Potočari Memorial Center: RS authorities are not interlocutors on the topic of genocide

SREBRENICA, (Patria) - The Srebrenica Memorial Center responded to the claims of the director of the Center for War Research, War Crimes and Missing Persons of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Kojić, regarding the remains of 82 unidentified victims of genocide in eastern Bosnia, which are to be buried in July this year.

"The Srebrenica Memorial Center, as an institution established by the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, expresses full respect for every innocent victim of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and encourages all activities that will lead to the discovery of missing persons, regardless of their name, surname, ethnic or other affiliation. We understand this very well through testimonies and daily work with families of those killed or those still formally listed as missing after the genocide in eastern Bosnia. However, it is unacceptable that the director of the RS War Research Center, an institution that receives funds from the public budget of the Republika Srpska entity, and thus from the pockets of all citizens living in this entity and paying taxes here, has consistently, for a quarter of a century, engaged in political games that attack the dignity of the victims of genocide.

Therefore, the authorities of that entity are not interlocutors on this topic," they state from the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

From the Srebrenica Memorial Center, they state that the mentioned 82 unidentified victims of genocide are located in the premises of the Podrinje Identification Project, a program that is the legacy of the long-standing professional and valuable work of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and domestic institutions that searched for missing persons. The work of the PIP has been used as an example for the process of searching for and identifying missing persons worldwide in natural disasters, as well as in numerous cases of war crimes investigations. The reason why the identity of this minority of minorities among all skeletal remains found so far has not been determined is a simple result of the crime of genocide – for these individuals, no living relatives remained with whom DNA samples could be matched and confirmed with 99.9% certainty which person it is.

Their remains, however, were found in mass graves in which more than six thousand already buried in the cemetery of the Memorial Center were also found: in Sandići, Branjevo, Budak, Kamenica, Cerska, Petkovci, Glogova, Hodžići, Pobuđe, Kameničko Brdo, Kozluk, Liplje, Nova Kasaba, Pusmulići, Snagovo, Ravnice, Zeleni Jadar, Zalazje, and Liplje.

"However, based on the location of discovery, time of death, and other circumstances, the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as other institutions, have established beyond reasonable doubt that these are victims of genocide."

These are the facts. Everything else is a shameful playing with the gravest and deepest traumas of thousands, or tens of thousands of people.