Srebrenica has stirred up controversy at the UN. Although a resolution establishing July 11 as International Day of Remembrance for the Srebrenica Genocide was eventually adopted, but not unanimously. Last week we wrote about Russia’s opposition to the document, and now we explain how it was received by the Serbs themselves and in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The media in Poland and the West write that the Balkans are “boiling over,” but the reality – as is usually the case – is more complicated. However, it was partly predictable: for the resolution is opposed mainly by the pro-Russian Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who has repeatedly denied the Srebrenica genocide, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
Srebrenica is to be remembered
Twenty-nine years after the massacre in Bosnian Srebrenica, in which the Armed Forces of Republika Srpska led by General Ratko Mladic slaughtered at least 8,372 people, the UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution on the issue. It establishes July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance for the Srebrenica Genocide, and strongly condemns any attempt to deny the event as genocide and glorify those responsible for it. The resolution calls on all countries that are part of the United Nations to promote facts about the event, including in their educational programs; it also stresses the importance of continuing the process of identifying the victims of the massacre.
The world’s media note that memorial day resolutions are usually adopted unanimously – but this time the result was much more ambiguous. Nineteen countries were against: in addition to Serbia, Russia, China and Belarus, and Hungary as the only EU member state, as well as several non-European countries: including Cuba, Eritrea, Nicaragua and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In turn, 68 of the 193 UN countries (from the EU, Slovakia, Greece and Malta) abstained from voting, most often citing the lack of the necessary consensus on the issue as the reason. Of the countries that were once part of Yugoslavia, all but Serbia supported the text of the resolution.
Media coverage of UN resolution on Srebrenica
The first reactions to reports of the passage of the resolution in New York appeared in the Polish media. The wp.pl portal, carrying the news from “Deutsche Welle,” writes in the title “boiling in the Balkans.” The boiling is also mentioned by “Do rzeczy.” TVN 24, on the other hand, cites Dodik’s threats about “the end of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
The title of the Deutsche Welle text reprinted in the Polish media refers to “mixed reactions in the Western Balkans.” In reality, however, these reactions are expected: the resolution is opposed primarily by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who has repeatedly denied the Srebrenica genocide, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Despite the final support for the resolution, we can observe mixed reactions among the media and public opinion in Montenegro. Other countries in the region, as well as the Croatian and Bosnian “president” of Bosnia (the country has three members of the presidium, each with a different ethnic background) express themselves favorably about the decision.
Following foreign media outlets, including those from other countries of the former Yugoslavia, one might get the impression that Serbs are in a gregarious denial of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide against Bosnian Muslims, and that the media there is a monolith subservient to the ruling president and his party, which is increasingly turning to Russia. The reality, however, is, as is usually the case, somewhat more complicated, and the media landscape there is by no means like the Belarusian variant.
Milorad Dodik denies genocide in Srebrenica
On Thursday, May 23, while the resolution was being voted on in New York, Milorad Dodik and his entire government appeared in Srebrenica, now part of Republika Srpska, one of the country’s constituent parts. In the nearby village of Bratunec, he gave a speech in which he once again negated the Srebrenica genocide – he stressed that it is not known how many Bosniaks were killed in Srebrenica, the bodies found there were moved from elsewhere, and no one has so far succeeded in proving that there were actually eight thousand victims (in fact, due to the movement of bodies between more than 80 mass graves, determining the exact number of victims is unlikely to be possible, nevertheless, so far 8372 victims, mostly men and boys, have been identified; similarly, the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals says there are about eight thousand victims).
“The entire Western world has conspired to label even unborn children as genocidal,” Dodik said. – “For us, it won’t be Memorial Day, because we didn’t do anything that day.”
The big concern, however, was triggered especially by Dodik’s subsequent declarations: he announced that Serbs who “can no longer live in such BiH” are launching a formal process of “disengagement and peaceful demarcation” because the Bosniaks “disrespected the Serbs” and acted illegally on the Srebrenica resolution. After a meeting of the Republika Srpska government in Srebrenica, Prime Minister Radovan Višković confirmed that an agreement on “peaceful disengagement” will be prepared within the next 30 days, adding that there is no question of secession, but precisely of a peaceful solution, since the Serbs do not want a conflict. However, if they are considered a genocidal nation, further coexistence is not possible.
Dodik wants “good relations with Russia”
Dodik’s pro-Russian orientation is evident, which, in addition to his declarations, is borne out by his actions – he went to visit Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2023, and during the visit said, among other things, that it reinforced his belief that the ongoing war was not a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but with the West (the same one that, as we recall, has conspired to stigmatize the Serbs as a genocidal nation). He also spoke of the “awakening of Nazism and fascism, especially in Ukraine,” and referred to Russia as another victim of NATO, which was also the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s. The next time Dodik appeared in Russia was in St. Petersburg in April of this year. At the time he said: “Despite tremendous pressure, we are committed to good relations with Russia.”
Among others, Srpsko građansko vijeće /Serbian Civic Council/ reacted to Dodik’s statements about “peaceful separation,” that is, the separation of the Republika Srpska from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a non-governmental organization of Bosnian Serbs that has existed since March 1994, founded by Serbs loyal to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which seeks to preserve a democratic, independent and sovereign Bosnia. “Bosnia must not be divided,” reads a statement prepared by the organization, “Calls for its division have happened before and are likely to continue to happen, but they remain only calls, a dead word on paper.”
The clear allusion in the statement is that these are not Dodik’s first such declarations. He has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2017, while he has also been on the British sanctions list since 2022: the reason for this is precisely to undermine the legitimacy and functionality of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and thus primarily to oppose the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which created the country in its current administrative form. Dodik’s threats seem to be the leitmotif of at least the last decade of his activities, which does not change the fact that there is still a danger of an escalation of the conflict. This is also pointed out by the SGV in the aforementioned statement, asking Dodik whether he is aware that he is calling for war, since a peaceful secession of Republika Srpska is not possible.
Serbian president accuses UN and West
Meanwhile, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić accuses the UN and the West of wanting to destabilize Bosnia, but also of spreading false propaganda. During a meeting in New York, Vučić claimed that the resolution would “open a Pandora’s box,” as well as inflame old wounds and bring new divisions, not only in the region, but in the UN itself. He recalled Serbian victims from World War II, and talked about the pressure exerted on other member states to vote against the resolution, which he said is “extremely politicized.” During the vote, Vučić sat wrapped in a Serbian flag, which he held in his hands, put it to his lips and touched his forehead with it. After the vote, he declared victory – with both the president and the Serbian government promoting the narrative that the outcome of the vote was unequivocally positive for Serbia, as 84 countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 87 did not support it (abstracting, among other things, from the fact that representatives of many abstaining countries, such as Mexico and Brazil, unequivocally pointed out that genocide had occurred in Srebrenica).
Serbian tabloids supporting the president wrote of his “heroic battle and great moral victory” (Telegraf), “compromising resolution” (Kurir, b92), “defeat of the West and its blackmail” (Večernje novosti) and “compromise – two-thirds of the world against the resolution” (Alo). Mostly pictures of Vučić wrapped in the Serbian flag emerged from the covers. He was quoted as saying that “many wanted to stigmatize Serbia, but they have not succeeded and will never succeed.” Kurir also enumerated Serbia’s true friends, while the moderate Politika, which is partly in state hands, also pointed out that more than half the world was on Serbia’s side.
Before the vote in Belgrade, billboards appeared with the words “We are not a genocidal nation. We remember…” Meanwhile, however, the daily Danas, which is critical of the Vučić regime, wrote on its cover: “Resolution: responsibility for genocide is individual.” Like many other Serbian commentators, former ambassador and sociologist Vesna Pešić, quoted in Danas, qualifies Vučić’s campaign, in which he tries to convince Serbs that the Srebrenica resolution collectively stigmatizes them as a genocidal nation, is immoral, deceitful and serves to personally promote the president and strengthen his regime by portraying him as a defender of Serbs and Serbia.
Experts invited to N1 TV spoke in a similar vein. Analyst Aleksandar Popov, when asked whether the resolution could destabilize Bosnia, explained that it was in fact destabilized by the actions of the authorities of Republika Srpska and Serbia. The cynical use of the resolution by Vučić and Dodik to gain support was also pointed out by law professor Marko Milanović – he stressed that the resolution will be cynically used to create tensions in the region, especially in July, when Memorial Day is to be celebrated.
Srebrenica divides Montenegrin society
Some commentators also pointed out that the rhetoric used by the president and his entourage takes Serbia back to the 1990s. At the time, Aleksandar Vučić was, it should be recalled, a journalist for the Bosnian Serb propaganda channel “Channel S,” and later, Minister of Information (although he is usually referred to as “Minister of Propaganda”), eager to grant financial penalties and bans to journalists critical of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. Danas columnist Snežana Čongradin, among others, recalls of his past: “Why does he [Vučić – note AW] insist on this lie – that Serbs are a genocidal nation? If he hadn’t spent half of his life as the closest associate of war criminal Vojislav Šešelj [sentenced in The Hague in 2018 to ten years in prison – note AW], he would have been a member of the Serb leadership. AW], if he hadn’t politically supported and inspired the gravest crimes against humanity during the war years of the 1990s, if he hadn’t uttered the worst lies against people of other nationalities and faith, if he hadn’t declared Serbia’s parliament a safe house for Ratko Mladic, if he hadn’t gained financially from the war and the bombing of Serbia…, today Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić himself would be the proud initiator of declaring July 11 a day of remembrance for the victims of the Srebrenica genocide before the UN.”
However, the resolution seems to have caused the greatest divisions in Montenegrin society, a third of which declares itself to be ethnic Serbs. The issue of the Srebrenica genocide had already caused political storms here: in 2006, the Montenegrin Parliament accepted the European Parliament’s resolution on the issue, then in 2021 it passed it with a two-thirds vote, thus confirming July 11 as Memorial Day. Subsequently, however, the Minister of Justice declared that the genocide had not happened, as a result of which he had to resign. In 2022, Montenegro’s new Prime Minister Dritan Abazović, on the other hand, said in Srebrenica that the genocide was done over “people, not Boszniaks,” although he later apologized. In turn, current Prime Minister Milojko Spajić declared his support for the resolution before the UN Assembly, however, on the condition that two amendments be adopted: that there be no collective responsibility of any national or religious group for the Srebrenica genocide, and that “efforts be made to strengthen unity in the diversity of Bosnia.”
Eventually, these changes were adopted and written into the preamble of the resolution. Montenegro supported the resolution, but chose not to be one of its sponsors, despite numerous petitions from NGOs and individual citizens. Prime Minister Spajić, aware of the controversy at home, stressed Montenegro’s constructive role in formulating the final text of the resolution, which once again emphasizes the individualization of blame for the massacre. Regardless of the amendments, support for the resolution was fiercely opposed by pro-Serbian parties in the Montenegrin parliament and government, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church and Metropolitan Joannicius of Montenegro. Protests were held in front of the government building on Wednesday and Thursday, with “treason,” “Russia” and “Ratko Mladic” repeated among the shouts.
In the media uproar, however, commentators are missing a significant fact, which in the future may be of crucial importance for memory conflicts in the countries formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia. At Cannes, the Palme d’Or has just been awarded to Croatian director Nebojša Slijepčević for his film “Čovjek koji nije znao šutjeti”/”The Man Who Couldn’t Keep Silent,” which recalls the crime committed by Serbian paramilitaries in Štrpce, Bosnia, when nineteen civilians were pulled from a train and shot dead. Meanwhile, a few months ago, the results of a survey titled “Views of young Serbs on the wars of the 1990s” were revealed. The survey polled 910 Serbian people between the ages of 18 and 30 – one-fifth admitted they knew nothing about the events, and almost half said they knew very little. Half of those questioned had not heard of the crimes against Croats, Bošniaks or Kosovo Albanians. Less than five percent of young Serbs consider Srebrenica to be the greatest crime of the wars of the 1990s, while 93% overestimate (often significantly) the number of victims of the NATO bombing of Serbia.
Autorka: Aleksandra Wojtaszek
Redakcja: Jędrzej Morawiecki
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