UN: Hate speech in Bosnia Herzegovina and Serbia an incitement to violence

The United Nations has voiced concern at recent incidents of hate speech and incitement to violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia, fearing inflammatory acts will escalate ahead of elections this year.

Bosnian Serbs celebrated their national day on Sunday marking the creation of the Republika Srpska (RS). It was one of the events seen as putting the country in the direction of the 1990s Bosnian War that killed over 100,000 people.

Rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell said the UN was “deeply concerned” by incidents that saw individuals “glorify atrocity crimes and convicted war criminals, target certain communities with hate speech, and, in some cases, directly incite violence”.

“The failure to prevent and sanction such acts, which fuel a climate of extreme anxiety, fear, and insecurity in some communities, is a major obstacle to trust-building and reconciliation,” said Throssell. “As we have repeatedly highlighted, the rise in hate speech, the denial of genocide and other atrocity crimes and the glorification of war criminals in the Western Balkans highlight the failure to comprehensively address the past.”

She said people had chanted the name of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic during torchlight processions, sung nationalistic songs calling for the takeover of locations in the former Yugoslavia and fired shots in the air outside a mosque.

About 100,000 people were killed in the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered in July 1995 in the Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide. The killings took place under the command of Ratko Mladic, who led the Army of Republika Srpska.

Elections are due to take place in Serbia in April and later in October in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Throssell warns failure to prevent and sanction inflammatory hate speech will exacerbate the already extremely tense political environment.

“We stress once again the need for the authorities in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina to abide by their international human rights obligations to ensure the rights to truth, justice, and reparation,” said Throssell.

“They should also adopt measures to prevent recurrence and to promote further reconciliation efforts. We call on them to condemn and refrain from any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred.” She says all perpetrators and instigators of such acts must be held accountable.