SARAJEVO -- Ethnic Serb members of the municipal council in Srebrenica have voted to rename many of the city's streets to commemorate Serb war victims while ignoring the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.
Despite international appeals to rethink the plan and a boycott by Bosniak members of the council, the proposal to rename 25 streets in Srebrenica and the neighboring village of Skelani was approved on April 15 in a move that critics have said is a further attempt to wipe the historical record of Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
Under the plan, a square and a part of a street has been renamed "Republika Srpska," after Bosnia-Herzegovina's ethnic Serb entity. Another street will be named after a controversial World War I Serb commander.
The July 1995 massacre, which was carried out by Bosnian Serb forces, has been ruled an act of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). So far, more than 50 individuals have been sentenced to some 700 years in prison for their roles in the Srebrenica genocide.
Radovan Karadzic, the first president (1992-1995) of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that make up Bosnia, was sentenced to life in prison by the ICTY for the Srebrenica genocide and crimes against humanity. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serbs' military commander, was also sentenced to life by the same court for the part he played in the genocide.
The controversial proposal was approved despite appeals by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which instead called for an "inclusive and transparent solution" for street names in the city.
Last month, the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina welcomed the Streets for Peace Project, an initiative by young people in the city to rename the streets using neutral, inclusive names such as Street of the Future, Street of Tolerance, and Children of Srebrenica.
Around 8,000 men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the 1995 massacre. (file photo)
The move also comes as the UN General Assembly is scheduled on April 17 to debate a draft UN resolution that declares July 11 "The International Day of Reflection and Remembrance of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide" ahead of an expected vote on May 2.
Partially modelled on a similar resolution for the Rwandan genocide, where up to 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, the document is being developed by a group of countries including Rwanda, Germany, France, and the United States.
The resolution has been opposed by Milorad Dodik, the Russia-friendly leader of Republika Srpska, who threatened that, if it was adopted, "Republika Srpska will withdraw from the decision-making process in Bosnia."
Dodik, who has been sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom over his efforts to undermine the Dayton peace accords that ended the Balkan country's war in 1995, has reiterated his denial of the Srebrenica genocide.
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik (file phto)
Under the new plan, Srebrenica City Park will be renamed the Park of Major Kosta Todorovic after a World War I Chetnik commander.
Chetniks were originally Serbian paramilitary groups fighting against the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and World War I.
During World War II, Chetnik forces committed war crimes in Bosnia, including mass killings and forced expulsions. Their leader, Draza Mihailovic, was sentenced to death by Yugoslav authorities in 1946, but Serbian authorities rehabilitated him 70 years later, in 2015.
Some Serb military and paramilitary formations called themselves Chetniks during the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo in the 1990s.
Also as a result of the April 15 decision, a part of Marshal Tito Street was renamed Republika Srpska Street.
Josip Broz Tito was the leader of the partisan movement and the president of communist Yugoslavia from World War II until his death in 1980. His name adorned hundreds of streets and squares in the former Yugoslavia.