Skopje Adopts Srebrenica Declaration

The declaration adopted in Skopje said that July 11 will be commemorated as the day of the Srebrenica, as a sign of support for all the victims of what is known as the biggest massacre in Europe since WWII.

"The sole purpose of the declaration is to condemn this war crime and genocide and to send a message that here in the Balkans we should bury nationalism and the idea of ethnic cleansing,” Silvana Boneva, a legislator from the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party, told media recently.

She argued that the declaration could have been adopted earlier if the assembly was not swarmed with laws that are part of the country's EU agenda.

General Ratko Mladic, indicted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, lead forces from the Army of Republika Srpska in July of 1995 when they occupied the city of Srebrenica. More than 8,000 people were killed. Thousands are still missing.

Mladic is still at large.

The Macedonian parliament concluded that the declaration is a sign of the determination to establish good relations between states in the region. It added that reconciliation, with lasting peace between peoples, is a precondition for stability and prosperity, as well as for further steps toward EU integration.

The two remaining states in the region which have not adopted any kind of declaration condemning the Srebrenca genocide are Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Recently, Serbian President Boris Tadic proposed that a resolution condemning the genocide be adopted by the Serbian parliament.  At the same time, he supported the idea of a separate resolution condemning war crimes committed against Serbs, noting that in this way parliament would avoid allocating "collective guilt".

Political parties from Republika Srpska, Bosnia's predominantly Serb entity, have refused to adopt this kind of declaration at the state level. Srebrenica is located in Republika Srpska.

On January 15, 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Srebrenica, calling on the Council of Ministers of the European Union and the European Commission, as well as Western Balkan countries, to endorse the resolution and proclaim July 11, the day the massacres began, a day of commemoration.

European parliamentarians, who voted overwhelmingly in favor of the measure, agreed that a resolution "was the best way of paying respect to the massacre victims and sending a clear message to future generations."

Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro adopted similar resolutions last year