Montenegro’s Bosniak Party Urges MPs to Recognise Srebrenica Genocide

Bosniak Party MP Ervin Ibrahimovic during a parliament session in Podgorica. Photo: Parliament of Montenegro.

"We have to face the past and pay homage to the victims. That is the task of Montenegro, which should continue the course that makes it a factor of stability in the region," Ibrahimovic told media.

In July 1995, more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica were killed in a series of massacres by Bosnian Serb forces, while over 40,000 women, children and elderly people were expelled - a crime that has been classified by international courts in The Hague and the Bosnian state court as genocide.

But political leaders of pro-Serb parties in Montenegro have consistently refused to accept this definition, saying that a war crime was committed, but not genocide.

Ibrahimovic said the Bosniak Party wants to work on a resolution proposal with all the other parliamentary parties.

"We want to work together on the concept and content of the text of the resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica and to submit it to the parliamentary procedure as soon as possible," he said.

The Bosnian Party won three seats in August's parliamentary elections but has refused to join the ruling alliance because of disagreement with some pro-Serb parties, like the Democratic Front, which have made nationalist statements in the past that have worried Montenegro's ethnic Albanian and Bosniak minorities.

In a separate development on December 16, the Black on White coalition, which is part of the government, said it will propose legislation to parliament that would ban denial, downplaying, justification or approval of the Holocaust, the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.

"Adopting the law would reduce the space for the...