A member of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity parliament Srdjan Mazalica denied that war-time Serb authorities ever ordered non-Serbs to wear white armbands and questioned the Srebrenica genocide during an interview with N1 about the recent guest appearance of the Sarajevo War Theatre’s (SARTR) at the "Petar Kocic" Theater Fest in Banja Luka for which the RS National Theatre was sharply criticised by some RS public figures, the public and the RS public emitter RTRS who refused to sponsor the festival.

Despite multiple warnings that he was violating the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina and that there are international and national verdicts proving the events from the war, Mazalica said there are other “qualifications of genocide in Srebrenica” and made shameful claims about the white armbands in Prijedor, by saying that they are “lies, deception, misinformation and propaganda”.

“I do not justify any harassment of the [RS National Theatre] director or the actors. I know most of them personally. These are good people and patriots, they do their job well. There are some disagreements and that is completely normal in these situations. Sometimes I also wonder what position to take. The play is not disputed, but the militant name and the past of that theatre when it became a propaganda unit of the Army of the then-Republic of BiH are disputed,” Mazalica said.

When asked to explain what kind of propaganda he was talking about he said that “these are all topics that are coloured by war and on which there are different opinions. Disagreement with Srebrenica, white armbands, tanks, calling anyone fascists and aggressors.”

Asked to further clarify who was being named all those things, Mazalica said that it is known who was being referred to, supposedly suggesting that ethnic Serbs were the ones being named and shamed.

N1’s host asked him to comment on the Twitter post of the daughter of RS President Milorad Dodik, Gorica Dodik, in which she said that SARTR calls Serbs aggressors and to name the play in which they did so.

“On their website, they stated ‘resistance to fascism and aggression.’ My family is an old anti-fascist family. It is known to whom they’re calling fascists. It (SARTS) was created as you said, during the siege [of Sarajevo] etc. Such a theatre does not exist in the RS. Who told any theatre to deal with the themes of Jasenovac, Dobrovoljačka, etc.? In the RS, there is no political-propaganda culture that should serve the political elites,” Mazalica responded.

When asked to name an example when and where has SARTR called anyone an aggressor and how is something propaganda if it is true, Mazalica responded:

“The white armbands are not the truth, they are misinformation. There are different opinions on the qualification of genocide in Srebrenica.”

when warned that he was violating the Criminal Code, he added:

“With all due respect to the victims of Srebrenica and Prijedor. White armbands are lies, misinformation, deception and propaganda.”

On May 31, 1992, Bosnian Serb forces occupied the northwestern town of Prijedor and ordered all non-Serbs to wear white armbands and to mark their houses with white sheets.

“Residents of Serb ethnicity, join your army and police in the persecution of these extremists. Other residents, of Muslim and Croatian ethnicity, must display white flags on their houses and wear white armbands. Otherwise, there will be severe consequences,” said the call on the local radio on May 31, 1992.

What followed was mass killings and prison camps.

Among the 3,176 victims were 102 children. Tens of thousands of people passed through the concentration camps, such as Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm, who were subjected to mass executions, rape crimes, various types of torture, as well as crimes against humanity.

Radovan Karadzic, the former President of wartime Republika Srpska (RS), now a Serb-dominated entity within Bosnia, was sentenced to life in prison for various crimes against humanity, including the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croats, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide and for taking UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) hostages during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army general, was sentenced to life in prison by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT). Trial judges found Mladic was responsible for ethnic cleansing campaigns against Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and murdering and terrorising civilians in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo during a 43-month siege, as part of a plan to forge a “Greater Serbia” out of parts of the former Yugoslavia.