Srebrenica Film Causes Storm in Serbian Parliament

03/04/2001| IslamWeb

BELGRADE (Islamweb & Agencies) - A British documentary on the Srebrenica massacre shown on Serbian television triggered heated argument in the Serbian parliament on Thursday with opposition deputies accusing the government of ``anti-Serb'' policy.
The ultra-nationalist Radical Party said the broadcast of ''A Cry From The Grave,'' about the mass killing by Bosnian Serb forces of more than 7,000 Muslims in eastern Bosnia in 1995, amounted to starting ``a witch-hunt against the Serbs.''
Deputies of the ruling DOS coalition said Serbs had to face the truth that some had committed atrocities on their behalf and that they should be identified and brought to justice to avoid the nation being tarred with collective guilt.
The film was shown for the first time on state-run RTS television on Wednesday, the sixth anniversary of the massacre. RTS had pumped out Serb nationalist material for years until Slobodan Milosevic was ousted as Yugoslav president last year.
Some independent stations have previously run the documentary but its showing on the main state channel ''triggered an avalanche of viewers' calls,'' an RTS source said.
Milosevic, who has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes court for atrocities committed in Kosovo in 1999, was transferred to the international tribunal at The Hague last month. Prosecutors say he will also face charges for atrocities committed in Bosnia and Croatia.
The U.N. tribunal has indicted Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief General Ratko Mladic for the Srebrenica massacre. They are still at large and widely believed to be hiding on Bosnian Serb territory.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Bosnian Muslim returnees sit in their destroyed home in the village of Glogova near the wartime U.N. safe zone of Srebrenica July 10, 2001. Bosnians will mark July 11 the sixth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre when Bosnian Serb forces entered the U.N. protected enclave committing what is seen as the worst war crime in Europe since World War Two. There are still some 18,000 people reported missing. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj
- Jul 10 11:40 AM ET