Republika Srpska recognises the Srebrenica «massacre»

The report published by the commission in charge of investigating the massacres committed in Srebrenica in July 1995 has put an end to nearly nine years of denial of responsibility by the Republika Srpska (RS). On 11 June, the RS government, a Serbian entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, finally admitted that «several thousand Bosnian (Muslims) were liquidated in a manner representing a serious violation of international humanitarian law» in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces, and that «the perpetrators covered up their crimes,» reports the news agency Agence France Presse. In its report, the commission, made up of Bosnian-Serb judges and lawyers, a victims' representative, and an international expert, says it «has established that military and police units, including special units of the interior ministry in Republika Srpska,» took part in the massacres. In 1995, Serb troops massacred around 7000 Muslims men and teenagers in the Srebrenica enclave, which the UN had declared a safe haven. Bosnian Serbs have always been thought responsible for the massacre, but until now no local authority has been willing to accept any form of responsibility, or even to acknowledge that the killings actually took place. The about-turn, however, did not extend to recognizing the massacres as genocide - as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) did.

When it affirmed General Radislav Krstic 35-years sentence for complicity in genocide on 19 April, the ICTY Appeals Chamber confirmed that «the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide against the Bosnian Muslims.» The remains of around 6000 people have so far been discovered in mass graves in the east of Bosnia, and new corpses are regularly unearthed. In 2002, the RS government provoked public indignation when it published a report downplaying the number of victims killed during the Srebrenica massacres.

«A dynamic of cooperation»

Vedran Persic, the spokesperson for Paddy Ashdown, the High Representative of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, told Associated Press that Ashdown welcomed the report. It indicated that «a dynamic of obstruction with regard to war crimes had been replaced by a dynamic of greater cooperation,» he said. Paddy Ashdown was recently forced to sack several highranking Bosnian Serbs, including the head of the army, General Cvjetko Savic, for obstructing the commission's work. Yet in spite of this Bosnian Serb turnaround, cooperation with the ICTY remains difficult. The RS has not yet handed over a single suspect wanted by the tribunal - least of all, the former military leader of the Bosnian Serbs Ratko Mladic and the ex-political leader Radovan Karadzic, who have both been accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.