbian people.”
“The story of the alleged genocide committed by the Serbs near the end of the last century continues,” Dodik said. He slammed the report as “irrelevant”, “untrue,” and “biased.”
Dodik also called for a new committee to “objectively and impartially” determine the events in Srebrenica during the 1992-1995 war, in the interests of “strengthening the trust and tolerance between the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
Following his speech, opposition representatives slammed Dodik for politicizing the Srebrenica tragedy. Still, the majority of lawmakers on Tuesday voted to revoke the 2004 report.
Source: DW
