Montenegro Parliament Urged to Probe Ex-Leader’s Srebrenica Role
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Movement for Changes leader Nebojsa Medojevic in parliament in Podgorica. Photo: Parliament of Montenegro.
The Movement for Changes party leader, Nebojsa Medojevic, claimed on Wednesday that the former government led by Milo Djukanovic’s Democratic Party of Socialists supported Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995 with fuel, munitions and other technical and logistical assistance, and called for parliament to investigate
“There are public indications that the Montenegrin authorities supported Bosnian Serb forces, despite the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s embargo on the Bosnian Serb authorities,” Medojevic said.
“By doing this, they directly supported military operations which resulted in the massacre of thousands of unarmed civilians in Srebrenica in July 1995,” he added.
He argued that by launching an investigation, Montenegrin parliament could “make a historic contribution to the culture of war crimes condemnation”. According to parliamentary rules, an investigation can be opened if more than half of MPs vote for it.
Medojevic, whose Movement for Changes party are part of the ruling alliance that ousted the Democratic Party of Socialists from office at elections last year, is a staunch opponent of Djukanovic.
His intervention comes after Serbian news website Vecernje Novosti on April 1 published a video of a Democratic Party of Socialists rally in 1996, in which Djukanovic claimed that his government had “secretly” supported the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina “for years” because Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was not doing so.
Djukanovic has denied the allegations that he supported the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s war. He told Montenegro’s public broadcaster RTCG on Tuesday that the claims are false information spread by “people close to the Serbian secret service”. Djukanovic was prime minister at the time of the Srebrenica mass killings, and Montenegro was still part of Yugoslavia.
The Movement for Changes’ proposal for an investigation came in the midst of another political row connected to Srebrenica.
Last week, Montenegrin Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic proposed the sacking of the Minister of Justice, Human and Minority Rights, Vladimir Leposavic, for allegedly expressing doubt about the Hague Tribunal’s ruling classifying the 1995 Srebrenica massacres of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces as genocide.
Leposavic, a pro-Serbian politician, argued last month that the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has no legitimacy because he claimed it had destroyed evidence about the trafficking of the organs of Serb civilians in Kosovo.
But Leposavic said he will not resign despite pressure from the prime minister because he did not deny the suffering of victims of the Srebrenica massacres but only criticised the Hague Tribunal.
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.
Medojevic’s Movement for Changes is a member of the pro-Serbian Democratic Front bloc. 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.
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.
