Law on Genocide Deniers Before Delegates of the House of Peoples of FBiH Today

The amendment to the Criminal Code of FBiH, according to which anyone who denies genocide on the territory of the Federation of BiH will be criminally liable, will be before the delegates of the House of Peoples of the Federation of BiH today, confirmed for the BiH news agency Patria Jasmin Duvnjak, vice-president of the Club of Delegates of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) in the Federal Parliament, who initiated this procedure in October 2011.

Duvnjak sees no reason why the delegates of this house would not adopt this law.

- I hope that the delegates will rise above daily politics and narrow party positions and support a solution that is in line with the best European practices for punishing these criminal offenses and for protecting the dignity of all victims and their families - Duvnjak told Patria.

According to the new amendment to the Criminal Code of FBiH, anyone who denies genocide committed in this entity on the territory of the Federation will be criminally liable. The law does not only apply to citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also to foreign citizens.

- This law is often misinterpreted in public as a law about Srebrenica. That is not the case. This law, by force of its provisions, will be able to punish all persons who deny the genocide in Srebrenica, but also all other crimes in BiH that have been confirmed by final court decisions - Duvnjak explained.

He previously stated that with the application of this law, no one will be able to invoke the suppression of freedom of speech, because it is clear that this is a civilizational response to the challenges of nationalism and chauvinism, regardless of which side they come from.

- In this way, protection is provided for all victims who were killed on the territory of BiH. This law has no national prefix, it affirms a culture of remembrance instead of a culture of forgetting, and I hope that one day it will be adopted at the state level as well - said Duvnjak, writes Patria.