Montenegrin Minister Criticised for Srebrenica Genocide Denial

Montenegro’s Minister of Justice, Human and Minority Rights Vladimir Leposavic. Photo: Parliament of Montenegro. 

The United States embassy in Podgorica on Sunday called on Montenegro’s government to state clearly that the 1995 massacres of Bosniaks from Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces were genocide, after Minister of Justice, Human and Minority Rights Vladimir Leposavic expressed doubt about the rulings of international courts about the atrocity.

“The embassy is concerned with comments casting doubt about what occurred in Srebrenica in 1995. We look for clarity and hope the government will unequivocally condemn the massacre and call it what it was – genocide,” the US embassy said in a post on Twitter.

Leposavic, a pro-Serbian politician, argued that the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which classified the massacres of Bosniaks from Srebrenica as genocide, had no legitimacy because he claimed it had destroyed evidence about the trafficking of the organs of Serb civilians in Kosovo.

“I am ready to admit that the crime of genocide was committed in Srebrenica when it is unequivocally established,” Leposavic said in parliament on Friday.

Political leaders of pro-Serbian parties in Montenegro have consistently refused to accept the Hague Tribunal’s definition, saying that Srebrenica killings were a war crime but not genocide.

The British embassy in Podgorica also reacted strongly to Leposavic’s comments.

“The UK remains clear in its longstanding position, that what happened in Srebrenica was genocide. These are facts, established before two international courts, on the basis of overwhelming evidence,” the embassy said on Twitter on Sunday.

Opposition parties and civic activists have called for Leposavic’s resignation, and urged Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic to criticise his comments.

But Slaven Radunovic, an MP from the pro-Serbian Democratic Front, accused the US and British embassies of putting political pressure on the government.

“The attitude of many people in Montenegro is not against the victims in Srebrenica, but only against the politicised decisions of the Hague Tribunal. Those decisions were used to create a black-and-white image of Serbs as ‘bad guys’ and to justify some illegal actions against us by the great powers,” Radunovic said on Monday.

In 2009, the Montenegrin parliament adopted a declaration accepting a European Parliament resolution on Srebrenica, which adopted July 11 as a day of remembrance in Montenegro for the victims of the 1995 massacres.

But although the declaration condemned the crimes, as well as other crimes committed during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the word genocide wasn’t mentioned.

In December 2020, Montenegro’s opposition Bosniak Party proposed a parliamentary resolution to recognise the Srebrenica genocide, but the ruling majority voted against it.

In July 1995, more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica were killed in a series of massacres by Bosnian Serb forces, and over 40,000 women, children and elderly people were expelled – a crime that was classified as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice.