On the day marking 20 years since July 1995, an online survey (114 participants) showed how layered and divided interpretations of Srebrenica in Serbia still are. Most respondents say they learned about the events from media in Serbia (37.84%), followed by media abroad (13.51%), and from direct participants (8.11%). A total of 7.03% draw information from court judgments, and 4.32% from official documents. The sample is slightly male (52.63%), with the largest group aged 36 to 45.
When asked to define what happened, a relative majority choose “a wartime conflict between two sides” (30.70%), followed closely by “a crime” (27.19%). Only 7.89% use the term “genocide,” even though international judgments have qualified Srebrenica as genocide.
The division is also visible in the question about the 2007 International Court of Justice decision: 15.79% say the ruling “must be respected,” but 40.35% state they know it and believe it “should not be respected.”
A quarter say they “do not remember” (23.68%), and 20.18% are not familiar with it.
The “7000” action does not have a single meaning either: 28.95% hear about it for the first time, while some participants view it as an attempt to “blame Serbia” (19.08%) or to “label Serbs as a genocidal people” (15.79%). (Multiple answers allowed.)
The same questionnaire also measured reactions to the incident in Potočari: most respondents describe it as an “organized attack by extremists” (39.47%) or a “spontaneous attack by those present” (28.07%).
Regarding future relations between Serbs and Bosniaks in Serbia, the dominant expectation is “maintaining the current level” (36.84%), with 24.56% seeing room for greater cooperation and tolerance. In Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, respondents more often expect a decrease in cooperation and tolerance.
Methodological note: The results are descriptive and come from an online, self-selected sample (N=114), collected on 11 July 2015. The questions were formulated neutrally; the findings are not representative of the general population and cannot be generalized without additional research.