Why Bosnia’s ban on genocide denial was a necessity

The country cannot move forward while many of its institutions and leaders remain invested in whitewashing history.

On July 23, the Office of the High Representative (OHR), the top international body overseeing the implementation of the peace agreement that ended Bosnia’s war, criminalised the denial and glorification of genocide in the country. The outgoing OHR head, Valentin Inzko, announced that he has introduced jail terms for anyone who “publicly condones, denies, grossly trivialises or tries to justify” the genocide or other war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity … must not be forgotten or denied,” his decree read. But why did Inzko feel the need to make such a move, some quarter of a century after the end of the war? Genocide denial in Bosnia started in 1992, almost simultaneously with the genocide itself. In May 1992, the first major massacre of the war was committed when Serbian forces shelled the main street in Sarajevo, hitting a breadline of civilians and killing 26 people. That same day, Serbian media reported that the Bosnian government had bombed its own citizens in order to blame the Serbs. In the following three and a half years, Serbian authorities and media used similar tactics to deny, trivialise or justify many other genocidal massacres in Bosnia and Herzegovina.