Persecution of Serbs

Serbia's Academy of Sciences and Arts, SANU, has dismissed as an "inflammatory political pamphlet" a paper drafted by its Croatian counterpart setting out the demands it says Zagreb should make as part of the negotiation process on the European Union accession of Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Aleksandar Vucic inaugurated the new plaque on Thursday near the banks of the River Sava, close to the location of the Staro Sajmiste (Old Trade Fair) concentration camp, which operated during World War II.

The central ceremony at the Monument to the Victims of Genocide in the complex of the former Nazi camp Staro Sajmite is led by President Aleksandar Vui.

Former inmates of the notorious Lora prison camp near Split, Croatia, condemned the Split Court verdict that sentenced the former prison commander and one of the guards only for crimes committed in a couple of months in 1992.

Kosovo's Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it has upheld the verdict convicting Serb fighter Zoran Djokic of war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians in Peja/Pec in March and April 1999.

In February last year, Pristina Basic Court found Djokic guilty and sentenced him to 12 years in prison. The verdict was upheld by the Court of Appeals in November.

The Croatian parliament started its session with a minute of silence to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday, while a delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Boris Milosevic and Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Korzinek laid wreaths at the Mirogoj Cemetery in the capital Zagreb.

Croatian leaders' contrasting attitudes towards Tuesday's annual commemoration of the murder of a Croatian family during the independence war drew equally contrasting responses.

Zagreb's new Left-Green mayor, Tomislav Tomasevic attended the commemoration of the murder of the Zec family in 1991 in person.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the verdict finding former Serb reservist policeman Nenad Arsic guilty of war crimes and confirmed his six-year prison sentence.

Arsic was found guilty of committing the crimes on May 21, 1999 during a police operation against Kosovo Albanian civilians in Pristina's Emshir neighbourhood.

Historian Dejan Ristic also attended the meeting in the premises of the Patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Several times a week, the Memorial Centre at Donja Gradina - the place where prisoners in the Ustasa-run Jasenovac-Stara Gradiska concentration camp complex in Croatia were brought every day to be liquidated - publishes posts on Twitter commemorating the lives of the camp's victims.