Twitter Hosts Right-Wing Rallying Cry of Srebrenica Genocide Denial

A change in the law between 2003 and 2007 allowed him to do so by declaring that relatives of Srebrenica victims could be buried alongside them at Potocari. Then the law changed back, limiting the cemetery to only those killed in July 1995.

Such details, however, were lost on Twitter users who in June wrote: "Emir Suljagic, exhume your father from the cemetery in Potocari!"

The words originated in an article posted on June 10 media portal based in the main Bosnian Serb town of Banja Luka and called vrbasmedia. They were picked up by a number of Twitter accounts heavily engaged in genocide-denial.

One of the accounts goes by the name Bodljikava, or 'barbed', as in 'barbed wire'. Bodljikava has spent years denying that genocide occurred at Srebrenica, as the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as well as local courts have ruled.

Bodljikava joined Twitter in June 2013 and has since posted almost 179,000 tweets. The frequency of tweets and topics she chooses has won her more than 11,600 followers on Twitter, a virtual army for spreading her views on Srebrenica. According to Twitter Audit, most of her followers are real, meaning they are not considered bots.

On June 10, Bodljikava tweeted a copy of the death certificate of Suljagic's father and accused Suljagic of "using deceit" to portray him as a genocide victim "even though his father, Suljo, passed away on December 24, 1992."

Bodljikava is one of 20 Twitter accounts identified by BIRN as consistently publishing content over the past 12 months that denies genocide occurred in Srebrenica. BIRN analysed these accounts and concluded that none of them are fake, even though not all of them have the same reach, which may explain why their tweets remain...