Hungary Will Vote Against UN Resolution Commemorating Genocide

(RepublicanJournal.org) – The United Nations is planning a resolution to commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica genocide — but Hungary plans to vote against it. Over 8,000 people died in the worst atrocity of the Bosnian civil war. However, Hungary says the resolution would increase tensions in Bosnia at a critical time.

In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army captured the city of Srebrenica, which had a majority Muslim population, then brushed aside 370 lightly-armed UN peacekeeping troops and massacred at least 8,372 men and boys. Five months later, the NATO-led IFOR took over from the UN, ending the war. Since then, the Srebrenica massacre has been classed as a genocide, and senior Bosnian Serb politicians and military commanders have been convicted of crimes against humanity in international courts over the incident.

Now, 29 years after the massacre, Germany and Rwanda have sponsored a UN resolution to create an annual day of commemoration. That’s outraged the Bosnian Serbs, who say the resolution labels their entire people as genocidal.

Milorad Dodik, who’s president of the Republika Srpska (RS) — one of the two “entities” that make up the current Bosnian nation — visited Hungary on May 15 and met foreign minister Péter Szijjártó. Szijjártó then told journalists that Hungary will vote against the resolution, saying it “would demonize the entire Serbian nation.” He also called on international organizations to stop escalating tensions in Bosnia, where there’s ongoing friction between the Muslim and Croat-dominated Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina (FBiH) and the majority-Serb RS.

Since 2021, Dodik has repeatedly threatened to secede from Bosnia and align more closely with neighboring Serbia. Many Bosnian Serbs would support this move. While the Serbs have been saddled with much of the blame for the wars of the 1990s, the region has a complex history. They were oppressed by the Ottoman Empire for centuries, then massacred in huge numbers by pro-Nazi Muslims and Croats during WWII. Dodik admits that “a terrible crime” happened in Srebrenica, but the latest UN resolution is likely to put him under more pressure to break away from the Western-imposed Bosnian nation.