The Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) in Belgrade has published its latest annual report, “The State of Denial,” which documents a significant number of instances related to the denial and relativization of war crimes in Serbia throughout 2025. According to the organization, the report identified at least 110 documented instances concerning past conflicts. The findings detail two primary categories of misconduct: sixty cases involved praising ten individuals who have been convicted of war crimes, while an additional fifty cases related to the denial of various atrocities committed during the conflicts of the 1990s.
The report enumerates specific areas where denial has been recorded. These include the refusal to acknowledge crimes in Peć, Kosovo, the denial regarding the siege of Sarajevo, claims that camps in Prijedor did not exist, and the dismissal of mass graves found in Batajnica near Belgrade, sites where the remains of Kosovo victims were allegedly hidden. YIHR assesses that the genocide in Srebrenica remains the most frequently contested crime in public discourse.
The publication serves to catalog these ongoing efforts to minimize or negate documented war crimes, providing a comprehensive overview of the current state of historical memory concerning the region’s wartime period.
Topics: #crimes #denial #war
