The Republika Srpska (RS) entity Government has annulled the 2004 Srebrenica Report and instructed the RS Justice Ministry to form new commissions. The first should deal with events in the Drina river valley, while the second one should focus on the events in Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995.

Entity President Milorad Dodik has once again accused the international community, or more precisely the former High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina who oversaw the civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in the country, Paddy Ashdown, of being bias during the making of his report to the UN, for the benefit of the Bosniak people.

“The pain of the white, Muslim, head-scarf has been long favoured here over the Serb pain. The entire period of Ashdown’s mandate was full of examples of Serb suffering on Bosnia, and yet not one example ever found its place in his report, because the international factor led by Paddy Ashdown would not allow it. Even as an opposition politician, I was the one who was always against his report,” Dodik stressed.

In a statement to N1, Ashdown said that this is not the way to build a country, and he warned the officials of this Serb-dominated, semi-autonomous entity of some historic messages.

“Bosnia cannot build its future by attempting to ignore its past. Neither the RS National Assembly nor any other institution can change what the world had seen and what the world knows to be the truth. Such behaviour makes no favours for them or the people they represent. As events from the past show us, those who deny history are almost always destined to repeat it,” former High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lord Paddy Ashdown told N1. 

The victims of war crimes, however, are clear – every innocent person needs to be recognised and honoured, but this must not be done at the cost of others and it must not diminish the suffering of others.

“Every innocent victim needs to be recognised and accepted as such. We have nothing against that, on the contrary, true facts concerning the suffering of Serbs in the Drina river valley must be established. But this must be established by an independent commission. An ad-hoc commission that will be established by the RS Government can't do that because it will be biased,” Head of the Victims and Witnesses of Genocide Association, Murat Tahirovic, said.