GENOCIDE IN SREBRENICA IS A BLATANT LIE, TARNISHING SERBIAN PEOPLE'S REPUTATION MUST NOT BE ALLOWED

BELGRADE, JULY 11 /SRNA/ - The leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Šešelj, claims that the alleged genocide against Bosniaks in Srebrenica is a blatant lie and that smearing and slandering the Serbian people must not be allowed. Instead, he says, the fight for the truth must be pursued with even greater determination.

Šešelj said that on July 11, 1995, when the Serb army entered Srebrenica, they did not find a single Muslim there; the town was empty, as the civilian population had withdrawn with the Dutch UNPROFOR battalion to the base in Potočari, while the men, as part of the 28th Muslim Infantry Division, set out armed and in combat formation to break through. "Those who commemorate the so-called genocide have even got the date wrong. The crimes that did occur, and which we Serbs condemn, happened on July 14, 15, and 16, possibly even the 17th in some isolated cases. That was not genocide, it was a war crime — the execution of prisoners of war," Šešelj said. This morning, in Knez Mihailova Street near the former "Russian Tsar" restaurant, he was signing copies of the second edition of his book "There Was No Genocide in Srebrenica." On this occasion, he pointed out that not a single woman or child was killed and explained that genocide means the indiscriminate killing of men, women, children, the elderly, the sick, and everyone else, as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Šešelj emphasized that a much more horrific crime had occurred in that area against Serb civilians, women, and children, more than 3,200 of whom were killed between 1992 and 1995. He stated that 1,200 Bosniak prisoners of war were executed in Srebrenica, some of whom were war criminals; the problem lies in the fact that they were executed without trial, and the burden on the conscience also comes from the fact that some of them were innocent. "Those who claim that there was a genocide in Srebrenica are lying. Eight thousand men were not executed. How did I arrive at that number? The vehicles used to transport prisoners from Bratunac to Zvornik, to the Zvornik municipality, could not have held more than 1,000 people," Šešelj explained. According to him, every piece of information in his books is documented because blatant lies must be refuted. He noted that he is not the only author who has written on this topic, and highlighted the importance of the works of historian Milivoje Ivanišević, especially his book "Srebrenica Rhapsody," as well as the book by Gideon Greif and others. Šešelj, who was a detainee at The Hague, emphasized that the International Court of Justice seriously erred in the Srebrenica case by not investigating whether genocide occurred, but instead almost mechanically accepted the first-instance verdict of the Hague Tribunal against General Radislav Krstić for genocide. “However, this was overturned on appeal. He was then convicted of aiding and abetting genocide, and those two crimes do not exist in the Genocide Convention. In other words, he was convicted of crimes that do not exist,” Šešelj said. He also noted that he was not convicted in The Hague as a war criminal but was convicted for the alleged deportation of Croats from Serbia, which never actually happened; no one was deported, as they left after exchanging property. He added that he is waiting for the right moment to file a request for revision of that verdict.