Russia blocks UN resolution calling Srebrenica a genocide

Russia has vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have condemned the 1995 massacre of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica as a “crime of genocide.”

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin deemed the British-drafted resolution “not constructive, confrontational and politically motivated” and argued that it unfairly singled out Bosnian Serbs for war crimes. 

Russia had instead proposed condemning “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.”

The vote at the U.N. on Wednesday coincided with the 20th anniversary of the massacre and took place despite appeals from Moscow and Beijing.

China, Nigeria, Angola and Venezuela abstained, and the remaining 10 members of the council voted in favor.

A United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has ruled the Srebrenica massacre was genocide.

On July 11, 1995, toward the end of Bosnia's three year war, Bosnian Serb forces swept into the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, a U.N.-designated safe haven. They executed thousands of men and boys from the Muslim community in the days that followed, dumping their bodies into pits.

“Our vote against ... will not, however, mean that we are deaf to the sufferings of the victims of Srebrenica and other areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Churkin said before the vote, adding that such a resolution would lead to greater regional tension.

But British Deputy Ambassador Peter Wilson accused Russia of siding “with those who are unwilling to accept the facts today.”

“Genocide occurred at Srebrenica. This is a legal fact, not a political judgment. On this there is no compromise,” he said.

Russia, the United States and Britain had been locked in intense negotiations over the past 24 hours to try to avoid a veto and agree on a text. But Moscow refused to drop its insistence that references to the Srebrenica killings as an act of genocide be scrapped, diplomats said.

Bosnian Serb leaders called on Russia to use its veto power to block the resolution, arguing that it was “anti-Serb.” Serbia acknowledges that a “grave crime” took place and adopted a declaration condemning the massacre in 2010 as it sought closer ties with the West but stopped short of describing it as genocide.

Serbia warned on Tuesday that the resolution would only widen ethnic divides in neighboring Bosnia.

Al Jazeera and Reuters