Srebrenica Historical Project Postbus 90471 2509LL Den Haag, The Netherlands +31 64 878 09078 (The Netherlands) +381 64 403 3612 (Serbia) Internet site: www.srebrenica-project.com E-mail: srebrenica.historical.proj...@gmail.com Den Haag, April 9, 2010 PRESS RELEASE Srebrenica Historical Project announces its full support for Republic of Srpska prime minister Milorad Dodik’s statement today that July 1995 Srebrenica events must not be used to question the legitimacy of the Republic of Srpska and that responsibility in relation to those events can only be individual and not imputed collectively to the Serbian people. Our NGO has been active for some time in sorting out those events using the only proper approach: by analyzing events and crimes that took place in Srebrenica not by focusing on three days in July of 1995, but in the context of the 1992 - 1995 conflict viewed as a whole. Based on our own insights, we accept the accuracy of the prime minister’s comment that “the truth still remains to be established, because many falsehoods were imposed from above.” During the two-month Srebrenica Declaration debate in Serbia , where the Project spearheaded a public education campaign, we discovered a shocking level of basic ignorance regarding Srebrenica, a situation that was seriously aggravated by the deliberate application of active disinformation techniques. One of the principal vehicles of disinformation was the much abused Report of the Republic of Srpska Commission that was submitted in 2004. Although composed under orders of the then High representative, that Report – by virtue of having been adopted – is now the property of the Republic of Srpska . Srebrenica Historical Project believes that the Government of the Republic of Srpska should encourage a genuinely unfettered, thorough, and scholarly inquiry into Srebrenica, focusing on the entire period of the war. As a first step, the Republic of Srpska should formally suspend the Report of the 2004 Commission. That ought to be followed by Government endorsement of a truly independent Srebrenica Commission which would take into account the enormous amount of new evidence and scholarly research that has emerged since 2004. The new Report must incorporate these new insights into its conclusions so that – to quote the prime minister – the imposed “truths” should be discarded and the genuine truth would be firmly established. Srebrenica Historical Project has recently published several significant monographs on these topics, including “The Martyrdom of Serbian Srebrenica, 1992 – 1995,” by Dr. Ljubiša Simić, and the “Proceedings of the International Symposium on ICTY and Srebrenica,” which it organized at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in April 2009, to which over 20 leading scholars from several countries contributed. The Project has a huge amount of data and considerable research experience in this area. Srebrenica Historical Project is eager to work together with the Government of the Republic of Srpska and other interested institutions to help ascertain the facts and to counter propaganda in relation to Srebrenica. Stephen Karganovic President Srebrenica Historical Project
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