(22 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Podgorica, Montenegro – 22 May 2024
1. Various people at protest holding Serbian flags
2. Close up Serbian flag
3. People at the protest holding Serbian flag
4. Various protest
5. People at protest, some wearing T-shirt depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin
6. Close up man wearing T-shirt depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin
7. Man holding cross
8. SOUNDBITE ( Montenegrin), Mileva (last name not given), protester:
”We are here to defend our nation, to prove that we are no genocidal nation. This government is formed thanks to the Serbs, and they cannot decide in our name like that. We will fight until the end as much as we can.”
9. Men holding Russian flag
10. Close up of Russian flag
11. People at the protest
12. SOUNDBITE ( Montenegrin), Savo (last name not given), protester:
”This is pure insolence to put more burdens on Serbs. And we Serbs are not that united in order to oppose that properly. All the time, they rush to blame us for all their mistakes.”
13. Wide of the protest
STORYLINE:
Hundreds gathered in front of the Montenegro government building to protest against a UN resolution sponsored by Germany and Rwanda to establish an annual day to commemorate the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs.
The UN General Assembly has scheduled a debate on the resolution on the morning of May 23 to be followed by a vote.
The final draft of the resolution would designate July 11 as the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica,” to be observed annually starting in two months.
The massacres started on July 11, 1995.
The Srebrenica killings were the bloody crescendo of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which came after the breakup of Yugoslavia unleashed nationalist passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serbs overran a U.N.-protected safe area in Srebrenica. They separated at least 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters and slaughtered them. Those who tried to escape were chased through the woods and over the mountains around the town.
Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic as well as the Bosnian Serb leadership have vehemently opposed the adoption of the Srebrenica resolution, saying it brands all Serbs as a “genocidal nation” although the draft does not mention Serbs as culprits.
Vucic and his government have been campaigning both at the UN and among developing countries to win support for a “No” vote. They say they have already gained a majority against the resolution. Approval requires a majority of those voting.
Montenegro, the tiny Adriatic state of 620,000 people, split from much larger Serbia in a 2006 referendum.
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