The UK is determined to prevent what happened in Srebrenica in 1995 from being forgotten, as denying atrocities such as the genocide that took place there is dangerous, the UK Minister of Faith, Lord Nick Bourne, said as he arrived in Bosnia on Thursday.

“Denying crimes such as the Holocaust and the genocide in Srebrenica is very dangerous. We need to understand and learn lessons from history, recognising and calling what happened by its real name,” Lord Bourne told reporters.

The visit was organised by the UK-based humanitarian organisation Remembering Srebrenica.

On Friday, Lord Bourne is to travel to the eastern Bosnian town to meet with representatives of associations of survivors of the ethnic cleansing and massacres that took place there which international courts later labeled an act of genocide.

“The UK is strongly determined to prevent the events in Srebrenica from being forgotten, which is what we have been doing throughout the past years, and this will continue via the Embassy as this is important to us in the sense of creating solidarity with Bosnia’s citizens,” he said.

The UK does not want the events that resulted in the mass killings, including the Srebrenica genocide, to ever be forgotten in culture and education, he said.

He also criticised a recent decision by the Parliament of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated part, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (RS), to reject a 2004 report on what happened in Srebrenica between July 10 and July 19, 1995, as wrong and immoral, saying that the UK Government is determined to keep the memory of the Srebrenica genocide across the world.

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