While the international community has decided by consensus to commemorate the 2003 Rwandan Tutsi genocide and the 2005 Holocaust, Serbia has in recent weeks pressed to prevent a UN vote to commemorate the Srebrenica massacre.
One year before the thirtieth anniversary of the systematic execution of 8,372 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the international community decided on Thursday 23 May to commemorate annually the genocide committed in July 1995 by the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, this decision was far from unanimous among the members of the UN General Assembly: 84 member countries voted in favour, 19 against and 68 abstained, despite the anger of Serbia and the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, who still refuse to recognise this genocide.
The resolution, which establishes 11 July as a commemorative day from 2025, is the third of its kind voted by the UN following the 2003 commemoration of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide and the 2005 Shoah. However, it is the only resolution that was not adopted by consensus, despite the fact that the text has been watered down to remove all references to Serbia's responsibility. This vote is another symptom of the polarisation that prevails in the General Assembly and underlines the fact that marginalising the 'Western bloc' is no longer a taboo in New York.
"The aim of our initiative is to honour the memory of the victims and to support the survivors who are still living with the scars of that fateful era," said German Ambassador to the UN Antje Leendertse, who introduced the resolution together with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rwanda. "There can be no room for negation, historical revisionism or the glorification of convicted war criminals," added her French counterpart Nicolas de Rivière.
Orbán in support of Vucic
Serbian officials, who led a massive lobbying campaign to reject the resolution, ironically celebrated the vote by claiming that the large number of abstentions made it invalid, despite UN voting rules. "More than two-thirds of the world's population was on our side," said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who had come to New York specifically for the occasion. He welcomed the support of his Chinese and Russian allies, as well as that of Viktor Orban's Hungary, the only European Union (EU) country to vote against the resolution. Ahead of the vote, he accused Germany of "politicisation" and sought to undermine its initiative with numerous references to "Nazi Germany".
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