Bosnian Oscar-winner Danis Tanovic responded on Saturday to Serbian outgoing Prime Minister Ana Brnabic’s claim that the Srebrenica Genocide was a ‘misunderstanding’, saying he wishes many misunderstandings to her closest family.
Serbia’s Ana Brnabic said she did not receive an invitation to the 25 anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide which took place on in this east Bosnian town,adding that “we must stop returning to the misunderstandings from the past.”
Following her statement, the world-famous film award winner Danis Tanovic responded with a tweet saying: “I wish AnaBrnabic many misunderstandings among her close family and close friends.”
https://twitter.com/DanisTanovic/status/1282035501973811201
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the organisers of the 25th commemoration at the Genocide Memorial Centre in Potocari, a village near Srebrenica, held the burial for nine victims whose remains were found over the past 25 years.
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The commemoration was attended by a reduced number of guests, but many foreign heads of state and officials paid their respects via video messages.
Speaking at the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) summit, Brnabic said that “revisiting the past does not contribute to peace and stability,” recalling the 2015 incident when Serbian President “Aleksandar Vucic was attacked at Potocari five years ago.”
Bosnian authorities are still investigating the 2015 incident when some participants of the event threw water bottles at Vucic.
This incident was made even more complicated following testimonies from some Serbian police officers claiming they were sent to Srebrenica days earlier without their badges, to attend the commemoration. They said they never found out what their purpose was at the event.
During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war for independence from the former Yugoslavia, the country lost over 100,000 people, over 8,000 of which were lost in July 1995 in Srebrenica, when Bosnian Serb forces, which received financial and logistical support both from Serbian authorities and individuals during the war, overrun the then UN-protected zone of Srebrenica.
The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide. International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars.
Those who the ICTY sentenced to life imprisonment are Ljubisa Beara, Zdravko Tolimir, and Vujadin Popovic. But the most well-known alleged masterminds of what happened in Srebrenica are former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and ex Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and both have been sentenced for it but have appealed.
