Nobel Academy reacts to Handken: He has condemned genocide in Srebrenica, there is nothing wrong with his writings.

Handken's gratitude has sparked much criticism, including survivors and relatives of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. They are calling on the Swedish Academy to withdraw the price decision.

Handke spoke at the funeral of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2006. Milosevic died in The Hague tribunal's detention unit, until the trial was under way against him on war crimes charges in the Balkans in the 1990s.

Handke also supported Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are convicted of genocide in Srebrenica.

In a text in the Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter”, Mats Malm, the head of the Swedish Academy, acknowledged that Handke made the “provocative, inappropriate and unclear remarks on political issues”.

However, he stressed that he did not clone the bloodshed and clearly condemned the Srebrenica massacre.

“Academia has found nothing in his writings that constitutes an attack on civil society or respect for the equality of all the people”, Malm wrote.

Swedish Academy quoted a text from the German newspaper “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” in 2006, in which Handke stressed that the Srebrenica massacre was the worst crime against humanity in Europe since World War II.

The Nobel Prize division for the Austrian writer, on the part of the Nobel Committee, had sparked reactions from many secular institutions and personalities.