Two MPs in Bosnia’s Federation (FBiH) entity announced on Tuesday they will submit an urgent initiative for the FBiH Parliament to discuss a draft law banning Holocaust and genocide denial which the FBiH House of Representatives already adopted five years ago.

“The goal of this draft is to regulate the sanctioning of Holocaust denial, crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, and it was sent to the procedure five years ago by the then representative of our party, Denis Gratz,” said one of the MPs from Nasa Stranka (Our Party), Mirsad Camdzic.

He stated that this law has never been on the agenda or considered in the House of Peoples of FBiH.

“I truly don't want to believe that there is any political force at the moment to which this very precise law, harmonized with the academic community and victims’ associations, is unacceptable. We hope that this urgency will bear fruit and that this law will be on the agenda of the House of Peoples of the FBiH Parliament as soon as possible,” he said.

His party colleague, Vibor Handzic, said that there is no reason why this draft has been “stuck” for years.

“In my opinion, this draft law is stuck somewhere in the deep drawers of the Parliament's offices for completely inexplicable reasons. In essence, this law should not be overly complicated at all, it stipulates that the act of denying, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity is treated as a criminal offence in accordance with Article 21 of the FBiH Criminal Code and prescribes fines and imprisonment for violation of the provisions of this law,” Handzic explained.

He noted that all EU countries have similar regulation in place.

“Unfortunately, in the five years we have been waiting for this law to be on the agenda, we could witness daily planned and organized activities in the context of the denial of the Holocaust, genocide and all other crimes. Unfortunately, today we live, work and act in a society in which different anti-civilization attitudes and practices of denying and minimizing crimes are expressed publicly every day,” he said.

He said he believes that with this solution, society would make a civilisational step forward because “it is high time as a system to resist and put an end to this problem, because only in this way can we systematically deal with growing anti-civilization actions and ultimately protect victims.”