The denial of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide by Serb officials and media in Bosnia and the Balkans has significantly waned over the past year but is still present, a report said Thursday.
Bosnian Serb forces captured the eastern town on July 11, 1995, just months before the end of Bosnia's war. They then killed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys, an act labelled genocide by two international courts.
The genocide is mostly denied by leaders of the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, that along with the Muslim-Croat Federation makes up post-war Bosnia, notably its President Milorad Dodik.
"There was no genocide in Srebrenica ... I say that with a clear conscience," Dodik said in April.
The Srebrenica memorial centre said in an annual report that from May 2022 to May this year, there were 90 cases of denial in Bosnia and the region compared with almost 700 cases during the previous 12-month period.
Since 2021, the denial of the Srebrenica genocide and other war crimes, as well as glorification of war criminals, is punishable with up to five years in jail.
As a consequence the number of reported cases has dropped, according to the report, although no one has yet been prosecuted.
The Srebrenica atrocity was the worst during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war that claimed nearly 100,000 lives.
A UN court sentenced both Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic to life in prison, notably for Srebrenica.
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic, who said "it's just a decision of a court, nothing more", was also cited in the report among the deniers.
The denials occur mostly in July, during the period of commemorations for the victims.
In July, two Bosnian Serb students sparked outrage among Muslims by glorifying Mladic on social media.
A few days later, head of Serbia's intelligence agency (BIA) Aleksandar Vulin offered them a scholarship and the possibility to continue studies at the agency's academy in Belgrade.
