In the ten years which have passed since that text was published, the situation has not improved, it has become more dangerous. Although key perpetrators \u2013 like Ratko Mladi\u0107, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army \u2013 have been convicted and sentenced, and the facts about the crime have been established beyond reasonable doubt by international and domestic courts, the denial of the Srebrenica genocide is intensifying. And it is no longer a fringe effort or a subtle distortion of facts. In Serbia and Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb-dominated entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it has hardened into official state policy, with devastating consequences for justice and peace in Bosnia, but also in the whole region and its future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This denial, rooted in nationalist ideology originally championed by the regime of Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107, is now amplified by geopolitical alliances with regimes that actively undermine international law. It is sustained by the failures of domestic leadership in Bosnia and tolerated \u2013 if not enabled \u2013 by the international community that increasingly applies justice selectively. Together, these forces have made space for a new generation to be raised on historical falsehoods and prepared, psychologically and politically, for renewed conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Genocide denial is now state doctrine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In both Serbia and Republika Srpska, genocide denial has evolved into a cornerstone of governance. Serbian president Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 continues to reject courts\u2019 rulings, meaning the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)<\/a> and the International Court of Justice (ICJ)<\/a> that classified the 1995 mass killings in Srebrenica as genocide. Rather than using his influence to foster a reckoning with the past, Vu\u010di\u0107 has taken every opportunity to frame the genocide recognition as an attack on Serbs and Serbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His efforts to derail the May 2024 UN General Assembly resolution<\/a> that established July 11 as the international day of remembrance for the Srebrenica genocide were not symbolic: they were aggressive, calculated and extensive. Serbia\u2019s diplomatic apparatus was mobilized to lobby dozens of countries against the resolution. This was not about semantics. It was about asserting a narrative in which genocide is denied, victims are delegitimized, and perpetrators are defended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Republika Srpska, President Milorad Dodik has pushed this strategy further still. Over the past decade, he has openly glorified war criminals, repealed official acknowledgements of the genocide, and embedded denial into the education system. School curricula omit any mention of Srebrenica as a genocide, and students are taught to view ICTY verdicts as anti-Serb propaganda. War criminals like Radovan Karad\u017ei\u0107 are celebrated, with dormitories and public spaces bearing their names. Dodik frames any attempt to discuss the genocide as an attack on Republika Srpska itself, using denial not just as historical revisionism, but as a political weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A pivotal moment in Republika Srpska\u2019s march toward official, institutionalized genocide denial came in 2019, when Milorad Dodik\u2019s government established a so-called \u201cIndependent international commission for investigating the suffering of all peoples in the Srebrenica region between 1992 and 1995\u201d<\/a>. Despite its name, the commission was neither independent nor committed to the truth. It was chaired by Gideon Greiff, an Israeli historian and former consultant at Yad Vashem, whose prior credentials dealing with Holocaust memory were cynically weaponized to give the project an air of legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commission\u2019s mandate was not to examine new facts or contribute to reconciliation. Its real objective was to nullify the findings of the earlier 2004 Republika Srpska Srebrenica Commission<\/a> - a report that had acknowledged the killings of thousands of Bosniak men and boys and paved the way for some degree of institutional accountability within the entity. The 2004 report, though imperfect, had recognized the role of the Republika Srpska military and police in the crimes and had identified numerous mass graves and victims by name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under Dodik\u2019s direction, the Greiff commission sought to erase those admissions. Its 2021 report downplayed the number of victims, cast doubt on the classification of genocide, and accused the ICTY of bias and fabrication. It made sweeping claims suggesting that the number of Bosniak deaths was inflated, that many were \u201ccombatants\u201d, and that the international courts\u2019 proceedings were politically motivated. The report leaned heavily on disputed or fringe sources, employed misleading statistical analysis, and ignored or dismissed overwhelming forensic and testimonial evidence presented during years of ICTY trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was not a scholarly exercise. It was a propaganda tool, publicly financed with the intent of constructing an alternative narrative \u2013 one that painted the Bosniak victims as Islamic fundamentalist aggressors and framed the Serbs as unjustly vilified. It was used not only as justification of internal policies of denial and distortion, but also as diplomatic ammunition. Dodik distributed the report to international partners, including Russia, China, and a number of right-wing figures in the European Parliament, in an effort to challenge the international consensus on Srebrenica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Greiff report sparked widespread outrage among survivors, victims\u2019 families, and international legal experts. The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), which succeeded the ICTY, reiterated that the genocide in Srebrenica was firmly established by numerous verdicts. Even the German government responded decisively, announcing in 2022 that Greiff was under investigation for his role in genocide denial and was no longer welcome in the country, and stripped of an award for Holocaust-related research<\/a> \u2013 a notable rebuke, given Greiff\u2019s long-standing associations with Holocaust memorial institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite this, the damage was done. In Republika Srpska, the Greiff report became a state-sanctioned document, treated as authoritative, and used to justify the rejection of court rulings and the removal of genocide references from public discourse. It was incorporated into Republika Srpska Assembly resolutions, echoed in media, and integrated into the talking points of Republika Srpska officials at every level. It represents perhaps the clearest example of how denial has shifted from a defensive position to an offensive campaign \u2013 a deliberate rewriting of history by state power and dressed in the language of academic legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Greiff commission did not just distort the record. It attempted to erase the foundation of justice established by more than a decade of international trials, over 800 witness testimonies, and thousands of forensic identifications. And it sent a clear message: Republika Srpska will not only reject the findings of international law, it will build its own reality, no matter how grotesquely it contradicts the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\t Denial of the Srebrenica genocide in Serbia and Republika Srpska is now the official policy, but the local and global circumstances have also played a part. The Bosniak political leadership is not without responsibility in this regard, primarily for its handling of the request for a revision of the 2007 judgment<\/a> of the International court of Justice (ICJ), which found that Serbia had failed to prevent the genocide in Srebrenica, but stopped short of declaring Serbia directly responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A legal opportunity existed to bring forth new evidence, possibly including previously unavailable ICTY material that demonstrated deeper Serbian state involvement in the coordination, support and cover-up of the genocide. But the Bosniak leadership, caught in a web of internal political rivalries, corruption and lacking international legal strategy, failed<\/a> to submit a valid request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The revision process, spearheaded by the then Bosniak member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency, Bakir Izetbegovi\u0107, was not even properly initiated. The ICJ dismissed the petition on procedural grounds, not on the merits, despite significant funds spent on various local and international legal experts allegedly working on the application. This failure sent a devastating signal - not only to survivors, who felt abandoned and were traumatised once again, but also to the perpetrators and their political successors: Serbia read it as a capitulation. The silence that followed was interpreted not as legal caution but as moral weakness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This moment, this failure was a major turning point in all conversations about justice and the acknowledgement of Srebrenica genocide in Belgrade and Banja Luka, where officials immediately framed it as exoneration. It emboldened the Serbian government to begin treating denial not as a defensive position but as a national mandate. It became the foundation of its political ideology \u2013 and an exportable product to a new generation. The message was clear: there would be no further legal challenge on the international stage to examine Serbia\u2019s role in the genocide. And in that vacuum, war criminals from Bosnia (both those under indictment and the convicted) were offered shelter in Serbia, thanks to laws on dual citizenship, while genocide denial took root more deeply and more boldly than ever before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, the global order has changed dramatically over the past decade, and not in favour of justice. When Bosnia attempted to revisit the ICJ judgment against Serbia, it faced not only internal dysfunction but a lack of international political support. That absence of will has only deepened in the wake of recent wars. The impunity enjoyed by Israel for its actions in Gaza and by Russia for its crimes in Ukraine sends a clear message: justice is optional, depending on your alliances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n States like the United States of America and Germany \u2013 who supported the UN resolution commemorating the Srebrenica genocide \u2013 shield Israel from accountability. This hypocrisy is not lost on Vu\u010di\u0107 and Dodik. They see it as license. And indeed, they have chosen their allies accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dodik has tethered his political future to Moscow, parroting Russian propaganda, undermining Bosnian state institutions, and openly supporting Putin\u2019s model of power. At the same time, Vu\u010di\u0107 has built bridges with Russia and Israel, cozying up to regimes where ethnic supremacy and occupation are normalized and, more importantly, protected by major powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the Israeli ambassador in Belgrade stated<\/a> that \u201cwhat happened in Srebrenica was not genocide\u201d, it was not a diplomatic blunder. It was a statement of intent, calibrated for political effect. Serbia and Republika Srpska are not outliers in this world, they are learning from it, mimicking its worst impulses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The message is now global: if your strategic position is strong enough, you can act with impunity. For those denying the genocide in Bosnia, this has become a playbook. Russia supports Dodik\u2019s destabilizing agenda. Israel legitimizes denial through diplomatic complicity. The United States and the European Union, while nominally supportive of justice for Srebrenica, have failed to apply the same standards of accountability elsewhere. The credibility of international justice is crumbling, and those invested in denial know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Greiff commission as a propaganda tool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Denial enabled locally and globally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Justice is optional, depending on your alliances<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Srebrenica Memorial Centre: an isolated beacon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"30](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Serbia_graffiti-Belgrad-genocide_@Massimo-Duratti-540x360.jpg\")
<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t![\"Refik](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Refik-Hodzic-1.jpg\")
REFIK HODZIC<\/strong><\/p>\n