Bosnia’s international administrator said that he is prepared to use his special powers to impose a law banning genocide denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko is the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, tasked with overseeing the civilian implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the Bosnian war. He has the power to impose and annul laws and fire local officials as high as presidents.
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The law on the ban of genocide denial has been on the table for years but Bosnian Serb representatives have fiercely opposed its adoption. Some Bosnian Serb politicians, including the Serb member of the tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, openly deny the genocide committed in the east-Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.
“All European countries have a Law on banning the Holocaust, in my country an English historian was sentenced to three years in prison because he claimed that the Holocaust did not happen,” Inzko told Al Jazeera Balkans.
Unless Bosnia adopts the law by July 11, 2021, the 26th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide in which Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, Inzko said he will be prepared to impose it.
“Let’s be completely clear, I am ready,” he declared. The international official had previously announced that Bosnia would have such a law in place in 2020, but this didn't happen.
