Srebrenica under spotlight in Bosnian vote

Bosnia voted in local polls on Sunday with all eyes on the eastern town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslim men were massacred in 1995, amid fears that Serbs could take power in the once Muslim-majority city.

New electoral rules have paved the way for the Serbs to win office in Srebrenica, a move that has fuelled inter-ethnic disputes in the town that became a gruesome symbol of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Local Muslim politicians complained that they have been abandoned by the international community, while their Serb opponents continued to deny that the events of 1995 constituted genocide, despite the rulings of two international courts.

Srebrenica Mayor Camil Durakovic, himself a massacre survivor, said Sunday’s vote in which he is running for re-election would be "the most important one since the end of the war”.

In his tiny campaign office in the centre of the once flourishing mining town, the 33-year-old Muslim said the vote "is not a fight for my personal victory”.

"This is a fight between two politics that dominate our country: those denying genocide and those who do not, between good and evil.”

Although Bosnian President Milorad Dodik, who visited Srebrenica during the election campaign, has denied genocide, Serb mayoral candidate Vesna Kocevic avoided the term while acknowledging that war crimes had been committed. "Muslims have nothing to fear if (continue reading...)