The management of the Srebrenica-Potocari memorial Centre will not welcome the Russian Embassy during an announced visit because of the Russian Federation’s denial of the Srebrenica genocide, the management said.

Families and friends of the victims will mark another anniversary of the 1995 systematic execution of some 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks on July 11 and will lay dozens of newly found bodies to rest next to the ones already buried at the memorial centre.

Every year, thousands attend the ceremony, including politicians and foreign diplomats. The decision to limit access and not welcome the Russian Embassy delegation was not made because of Ambassador Petar Ivantsov personally but because the official position of the Russian Federation, which is denying the genocide in Srebrenica, said a statement signed by the head of the centre, Nisvet Mujanovic.

The UN tribunal in the Hague as well as the World Court have ruled that the killings of Muslim Bosniak men that occurred within a few days after Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian town were acts of genocide.

However, Russia, a long-time Serb ally, is ignoring the rulings and has vetoed a proposal made by the UK for the Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemns the Srebrenica genocide.

The statement said that the personal position of the Russian Ambassador himself was not discussed but that the decision not to welcome him and his aides was based only on the position of his country.

“With its active campaign of denying the truth about the genocide in Srebrenica, a truth based on facts established by the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the institutions of the Russian Federation have shown no compassion for the genocide victims and have insulted them while also hurting their families,” the statement said.

The management said it was sorry Russia was violating the principles of the United Nations and that it hopes that Russian institutions will start respecting the rulings of international courts and basing their official positions on the “legal and historical truth about the committed crimes as well as on compassion for the victims.”

This, the statement said, would enable Russia to take the place it thinks it deserves in the Memorial Centre and in other institutions that preserve the memory of genocide.

So far, 6,575 genocide victims have been buried in the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Centre. Another 1,000 victims are still missing.