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“I accept the verdicts of the Tribunal from 2001 and 2004, where it is established that the forces of the army to which I belonged committed genocide against Bosniaks in Srebrenica in July 1995, and that I helped and supported the genocide by knowing that some members of the General Staff had the intention to commit genocide,” wrote Krstic, now 76 years old.
He said he wished to “bow down before the victims and ask for forgiveness”.
Very few of those convicted of war crimes during the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s have asked for forgiveness or admitted remorse in the decades since. Some who did, while on trial, later recanted, saying they had done so only to secure more lenient punishment.
Krstic’s letter was a significant moment, coming from the first person to be convicted of genocide by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2001.
It received little coverage, however, in either Bosnia’s predominantly Serb-populated Republika Srpska entity or Serbia, where war crimes denial is widespread and public officials routinely dispute the death toll of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys killed in Srebrenica or that the massacres constituted genocide.
Sofija Todorovic of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Serbia said she was not surprised by the muted reaction. Those who did respond, she said, either downplayed his confession, claimed he wrote the letter under duress, or was simply a traitor.
“In his letter, he directly says that those things we had the opportunity to listen to have no basis in reality and he expresses a completely opposite stance,” Todorovic told Detektor.
“And that is a very important thing, because we are talking about one of the first people convicted of genocide in Srebrenica.”
Media close to the government are accomplices in efforts to conceal the truth, Todorovic said.
The airwaves are only open to “speeches that contribute to intolerance and the denial of judicially established facts”, she said. “And when we have statements like this… they are not talked about. It is significant that the public is not even aware that something like this exists.”
Krstic’s letter ‘must be discussed’
Part of Krstić’s letter in which he acknowledges the genocide in Srebrenica. Photo: MMKS
Lawyer Dusko Tomic, who has represented a number of war crimes defendants, some of whom pleaded guilty, said the confession was highly significant.
He noted that Krstic, in his letter, welcomed a May 2024 resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly designating July 11 as international day of ‘reflection and commemoration’ of the genocide in Srebrenica, a resolution both Serbia and the Republika Srpska condemned at the time as ‘anti-Serb’.
Tomic said Krstic’s “voice” was stronger than those of the states that voted in favour of the UN resolution, “because they did not commit crimes but General Krstic did”.
“This is a very important topic and it is simply not clear to me why our country and our media have not recognised the significance of this confession.”
Refik Hodzic, an expert on transitional justice and former spokesperson for the UN tribunal in The Hague, said Krstic’s confession is important for Serbs in Serbia and Bosnia.
“If Radislav Krstic can feel remorse and sympathise with the victims of his own crimes, it gives someone who did not participate in any way in the crimes – and on whom this propaganda imposes a sense of collective guilt – the opportunity to call into question the lies and humiliation of Bosniak victims with which they are bombarded every day by the governments of Vucic and Dodik through their media and other megaphones,” said Hodzic.
“In order for Krstic’s letter to have an effect, it must be discussed; there must be a public debate about its importance, in which the victims will have the central voice but other voices will participate, ranging from those who deny the Srebrenica genocide to experts, scientists, and even young people for whom the preservation of peace is of existential importance.”
Distortion of facts
The “Potočari” Memorial Center is a permanent reminder of the judicially established facts about the genocide in Srebrenica. Photo: Detektor
Tarik Mocevic, project coordinator at Media Centre Sarajevo, which promotes media literacy and monitors disinformation, said genocide deniers had managed to twist the confession to double down on their denial.
“We should not be surprised by the paradox in this, as the entire campaign to deny the genocide against Bosniaks is based on the distortion and false interpretation of well-known facts,” Mocevic told Detektor.
Genocide deniers at first appeared to have no answer to Krstic’s confession, until a text was published on the portal of Russia Today’s Balkans service. The text simultaneously portrayed Krstic as a victim of pressure and as a traitor who confessed only to secure early release.
Mocevic said Russia Today had become “the main tool of the campaign to spread false narratives and deny genocide”.
He also cited the response of ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj, himself a convicted war criminal, who called Krstic a traitor, and of Nedeljko Elek, director of the publicly owned gas company Sarajevo-gas in the Republika Srpska, who condemned Krstic on social media and accused him of trying to smear the Serb nation.
Sarina Bakic, head of the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo, said the reaction to Krstic’s confession underscored the need for social dialogue.
“The most important task, in a general sense, is to change such cultural patterns and strengthen the awareness that crimes are still directly and indirectly relevant to the way we live today,” Bakic told Detektor.
“Denial, ignorance, belittling, mocking, abuse, exploitation and ultimately lies are not just attitudes about the past, but also about the present and the future,” she said. “That’s why a mature and serious conversation about these issues is actually a step towards society’s greater awareness of itself.”
