Human rights abuses

The dramatic episode of the Holocaust remains a lesson of national and universal history that should never be forgotten, in the current international context, marked by the rise in intolerance, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) states.

Romania, in and of itself, but also as a member state of the European Union, promotes tolerance between people, non-discrimination and peace, remaining active in the process of preserving and completing the Holocaust memory, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said in a message conveyed on Monday, on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, a dwindling number of elderly Holocaust survivors will gather at the former German Nazi death camp on Jan. 27 to honour its over 1.1 million mostly Jewish victims amid fresh concerns over anti-semitism.    

January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the extermination of some 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime. This year's anniversary is doubly important from a historical standpoint as it coincides with the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the site of the martyrdom and sacrifice of 1.1 million people, among whom were some 55,000 Greek Jews.

In June 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland opened on the grounds of the former death camp. In 1960, the museum allocated space for 'national exhibitions,' which focused on the countries from which citizens were deported to the camp.

The House of Peoples, the upper house of the Bosnian parliament, voted on Thursday against changing the criminal code of Bosnia and Herzegovina to criminalise the denial of genocide and war crimes.

The Mothers of Srebrenica association, representing more than 6,000 family members of Srebrenica genocide victims, has filed a complaint against the Netherlands to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, Dutch law firm Van Diepen Van der Kroef announced on Monday.

Margaritis Schinas, vice president of the European Commission responsible for promoting the European way of life, on Thursday told Greece's Parliament that the bloc is planning a new migration and asylum agreement for the first quarter of 2020 that would take a "holistic" approach to the migration problem and oblige all member-states to pull their weight.

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court has confirmed the verdict sentencing Mico Jurisic to 11 years in prison for wartime crimes including involvement in several murders in the Prijedor area in 1992.

He was found guilty of participating in the murders of two Bosniaks in the village of Carakovo, as well as the killings of two others.

"Novosti" notes that this idea has been present for a long time, but that it has been "reactivated" after the British government released confidential documents confirming that the Bosnian Serb attack on July 1995 was provoked by Bosniak forces and that the leaderships of Republika Srpska and Serbia did not organize or order crimes.