Albania’s opposition Democratic Party (PD) has vowed to present a resolution in the new parliamentary legislature to recognize and condemn the Bosnian and Kosovo genocides committed by Serbian forces.
July 11 marked the 26th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. On the same day in 1995, Serbian military forces killed over 8,000 Bosniak Muslims, mostly men and boys, in the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.
On Sunday, PD leader Lulzim Basha said that Albania must have the courage and independence to condemn the genocide in Srebrenica and Kosovo by Serbian forces, adding that he would ask the Albanian parliament to recognize the Serbian genocide in Kosovo, through a resolution on crimes committed against humanity.
The Srebrenica genocide has been recognized by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague and by the European Parliament.
Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia have condemned the Srebrenica genocide in a parliamentary resolution, while the Serbian Parliament has apologized through another resolution but has not yet recognized it as genocide.
Meanwhile, the Albanian Parliament has taken no such official position on either the Srebrenica genocide or the Reçak massacre in Kosovo.
The massacre in Reçak in 1999 triggered NATO’s intervention in Kosovo which forced Serbia to end its military campaign.
During a visit to Albania in December 2020, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani asked the Albanian parliament to recognize and condemn the genocide in Kosovo through a resolution.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who was Slobodan Vučić’s minister of information during massacres in Kosovo, including the Reçak massacre, still denies the latter.
The denial of the Srebrenica genocide continues while Serbian officials consciously avoid using the word genocide and often repeated that Srebrenica was a “serious crime.”
