Every act of genocide is the same regardless of the number of victims, HDZ party whip Branko Bacic said on Tuesday.

Bacic's statement was a comment on President Zoran Milanovic's statement of last week that “there are different kinds of genocide” and his describing the genocide in Srebrenica as less severe than the genocides committed during the Holocaust.

“The President's statement is incautious,” Bacic told reporters after a meeting of the ruling coalition.

“The HDZ is clear on the matter, every genocide is the same, the more so if it has been determined by rulings of international courts,” he added.

“One cannot make a distinction between acts of genocide depending on the number of victims,” Bacic said.

Milanovic's statement about the Srebrenica genocide has been condemned by the Bosniak member of the BiH Presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic, the head of the Bosniak Ethnic Minority Council in Croatia, Armin Hodzic, as well as the leader of the biggest Bosniak party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic.

Bacic, however, would not say if the leader of the Bosnian Croat HDZ BiH party, Dragan Covic, was wrong to vote against Bosnia and Herzegovina's law banning the denial of genocide.

“He has made a statement on the matter,” said the HDZ whip.

Covic on Monday commented on the vote on a conclusion by the Serb people's group in the BiH Parliament's House of Representatives on the law banning the denial of genocide, which was imposed by the former High Representative of the international community to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Valentin Inzko, before his term expired in July this year.

Covic and his HDZ BiH party on 29 November endorsed the proposal by the Serb people's group to abolish the said law.

Commenting on this, the BiH Croat leader said on Monday that it was “an act of gross manipulation and abuse.”

“We tried to make the House of Peoples start functioning as it has not been working due to the imposed law. We wanted to change that in agreement with international institutions but unfortunately, when we made the first step, it was grossly abused and depicted as a denial of genocide,” Covic said.

“The public in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international public have been manipulated by a source of information in an utterly unacceptable way,” Covic said.