News   /   Politics

US House commemorates 20th anniversary of Srebrenica 'genocide'

Two Bosnian women mourning over the coffin of a relative during the preparation for mass burial at the Potocari memorial cemetery near Srebrenicaon on July 9, 2010 . (AFP photo)

The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to mark the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica "genocide" of Bosnian Muslims.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces massacred more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

The US House labeled the mass murder of Muslims a genocide a decade ago and on Wednesday voted a new resolution that mentions the word genocide 14 times.

The House resolution "affirms that the policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing as implemented by Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 meet the terms defining the crime of genocide in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."

It also "condemns statements that deny or question that the massacre at Srebrenica constituted a genocide."

Forensic experts from the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague work on a pile of partly decomposed bodies on July 24, 1996 found in a mass grave in the village of Pilica some 300 km northeast of Sarajevo. (AFP photo)

Serbia’s leaders have refused to call the atrocity a genocide.

Britain has submitted a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council, calling for the global body to recognize the 1995 mass murder as genocide.

On Wednesday, Russia vetoed the UK-drafted text. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called the resolution "not constructive, confrontational and politically-motivated," arguing that it unfairly singled out Bosnian Serbs for war crimes.

At the start of the Bosnian War in 1992, Srebrenica was a majority Muslim town in a part of Bosnia ruled by the Bosnian Serb “Republika Srpska.”

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, separated women and young children from men and older boys, and then systematically executed 8,372 men and boys and buried them in mass graves.

-


Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Press TV News Roku