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Belgrade NGO representatives at the conference. Photo: Media Centre Belgrade.

In a bid to support the initiative by journalist Dusan Masic, who aims to symbolically gather 7,000 people in front of the National Assembly in the Serbian capital on the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacres on July 11, a total of 11 Belgrade-based NGOs on Thursday urged people to join the gathering.

“The #7000 action is the answer to the oft-repeated need in certain circles to minimise or in some way justify the killings in Srebrenica,” says the NGOs’ letter in support of the action which was made public at a conference in Belgrade on Thursday.

“That is why we will lie down on July 11 at 11:07am in front of the National Assembly and for a moment become just one in a series of numbers which represent irretrievably lost lives,” says the letter.

At the commemorative event, people will lie on the ground, symbolising the approximate number of Bosniaks from Srebrenica massacred by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. People wanting to take part can register for a number via the campaign’s website. The NGOs will also invite Serbia’s prime minister and MPs, they said.

In March 2010, Serbia’s parliament adopted a resolution condemning the massacre in Srebrenica, but failed to call the crime a genocide.

Belgrade is also strongly opposed to a proposed UN Security Council resolution to commemorate the 20th anniversary which condemns the killings and any denial that they represented genocide.

Izabela Kisic from the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia told Thursday’s conference that the current atmosphere in the country is the same as 20 years ago, and that “euphemisms are still used for what happened in Srebrenica”.

“But civil society will insist that Serbia admits the Srebrenica genocide, no matter how long it takes,” Kisic said.

Anita Mitic of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights said the action would send a different message from Serbia about Srebrenica.

But Mitic said that the way the massacres are being discussed in public, including a recent letter from Serbian students calling on Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and President Tomislav Nikolic not to attend the anniversary commemoration on July 11 in Srebrenica “shows that 20 years later, we haven’t moved much further on”.

It still remains unclear whether Serbian officials will attend the commemoration.