BELGRADE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th July, 2021) The political leadership of the Bosnian Serbs suspended their work in government on Tuesday due to adopted amendments to the Criminal Code of the country that criminalize denial of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica.
Last week, the top international envoy observing the implementation of the peace agreement that ended Bosnian war, High Representative Valentin Inzko, set jail terms in Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH) criminal code of up to five years for anyone who publicly denies, or tries to justify, the Srebrenica genocide. On Monday, there was a meeting of the political leadership of all Bosnian Serb parties in Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska, unanimously rejecting the amendments.
"Starting Tuesday, representatives of the Republika Srpska are not going to take part in work and decision-making in the joint structures of BiH. We are not leaving them, but there are no conditions for working in the Presidium of BiH, the Parliamentary Assembly [parliament] of BiH and the Council of Ministers [government] of BiH," the chairman of the parliament of the Republika Srpska, Nedeljko Cubrilovic, said, explaining that the boycott would continue until the problem is resolved.
The leadership of Serbia and the Republika Srpska of Bosnia Herzegovina recognize the commission of a war crime in Srebrenica by certain individuals, but deny the term "genocide" and the involvement of the entire Serbian people in it.
The EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, said on July 11, the anniversary of Srebrenica massacre, that all states in the western Balkans should recognize the 1995 Bosnian Muslim massacre in Srebrenica as genocide.
