Croatian President Zoran Milanovic was put on a list of persons who denied or relativised to the greatest extent the Srebrenica genocide, committed against Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb soldiers and police in July 1995.

The Srebrenica Genocide Denial Report is published annually by the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Centre, a governmental institution whose management board is appointed by the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The document was compiled by a four-member research team, which analysed the period from May 2022 to June 2023 through the data available in the media.

Milanovic was included on the list of ten persons or media outlets who had during the year relativised the nature of the crime that occured in Srebrenica. Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, was on top of the list.

In the summary, the team said that thanks to the entry into force of the amendments to the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which made denying war crimes confirmed by rulings of domestic or international courts a criminal offence, fewer such statements or claims were recorded in the past year compared to previous years. However, they said that a considerable number of such statements had still been observed.

They also noted that no one had been charged or convicted for this.

Over the course of a year, researchers identified 90 different statements questioning the genocide in Srebrenica or its scale in Bosnia or neighbouring countries, while a year earlier there had been as many as 693 such statements.

“Active denial” of genocide was recorded in 53 cases, relativisation in 26 cases, support for the perpetrators in nine cases, and recognition of the crime, but not genocide, in two cases.

After Dodik, the largest number of statements denying the genocide were made by Branimir Kojic, president of the Organisation of Families of Captured and Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians from Srebrenica, and Miodrag Linta, a member of the Serbian National Assembly, and the document describes them as the main deniers of the genocide.

They are followed by tabloids from Serbia “Informer” and “Alo”, while Croatian President Milanovic is sixth on the list. He is followed by Radovan Kovacevic, a member of the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Nenad Kecmanovic, a former advisor to Milorad Dodik.

The authors of the document noted that the inclusion of Milanovic in this list was a key change compared to previous years and that his “appearance as a denier of genocide and a person who relativises that crime is significant due to his high political position and the influence he has as the president of the Republic of Croatia”.

As an example of Milanovic’s negative attitude towards Srebrenica, the document only quotes his statement from November 2022, in which he argued with members of the Mothers of Srebrenica association.

Milanovic then said he had never denied the extent of the killing and massacre in Srebrenica as some denied the Holocaust, but that legal qualifications were something else.

His statement is now used as evidence of his denial of the genocide.