The fourth report, “The State of Denial,” maps the practices of war crime denial and glorification of convicted war criminals by government representatives and institutions, as well as other social actors such as the media, churches, political parties, and academia. This year’s report is titled “The State of Denial – Serbia 2025: War Criminals as Deserving Citizens,” recalling the event that marked 2025 in terms of the scale of war crime denial and glorification of convicted war criminals – the death and funeral of Nebojša Pavković. Pavković was buried in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens at Belgrade’s New Cemetery, making him the first war criminal from the 1990s to be buried with the highest state and military honors, which sets a dangerous precedent.
“When we started our annual reporting on the state of denial, we knew that the denial and relativization of war crimes had become one of the main pillars of politics in Serbia. It is the main means of inciting hatred, which is proving to be a nationalistic tool for distracting the public because, unfortunately, it effectively creates divisions. Last year was a clear example that the goal of denying and abusing the war past is actually to destroy the democratic capacities of our society,” points out Sofija Todorović, director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights.
The obstruction of cooperation with the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague in the case of several officials of the Serbian Radical Party, the non-recognition of the verdict of the Court of BiH in the case of the crime at the Tuzla Gate, and the appointment of Dragoslav Bokan, founder of the paramilitary unit “White Eagles” as president of the Board of Directors of the National Theater in Belgrade, are just illustrative examples of the institutional blockade of the process of dealing with the war past in Serbia.
The record-breaking scale of denial practices in 2025 should be partly interpreted in the context of the regime’s repressive response to mass citizen protests, as government officials instrumentalize the topics of wars and war crimes in order to discredit political opponents. For example, over the past year, top government officials have repeatedly falsely accused representatives of the opposition and the student movement of claiming that Serbs are a “genocidal people”.
Todorović states that the report shows “how little we actually talk about the past in the right way, because there is almost no space for it, although it is the task of all of us to create it.” She concludes that “the main obstacle to a conversation about the past that would contribute to the process of healing and justice are representatives of institutions and the media.”
You can read the report “State of Denial – Serbia 2025: War Criminals as Deserving Citizens” here.
