An intense debate is currently in progress in Serbia about the adoption of a parliamentary resolution on Srebrenica that would be modeled after the January 15, 2009, Resolution that was passed by the European Parliament. The controversy has revealed widespread ignorance of basic facts about events in Srebrenica in 1995 and their background. To fill that gap, a “Fact Sheet” was created and it was published by Belgrade daily “Politika” on February 11, 2010:

1. Drazen Erdemovic is the only man immediately connected with genocide at Srebrenica in July 1995 who was convicted by the Hague tribunal, A Croat from the Tuzla region. He reached a plea bargain with the prosecution and was given the minimum sentence, on the  basis of his own testimony. The content of which he changed several times. The key point of the agreement with the prosecution was that he had to testify against Serb defendants.  Why should the Serbian state assume responsibility for  the crimes of the Bosnian Croat Erdemovic, on the basis of his contradictory and unreliable testimony at that?

2. Erdemovic was allegedly a member of the so-called Xth Special Detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army, a multi-ethnic unit made up of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Muslims. He named seven more participants in the shootings, some of whom had fought in Africa as mercenaries of Western Armies. To date no warrants have been issued by the Hague Tribunal, nor any state – not Serbia, not Bosnia-Herzegovina, nor any other – for the arrest of these men, although their whereabouts is known. What  do they want to cover up?

3. Engraved on the monument in Srebrenica is the number of “8372...”, but that number  includes the names of people who are still classified as “missing”.   And the three suspension points after that number indicate that the list is not yet complete. How is it that missing  people can be the “victims of genocide”? No post mortems have been executed, nor is it known that they are in fact dead.

4. According to the latest forensic investigations, the total number of bodies exhumed from mass graves is under 2000, of whom 442 can be said with certainty to have been the victims of  execution by firing squad. This is 8000 less than the number that has publicly been linked with the “genocide” at Srebrenica.

5. The highest civilian UN representative on the ground in Srebrenica in July 1995 was the American Philipp Corwin. For years now he has been insisting that the number killed then at Srebrenica was “about 700” Bosnian Muslims and that the difference between that number and the incessantly propagated number of 8 000 is nothing but politics. Clearly, Srebrenica has become a political game with numbers being rattled off like an auctioneer ever upping the amount of the bids.

6. The Commission of the Government of Serbia never conceded “genocide”, but has used that word only as  a quotation of the judgment against Bosnia Serb Army General Radislav Krstic. The Commission has not adopted the number of 8 000 men shot to death, despite being subjected to enormous Western pressures. Nor has the Commission reported that all persons on the list of missing were in fact killed and are dead. Rather, the Commission stated that the list includes persons still living and those who were killed in battle before 1995, and in addition people who later died a natural death. Besides the foregoing, it is confirmed that there are people who have changed their identity and are living in other places, others yet who have served prison terms for criminal acts.

7. According to a judgment of the International Court of Justice, Serbia  bears no responsibility for “genocide” nor did Serbia participate in preparation or execution of genocide. By this judgment alone Serbia has no obligation to adopt any “Declaration on Srebrenica”.

8. If Serbia assumes responsibility for events in Srebrenica, she would open herself to liability for crushing reparations. Is this the price we’re supposed to pay, and is this the inheritance we are to leave to our children and grandchildren? 

9. A January 2009 European Parliament Resolution is what pushed for the adoption of this resolution. But an obvious internal contradiction in this resolution in section “E” is that we cannot, in spite of the enormous investigative efforts to date, come up with a full reconstruction of the events in and around “Srebrenica”. This absolutely excludes any and all self-confidence about final conclusions concerning that complex event and especially about the glib exploitation of the gravest legal qualifications in relation to the state of Serbia and her citizens. If the straight truth about Srebrenica is one day established, the content of any eventual resolution of the National Parliament will be contradicted. How will the parliamentarians who will vote for the resolution ever redeem themselves in the eyes of history and of their descendants?