August 13, 2009, Belgrade, Serbia: Activists from several Serbian organizations — including Advocacy Project partner Women in Black — rallied outside of President Boris Tadic’s house on August 11 to press the leader to officially recognize the Srebrenica genocide.
The organizations are calling on Tadic to proclaim July 11 Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day. The fourteenth anniversary of the 1995 genocide was marked this July 11, and demonsrators said they’d be back on the 11th of each month until they get an answer from the Serbian government.
“We are demanding support for the request of July 11 being a day to remember the Srebrenica genocide victims in Serbia as well and paying respect to them,” the organizations stated in a letter to Tadic.
The letter reminds the President that the European Parliament adopted a resolution on January 15, 2009 proclaiming July 11 a day of remembrance for Srebrenica, and stated that because Serbia wants to join the EU, that has also become the obligation of the Serbian government.
“We are expressing our firm conviction that respecting and recognizing the victims of the worst crime among crimes and the beginning of building shared remembrance in which all war crimes victims from the territory of the former Yugoslavia will be included is our common obligation,” the letter states.
The demand was sent to Tadic by the Humanitarian Law Center, Women in Black, the Helsinki Human Rights Committee in Serbia, the Center for Developing Legal Studies, the Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, the Fund for Open Societies and the Center for Cultural Decontamination.
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered at Srebrenica in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces seized the town.
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Tags: Serbia, Srebrenica, Women in Black