Conclusion of New Srebrenica Commission: Heinous Crimes Took Place, But Not Genocide

Serbian Political Scene and the Srebrenica Massacre: Acknowledging the Crime, but not Genocide

An independent international commission for investigating the suffering of all peoples in the Srebrenica area in the period from 1992 to 1995, formed by the government of Republika Srpska, has concluded that Srebrenica was not a case of individual crime of genocide, nor genocide in general. 

However, the commission did find that thousands of people had been murdered in Srebrenica in the most heinous of manners and that the perpetrators had to be punished. This was stated on July 21 in the general conclusions of the report of the Commission, which was formed by the government of Republika Srpska with the aim of comprehensively investigating the events in and around Srebrenica, which would contribute to "the strengthening of confidence and tolerance among the peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the definitive reconciliation and cohabitation of the current and future generations." 

"In the broader sense, the decisive thing for the prevention of future genocides is that the notion of genocide, as the crime above all other crimes, is not 'watered-down.' If the term were to be used arbitrarily, as it has been in the case of the events in Srebrenica in July 1995, it would eventually become pointless," the report reads. 

The commission stated that the interpretation that has been accepted so far was that the murder of 8,000 Muslim men resembled the genocidal crimes committed by the Nazis, who systematically separated the Jews and other minorities from the rest of the population, in order to kill them. "The findings of the Commission show that the crime of that nature did not take place," it was pointed out in the report.