Two swiss authors deny genocide in Srebrenica: Criminal complaint filed
Common press release by the Society for Threatened Peoples (Switzerland) and TRIAL (Track Impunity Always – Swiss association against impunity)
In an article in the bi-monthly newspaper La Nation, two authors qualify the genocide in Srebrenica as a “pseudo-massacre.” In response, the Society for Threatened Peoples and the Swiss Association Against Impunity (TRIAL) filed today a criminal complaint before the investigative judge of the Canton of Vaud (Switzerland) for denial of genocide and other crimes against humanity. The case is only the third time the Swiss judiciary has been called on to decide a case of genocide. The other cases involved the Shoah and the Armenian genocide.
In La Nation, a right-wing newspaper, two regular contributors deny:
- The genocide in Srebrenica and the murder of over 8,000 Muslim men;
- The atrocities committed in concentration camps run by Serbian forces and other crimes against humanity;
- Mass rapes committed by the Bosnian Serbs;
- The shelling of civilians at the Sarajevo market place by Serbian forces.
The article was published after Kosovo`s declaration of independence on 17 February 2008. Shortly thereafter, La Nation, the official newspaper of La Ligue vaudoise, published a series of articles on the so-called “media lynching of Serbs.” Two months later, the inflammatory articles remain on the Ligue vaudoise website.
“After the horrors which victims have gone through, the denial of these crimes is unacceptable and prevents a general reconciliation as well as a peaceful coexistence in the future,” says Fadila Memišević, the President of the Society for Threatened Peoples for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The President of TRIAL, Philip Grant, added that, “the arguments used by the authors are identical to those used by Radovan Karadžić in The Hague. They deny the suffering of victims and exonerate the perpetrators of thesecrimes.”
The Society for Threatened Peoples, Switzerland, is a human rights organization that defends the rights of exiled minorities and indigenous people. The Swiss Association Against Impunity (TRIAL) fights against impunity for initiators and perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and enforced disappearances.
- For more information, please refer to the Press information packet (in French).
