Serbian activists expressed support for the families of the victims of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica on Thursday, saying that they will continue to work toward their country admitting that a genocide took place there.
The leadership in Serbia and that of the Bosnian Serbs never recognised the rulings of two international courts that defined the murder of some 8,000 Srebrenica men and boys as an act of genocide. Some of them call it a crime but others deny it ever happened.
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The leader of the Movement of Free Citizens, actor Sergej Trifunovic, is a rare public figure in Serbia who openly uses the word genocide.
“That is why on this day I want to pay my respects to the victims of the genocide, as it was a genocide, as it was defined by the United Nations as an international crime of intentional, complete or partial destruction of national, ethnic, racial or religious groups,” Trifunovic said.
Stasa Zajevic, a member of the ‘Woman in Black’ association in Serbia, which has fought for the recognition of the crime for years said that her organisation “will never stop asking the Prime Minister and the President to admit the genocide, that is their obligation toward the victims.”
“Srebrenica is a place of failure of the entire humanity and this is their chance to reclaim a completely lost humanity,” she said, adding that “shame is insignificant when compared to what happens in Srebrenica.”
“With this, we express our deepest compassion and sorrow that the state we come from has a state policy of denying the genocide,” she added.
Cedomir Jovanovic, the leader of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Serbia, said that his country “must open its eyes.”
“My people will have to carry that burden, no matter how heavy it may be. Srebrenica is plaguing Serbia and Serbs increasingly, and Bosniaks are increasingly finding their peace with the support from the world,” he said.
His country, he argued, must “admit and take over its part of the responsibility for the genocide in Srebrenica,” arguing that this is the Serbia that its people need.
