Hardline Serbian nationalists gathered on Saturday to commemorate Serb victims of the Yugoslav wars in a defiant gesture ahead of the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims.
Their rally was in stark contrast to somber scenes in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where solemn crowds lined the streets to greet a convoy of trucks carrying 610 coffins containing the identified remains of Srebrenica victims. The remains will be reburied at a memorial ceremony on Monday that is expected to draw 50,000 mourners.
More than 2,000 victims have been identified by painstaking DNA analysis over the years. About 7,000 body bags have still to be analyzed and 20 more mass graves to be exhumed.
But such incontrovertible evidence has little impact on those Serbs who still insist the killing was simply a fact of war, or a justifiable act of revenge, or who deny the massacre outright.
Led by the ultra-nationalist Radical Party and the top ranks of the Orthodox Christian church, hardline Serbs packed a hall on the banks of the Sava river in Belgrade to listen to patriotic speeches and watch a documentary of Serb suffering in the wars.
Seated in the two front rows were well-known defenders of Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives Mr Radovan Karadzic and Mr Ratko Mladic as well as supporters of Mr Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb leader now on trial for genocide in The Hague.
The rally listened to a message from party leader Mr Vojislav Seselj, who is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial on war crimes charges and is forbidden from engaging in politics.
"With this film about crimes against Serbs we are showing who were the real victims in this war," Radical Party official Mr Aleksandar Vucic told the Belgrade tabloid Srpski Nacional.
"We are in an absurd situation where no one talks about crimes against Serbs. We offered this film to TV stations but they refused to show it, while they looped film about Srebrenica day in and day out."