"We believe that the court did not establish all the facts. The genocide in Srebrenica is genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Executions of people from all over Bosnia-Herzegovina in one place indicate that the policy and the regime which led to that were genocidal, and they cannot justify reducing genocide to a local framework. The Bosnian Serb army, which the ICJ, upholding previous convictions before the ICTY, found to have committed genocide, could not have committed genocide without institutional support from Banja Luka and Belgrade," the association said.
The association said it regretted the fact that responsibility was being shifted from the ICJ to the ICTY's Office of the Prosecutor, stating that the ICJ alone was responsible for the verdict that was based on incomplete facts.
"We would like to warn that the verdict has had a profound impact on post-Yugoslav societies and that it has contributed to the creation of a very tense situation. Those who are directly affected consider the verdict as repeated victimisation and failure to acknowledge their suffering. In Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina the verdict has shaken trust in international judicial institutions, and in Serbia it was used by leading political parties and the Serb Orthodox Church to justify the crimes," said the statement, signed by Documenta head Vesna Terselic.
The verdict will have far-reaching consequences because it is below the standards achieved in the Nuremberg trials which established not only individual guilt, but also the criminal liability of six criminal organisations, including the leadership of the Nazi Party, Gestapo or SS units, the association said.
It called on the UN Security Council to request a report from the ICJ on the collection of evidence and urged other international institutions to take a stand on the consequences of the ICJ verdict and make proposals for the payment of compensation to the victims and their families.