Even though “a serious crime has been committed against Bosniaks in Srebrenica,” Bosnian Serb leader and Serb Presidency member Milorad Dodik said Sunday he was against the imposition of a law banning the denial of genocide in Bosnia.

He said he respects the pain of the mothers from Srebrenica “both in white and black headscarfs (Muslim and Orthodox), that crimes against anyone must be condemned, but that one truth can't be favoured over another. Truth must be built on facts and not speculation,” Milorad Dodik said.

“Lately I have heard a constant request to ban something and to deny it. The truth cannot be built on that. Whether something happened or not. If there is something suspicious, such as their story, with which they want to say that genocide happened, then it cannot be forced by law. It is just a story about a new verbal offence or something similar,” Dodik stated.

He then noted that neither the Hague Tribunal, set in place to try war crimes suspects from wars that took place in the former Yugoslav states such as Bosnia and Croatia in the 90, nor the former US President Bill Clinton famous for finally stopping the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, can write history or talk about Srebrenica.

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.