News

Peace Talks Leads to Release of Child Soldiers

By Cintia Garcia

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

Bogota, Colombia— On Sunday March 15 in Havana, Cuba, the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed forces of Colombia (FARC) reached an agreement to release child soldiers from the FARC’s ranks. Both parties have agreed to release all children under the age of 15 from FARC, and FARC has agreed that they will no longer recruit children within this age range. In addition, the government of Colombia and FARC will develop a plan to release child soldiers under the age of 18. Furthermore, the agreement also proposes the creation of a reintegration plan that will assist in transitioning the child soldiers into society.

Child Soldier in Colombia. (Photo Courtesy of Colombia Reports)

The priority of the government of Colombia is to ensure the safety and the release of any child under the age of 15. FARC will assist the government of Colombia in finding and identifying any child who falls within this age group for their departure from the non-state military. Although FARC claimed it only had knowledge of 20 children under age 15 currently serving FARC, it has been confirmed that 170 children will be released. Upon the release of the child soldiers, FARC has asked the government of Colombia to not prosecute the child soldiers for crimes they have committed and provide them with “Victim Status.” About 100 boys and 70 girls will be released to UNICEF.

According to UNICEF, since 2013, the number of children soldiers that have been killed or injured under FARC has dropped by 40%. Additionally, in the past 17 years 60% of the 6,000 children that have left the rebel military belong to FARC.

UNICEF has been an integral partner during the peace talks in ensuring the children of FARC are reintegrated with their families and into society. UNICEF representative, Roberto de Bernardi, announced that UNICEF “stands ready to support the release of all children and their reintegration into their families and communities, in accordance with national and international law.”

The historic announcement comes amidst three years of peace talks between the government of Colombia and FARC. The peace talks are being held in Havana, Cuba with the goal of reaching a cease fire by the end of this year. FARC is the most mobilized rebel group in Colombia. Since the peace talks began, the number of fighters within FARC has reduced to about 8,000 through the voluntary disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program.

For more information, please see: 

BBC – Colombia and Farc Rebels Agreed Child Soldier Deal—16 May 2016

Colombia Reports—Farc to Release 170 Child Soldiers: Colombia’s Defense Minister—19 May 2016

New York Times—Colombia and FARC Rebels Reach a Deal to Free Child Soldiers—15 May 2016

Newsweek—FARC Rebel Rehab Hopes to Create Lasting Peace in Colombia—24 April 2016

UNICEF—UNICEF Welcomes FARC’s Announcement to Release all Children in its Rank—16 May 2016

Iraqi Forces Retake Rutba; Battle for Fallujah Next

By Zachary Lucas

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq — After a two-day battle with the Islamic State, Iraqi forces reported that they had retaken the remote town of Rutba in the Andar Province. This comes on the heels of other military victories against IS in the northern and western regions of Iraq. This string of victories has been followed by some Iraq military officials stating that plans are being made to retake Fallujah next.

Iraqi Forces Have a String of Military Victories Against IS (Photo courtesy of the BBC)

Iraqi forces, backed by United States led coalition airstrikes, entered Rutba on Tuesday. These forces were helped by elite commandos and local tribal fighters to retake the city within two days. Coalition spokesperson, Colonel Steve Warren, stated that there were approximately 200 IS fighters in the town. Colonel Warren and Iraqi military officials added that little resistance was made by IS to defend the city.

Rutba was captured by IS in June 2014 and quickly became a home for IS training grounds and bases due to its remoteness. IS used Rutba as staging grounds for attacks in both Syria and Iraq. Colonel Warren stated that the retaking of Rutba will deny IS a “critical support zone” for future attacks against military forces and civilians.

Retaking Rutba is one of a few victories that the Iraqi military has seen in the last few months. In February, the Iraq military retook Ramadi from IS and last month they retook the town of Hit in Anbar province. Coalition forces estimate that IS has lost more than 30 percent of its territory in Iraq and Syria. Some officials have stated that the loss of territory and supplies has led IS to put up less military resistance and instead focus attacks on civilian populations like the recent bombings in Baghdad.

These recent victories and the strategic victory in Rutba, lead many into thinking that Fallujah is next. Both Iraqi military officials and local, allied militia leaders stated plans for retaking Fallujah are in the works. Fallujah was the first city to fall to IS control in 2014 and was later followed by numerous Iraqi military defeats, including losing the second largest city Mosul. Fallujah and Mosul, where IS has headquartered military operations, attacks on civilians, and sex trafficking of women, have been IS strongholds for almost two years.

For more information, please see:

The Washington Post — Iraqi forces retake Rutba from ISIS and eye Fallujah for next battle — 19 May 2016

BBC — IS conflict: Iraq forces retake remote western town of Rutba — 19 May 2016

Radio Free Europe — Iraqi Forces Retake Remote Western Town From Islamic State — 19 May 2016

Reuters — Iraq says it retakes western town of Rutba from Islamic State — 19 May 2016

Justice for Sergei Magnitsky: Kremlin’s TV Accused the CIA of a Plot to Cause the Death of Sergei Magnitsky

14 April 2016 – Last night, the Kremlin’s main TV propaganda channel, Rossiya-1, distributed a video showing fake documents claiming that the CIA had organised the withholding of medical care to Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian detention center to cause his death. To support this claim, the TV channel showed a CIA report dated 20 September 2009, which according to one of the program’s participants, was authenticated in a forensic report by a UK company headed by a senior ex MI-6 agent.
“The Kremlin’s propaganda is in contradiction with all official Russian documents describing the torturous conditions that had been created by Russian authorities for Sergei Magnitsky during his 358 days in detention and the fact that senior officials in the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office refused his written requests for medical attention,” said a representative of Magnitsky Justice Campaign.
As a result of his mistreatment for the first six months in detention, Sergei Magnitsky lost nearly 20 kg, and developed pancreatitis and gallstones, which were diagnosed on 1 July 2009, as shown by reply from Matrosskaya Tishina detention center (http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/D05.pdf). He was prescribed surgery. But one week before the scheduled surgery, Sergei Magnitsky was moved to a new detention center, Butyrka, which did not have any medical facilities. The decision was sanctioned by Russian Interior Ministry investigator Silchenko and serving head of the Russian Penitentiary System Petrukhin. All requests from Sergei Magnitsky and his lawyers for medical care were refused by officials from the Interior Ministry, General Prosecutor’s Office, detention system, and judges (see The Torture and Murder of Sergei Magnitsky report – http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/P01E.pdf).
In May 2009, the Council of Europe’s Rapporteur asked Russian General Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the torturous conditions Sergei Magnitsky was subjected to in detention. She received an official response that Sergei Magnitsky had not been arrested and that the named police officer did not work in the Russian Interior Ministry. The UK Law Society wrote to Russian General Prosecutor Chaika in July 2009 urging him to release Sergei Magnitsky from custody. In October 2009, General Prosecutor’s Office responded that there was no need to intervene, and that there was no violation of his rights in custody.
On 16 November 2009, after nearly 12 months in custody Sergei Magnitsky was moved from Byturka to Matrosskaya Tishina, allegedly for hospitalisation. But instead of being admitted to the hospital, Sergei Magnitsky was put in an isolation cell and beaten by eight guards. Civilian doctors were not let into his cell until he was dead. In spite of an application from Sergei Magnitsky’s mother to bring to justice over 50 officials from the General Prosecutor’s Office, Interior Ministry, FSB and Penitentiary System for the murder of her son, the Russian Investigative Committee closed the case into his death claiming absence of crime.
The journalist behind yesterday’s fake “evidence” on the alleged CIA Plot to kill Sergei Magnitsky is Evgeniy Popov, who works for Rossiya-1, and has been sanctioned by Ukraine for his role in the disinformation campaign about the war in Ukraine. Earlier in April, Evgeniy Popov travelled to London to obtain a video footage of William Browder’s office there. Police had to be called in because of disruption he caused.
For more information please contact:
Justice for Sergei Magnitsky
+44 207 440 1777

ICTJ: Post-Karadzic Bosnia and Herzegovina and the End of the Criminal Justice Era

Foca, eastern Bosnia, December 24, 1992, around midday. A tall, dark-haired man with an angry look in his eyes and a patch from the local military police unit of the Bosnian Serb Army on his arm walks briskly through the center of the small town. He has two girls with him. Naked, clutching some clothes in their arms. He drags one by her hair, a large knife in the other hand. The second girl is trying to walk faster, ahead of him, blood dripping from her nose and a cut above her eye. “Go on, you fucking whores,” shouts Radomir Kovac. “I am going to take you to Drina, slit your throats and throw you in the river.”

“He turned the knife around and hit me on the head with it. I had a bump on my head from the blow. I was completely exhausted and afraid, and my knees just wouldn’t hold me up. I had no strength whatsoever,” one of them would recall some 17 years later in her testimony before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). She was 22 at the time, taken from her home by Serb soldiers along with hundreds of other women from surrounding Muslim villages to be detained in one of several rape camps in and around Foca.

“He brought us to where the Cehotina and Drina rivers meet. And I just looked back at him, because I wasn’t able to go forward. But I always thought, ‘You’re not going to slit my throat. You’re not going to slaughter me alive.’ The tide was high, and I thought that I would throw myself into the Drina, that I’d rather drown than have my throat slit,” the girl, now a women known as witness FSW-75c, recalls. At the last moment, Kovac is stopped by one of his friends, who tells him that some Montenegrins offered 500 German Marks for each of the girls. It pays not to kill them. Better to sell them on.

The two girls, beaten and bloodied, are paraded naked through the center of Foca again. On their way they pass the municipality building. There are people there, going on about their business. Some walk by without a word, some look on, some greet Kovac merrily, pointing and laughing at the girls. Nobody tries to help them.

Nobody thinks of it, for this is now a new, accepted reality in Serb-held parts of Bosnia, in which Muslims (Bosniaks) are de-humanized to the point where they deserve everything that happens to them, no matter how horrific. In this new normal there cannot be any empathy for people deemed a virus, a “disease which has historically been eating into the healthy tissue of the Serb national being,” as Biljana Plavsic, member of Bosnian Serb Presidency, infamously stated.

The creation of this new reality was a key pre-requisite for the implementation of the strategy of “separation of peoples” designed by Radovan Karadzic and the leadership of his Serb Democratic Party as a method of achieving their ultimate political goal – the establishment of an “ethnically pure” Serb state on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic addresses the court of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague Netherlands in this image taken from TV, Wednesday Oct. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/ICTY via Associated Press Television)


Karadzic’s poisonous legacy

Being from Prijedor, I had to come to terms with the devastating impact of Karadzic’s vision on my family, my community, my birthplace, my life. As a journalist and later as a staff member of the ICTY, all that I have done during the last 20 years has somehow been shrouded in Karadzic’s dark shadow. I know too many people who buried their own children. I know too many people who are still searching for their children’s bones to bury. I know too many people who murdered, drunk on Karadzic’s vision of Bosnian Serbs’ right to self-determination in which childhood friends were turned into “historic enemies.”

Often I have dreamt of the day he was going to pay for it all, when justice will be served upon him, cold and merciless. And then, more than 20 years after he was first indicted, the day came. Or rather, it crashed upon us all, with its media frenzy, with hundreds of opportunists keen to be part of the spectacle in whatever way available, with a cacophony of voices calling for his head, calling for him to be beatified, voices screaming “genocide”, voices warning of dire, dire consequences should the judgment be used to change the status quo his crimes created, voices demanding, pleading, threatening…

Amidst this deafening noise, Karadzic entered the courtroom with a beaming smile, probably counting on the day’s outcome, satisfied that the fruits of his bloody labor in Bosnia and Herzegovina – his new normal of division, hatred, mistrust and separation – are alive and flourishing.

The judgment contained no surprises, unless one counts the acquittal on charges of genocide in municipalities like Prijedor as a surprise. I don’t. According to judges, evidence was insufficient to show that Karadzic and his co-perpetrators intended to physically destroy Bosnian Muslims and Croats in these municipalities. In Srebrenica yes, said judges, and he was duly convicted of genocide for the 1995 annihilation of some 8,000 men and boys. But elsewhere he just intended to exterminate, not physically destroy, judges ruled. Unpalatable use of legal nuance, yes, but not surprising.

“The fruits of [Karadzic’s] bloody labor in Bosnia and Herzegovina…are alive and flourishing.”

Most importantly, Karadzic was convicted of leading the joint criminal enterprise which employed extermination, murder, torture, rape, forced deportation and widespread persecution of Bosnian Muslims and Croats to implement the vision laid out in a document titled “Strategic Goals of Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” of which two are crucial: the creation of a Serb state on Bosnian territory and the physical separation of Serbs from other peoples inhabiting these territories.

The drastic nature of methods envisaged for implementation of this strategy was best captured by the reaction of the newly appointed commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, General Ratko Mladic. He climbed to the podium at the meeting of the Serb assembly on May 12, 1992, where the document was first presented, and addressed the politicians before him: “You can’t sift people through a net so that one people falls through and the other remains. What you are asking me to do is pure and simple genocide.” This did not mean Mladic would refuse the request; once the decision was made he implemented it with fervor and fanaticism.

Much of Karadzic’s judgment had already been written in previous verdicts against his co-perpetrators, members of the Bosnian Serb political and military leadership: Momcilo Krajisnik, Biljana Plavsic, Radoslav Brdjanin, Stojan Zupljanin and others. Although only a few new facts emerged, the judgment laid out in detail the picture of Karadzic’s key role in creating an ideology that de-humanized the non-Serbs to the point where their extermination became a legitimate, necessary national effort.

The judges were precise in describing this evidence: “Radovan Karadzic was at the forefront of developing and promoting the ideology and policies of the SDS and creating the parallel governmental, military, police and political structures that were used to establish and maintain authority over Bosnian Serb-claimed territory and further the objective of [removing non-Serbs through commission of crimes]. He was central in outlining the goals of the Bosnian Serb leadership including separation from Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, the take-over of Bosnian Serb-claimed territory, and the creation of a largely ethnically homogeneous Bosnian Serb state. Karadzic was also a central figure in the dissemination of propaganda against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, which identified them as the historic enemies of the Serbs and insisted that co-existence was impossible. He played on this historical narrative and his rhetoric was used to engender fear and hatred of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats and had the effect of exacerbating ethnic divisions and tensions in BiH.”

This is Karadzic’s most poisonous and most important legacy: the creation of a new reality in which Radomir Kovac was regarded as a hero, and girls in his ownership reduced to vermin whose lives and dignity were meaningless to their Serb neighbors. All the crimes –the killings, the torture, the systematic rape and the genocide –were possible because of this new reality that reduced non-Serbs to a problem that needed to be solved in order for Serbs to attain freedom and security.


ICTY archives contain millions of pages of documents, thousands of hours of AV material and other evidence. (Susan Schuppli)


End of the era of criminal justice

As I write these words at my desk, I can hear my daughter humming “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers from the adjacent room, while in the bedroom my wife is feeding our newborn son. Just another evening, perfect in its simplicity, but not one that we will register as “memorable”. Yet for the likes of Radovan Karadzic, an evening like this will remain an unattainable dream for the remainder of his natural life. For what he has left of his life will amount to the miserable existence of a convicted war criminal, bound to end in a bleak, bare cell in one of Europe’s prisons.

A fitting end for a man who has destroyed hundreds of thousands of ordinary lives as he pursued his dream of an ethnically homogenous ethnic state? I don’t know. Indeed, what could be a fitting end for a man with such a poisonous legacy? I just know that 20 years of anger and thirst for retribution dissolved into a new realization: I just want this man out of my life. I don’t know what constitutes a fitting punishment for someone like him, but there is some comfort in knowing that with his trial over, he would no longer participate in the reality his crimes created. It is this reality we have to deconstruct, dismantle and transform.

The starting point in such an endeavor must be the realization that the end of Karadzic’s trial brings an end to “the era of criminal justice” in our search for the serum to counter his poison. This does not mean the end of war crimes trials as such, but instead the end of our reliance on criminal justice to transform our society.

We gained mightily from this era: there are mountains of gathered evidence, countless facts about crimes have been established beyond a reasonable doubt. A number of perpetrators have been removed from our midst, and the judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina is in relatively good shape to pursue the perpetrators of these crimes for as long as they and their victims are alive.

At the same time, we need to accept that in these 20 years of criminal justice efforts, the Karadzic’s new normal in Republika Srpska – and its reverberations in Bosniak and Croat communities – has not been significantly affected.

There has been much baseless expectation and careless manipulation among Bosniaks over what these trials could bring about: from catharsis in the Serb nation, to the ultimate historical record of the conflict, to the abolition of Republika Srpska. None of these were grounded in solid precedents nor did they ever have any realistic “roadmap” that clearly charts the causal relationship between the trials and the desired outcome.

“The dominance of criminal justice as the preferred cure for our broken society needs to end”

 

Fueled by opportunistic opinion makers from media and academia, religious and political leaders, these expectations often hinged on some big power suddenly waking up to the vast scope of injustice and suffering confirmed in ICTY judgments and somehow acting to reverse the results of Karadzic’s genocidal effort. Years have been wasted in the recycling of such myths, heavily reliant on victimhood as the backbone of Bosniak identity, which in turn paralyzed any meaningful conversation on reconciliation and anathemized notions of acknowledgement and forgiveness. Perversely, ICTY trials were somehow seen by many as a possible way to win back the territory and the constitutional framework lost in the war.

At the same time, the Serbs have been sold the same story by their leaders, but told from a different perspective: that somehow the ICTY’s judgments were designed to criminalize every Serb who has fought in the war, and that they would be used to somehow undermine Republika Srpska and Serbia. Of course, every leader from, Slobodan Milosevic to Milorad Dodik (with the possible exception of Zoran Djindjic), always positioned himself as the only person capable of “defending” the Serb people, saving Serbia from humiliation and protecting the RS from abolition.

Every time this grip of fear and manipulation would loosen and people began to focus on their meager livelihoods, on the rampant corruption and plunder, there would come a manufactured crisis to draw them back into the Karadzic-created reality of a nation under siege surrounded by “historic enemies” and their allies in the international community. Instead of progressing and putting as much distance as possible between themselves and Karadzic’s methods of achieving Serb political goals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Serb political establishment went full circle and again started embracing his ideology, rehabilitating his ideas and celebrating those who implemented them as national heroes.

The consequences of this bipolar dynamic have been devastating. The paralysis of positive social processes to which this dynamic has contributed has allowed the political elites on both sides to plunder, unchecked by the constantly re-traumatized populace. The younger generation, which is always the most important agent of social change, has either beenforced into thinking about leaving or has largely been infested with most virulent forms of nationalism and hatred, often growing up in the “ethnically pure” communities forged by the conflict. Civil society has largely atrophied, burdened by donors’ agendas and a lack of legitimacy among the people. Militant extremism is on the rise in all ethnic groups, actively fanned by hate speech in the media and on social networks.

Granted, there are organic processes in which people reconnect: trade, sports, and some civil society initiatives. But these advances are weak and fragile, constantly under assault from the mighty machinery of the political establishment and the institutions it controls. Instead of human rights policy seeking to repair victims and prevent conflict from recurring, the society is trapped in a continuation of war by “other means.”

This has to end if we are to avoid sliding back into armed conflict of some sort. It doesn’t mean that pursuit of justice for war crimes has to be abandoned in favor of forgetting, but it does mean that the dominance of criminal justice as the preferred cure for our broken society needs to end, and that collective energy needs to be directed to other means of dismantling Karadzic’s legacy. It means that instead of endlessly going in circles around ICTY trials, we need to open a serious public debate on acknowledgement and reparations.


Families of inmates killed in Prijedor camps release hundreds of balloons with their names to symbolize their demand for public memorials. (Stop Genocide Denial)


A case for acknowledgment and reparations

Some years back I interviewed tens of survivors of the notorious Prijedor camps and families of those who were killed in 1992. I was trying to understand how they perceived the justice meted out in war crimes trials in The Hague and in Bosnian courts. While they all differed on how important sentences were, how the act of testifying shaped their views and most other aspects of court proceedings, one thing they all agreed on: in terms of importance, court justice came a distant second to acknowledgment of their suffering by the authorities and their Serb neighbors. One former inmate of Omarska summed it up: “The recognition of my suffering is more important to me than material compensation of any kind. If there was a public effort of the local Serb community to say ‘yes, we know what happened, we recognize it’, it would mean more to me than all the jail terms, all the money in the world. That would lead to reconciliation.”

So there it is: if, as the Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic likes to repeat, Serbian political establishment genuinely wants reconciliation with Bosniaks, acknowledgement is the crucial first step. It is a moral imperative, affirming that our humanity has survived atrocity, but it is not devoid of pragmatic value: it is in the long-term interest of Republika Srpska to acknowledge the crimes Karadzic used to achieve political goals set out at the outset of the war and announced on May 12 ,1992.

“Acknowledgement is the crucial first step. It is a moral imperative, affirming that our humanity has survived atrocity, but it is not devoid of pragmatic value.”

The reasoning for this is relatively simple, as it relates to the current paralysis and prospects for the future. If there is no acknowledgement; if Karadzic’s methods of extermination and genocide are not de-legitimized in the Serbian political discourse; if the Bosnian Serb political leadership doesn’t fully disown his methods; if the denial and rehabilitation of perpetrators persists; if there is continued intimidation and discrimination of non-Serbs, then Bosniaks (or any other reasonable person) must conclude that this Republika Srpska is in fact the continuation of the Karadzic’s project, designed to complete his work and cement the outcomes of his extermination effort.

If this is indeed so, then Bosniaks have no alternative but to regard Republika Srpska as a hostile presence and a security threat. Consequently, any mention of Republika Srpska possibly declaring independence or in some other way pursuing increased autonomy or closer ties to Serbia constitutes an act of escalation, which could in theory result in borders of a hostile state running, for example, through the hills above Sarajevo. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

It is simply unimaginable that Bosniaks would ever allow themselves to be in a similar situation again. Not without a fight anyway, and this time around the fight would probably have devastating consequences for all, but primarily for Republika Srpska considering its current geostrategic position and the military balance as compared to 1992.

So, to reiterate, for Republika Srpska acknowledgement is not only a matter of obligation to its non-Serb citizens targeted for extermination and genocide by its military and police – it is a matter of political necessity. The alternatives are bleak: the current debilitating paralysis and/or recurrence of armed conflict.

It is not as if Serb leaders have far to look for inspiration: there has been a period from 2003 to April 2006 when Republika Srpska (albeit under pressure from the international community) made shy first steps in this direction through a televised acknowledgement of the Srebrenica genocide by the then president Dragan Cavic. This unprecedented act of public acknowledgement stemmed from an inquiry into the events surrounding the fall of Srebrenica conducted and paid for by the RS. During these years, its public broadcaster RTRS regularly screened SENSE Agency reports from the ICTY trials. There was a serious effort to establish a truth commission at the state level, and in Prijedor, for example, there was a substantive conversation about a memorial at the site of Omarska concentration camp. Things were going in the right direction.

However, after the demise of constitutional reforms in 2006 known as the “April package”, Serbian political strategy in Bosnia turned from acknowledgement towards aggressive denial. The RS President Milorad Dodik personifies this shift – once vehemently opposed to Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, a man who publicly acknowledged genocide in Srebrenica, today is known as the most vocal genocide denier who doesn’t miss an opportunity to mock Bosniak victims and justify Karadzic’s methods.

In such atmosphere, the apology by Dragan Cavic is today seen by most Bosnian Serbs as an act of treason. Political leadership of the RS uses every opportunity to reject facts about the crimes committed by the RS institutions against non-Serbs and to deny victims basic rights to memorialization. The case of Prijedor and the refusal of the local Serb authorities to allow the memorial for 102 children killed there in 1992 stands out as the illustration of the heartlessness and racism of this politic. Their actions are allowing for the new normal forged by Karadzic’s policies to rear its ugly head again.


Activists from the initiative “Because it matters,” which gathers youth of different ethnic backgrounds, protest for victims’ rights to remembrance. (Stop Genocide Denial)


What way forward?

So, what forms should acknowledgment take? Apologies from key political leaders are symbolically important, and as long as they are genuine they can catalyze other processes of reckoning with the past. However, bearing in mind farcical attempts at apology in the past – such as the former Serbian president Boris Tadic’s qualified mumblings, or thefiasco of the current Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic’s visit to Potocari in the aftermath of his feverish campaign against the UK resolution on Srebrenica in the UN SC – we must look beyond these largely ceremonial acts. To reverse the effects of Karadzic’s crimes and years of denial, much more needs to be done.

First, public denial has to stop now, today. The mockery of victims of some of the worst atrocities, including Srebrenica, Markale market massacre, Tuzla Kapija massacre and others, emitted almost daily by Serb politicians and amplified through public television, radio and other media in the RS and Serbia, is nothing short of hatemongering. Its effects on any prospect of reconciliation are corrosive and they diminish, if not destroy, the capacity of victims to forgive. In addition, such language forms a continuum with the similar practices of Karadzic’s circle and his media during the conflict, further cementing the perception among Bosniaks that today’s Republika Srpska is indeed the same hostile presence whose forces committed countless atrocities.

There are a number of other concrete steps that need to be taken.

Public media form the key arena where the shift from denial to acknowledgement must happen, considering the destructive role of Serbian and RS media in the process of dehumanization of non-Serbs, their ongoing negation of suffering inflicted upon non-Serbs and their effort to rehabilitate convicted war criminals. In addition to amplifying messages of acknowledgement from political leaders, public broadcasters need to produce and commission content that presents facts about crimes of Serb forces based on evidence gathered by the ICTY and other credible sources. Programming featuring voices of non-Serb victims needs to be produced to humanize them again, and to demonstrate that empathy for the other is not an act of betrayal of Serbdom, as Karadzic’s ideology teaches. These are mere examples of what needs to be a concerted media effort which would signal to both Serb and non-Serb audiences that Karadzic’s new normal is being dismantled.

Another key frontline is the education system. Evidence of the crimes committed by the Serb forces, their systematic nature and the impact they had on the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina must find their way into the history curriculum at the primary and secondary level. Textbooks at these levels must be cleansed of inflammatory language directed against non-Serbs, which paint them as “historic enemies” of Serbs. University curriculum in faculties of law and political science, which now serve as breeding grounds for extreme nationalism and revisionism, need to be reformed to include the study of systematic crimes against non-Serbs, analyzing their root causes and consequences. Additionally, universities in Belgrade and Banja Luka would be well advised to establish a joint institute for the study of genocide, which would have specific programs at graduate and post-graduate levels focused on researching various aspects of the crimes against humanity committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Lastly, substantive efforts need to be made by local authorities in Republika Srpska to memorialize the suffering of its non-Serb citizens. Memorials should be developed in close consultation with families of victims and survivors, both in places of suffering such as sites of detention camps, but also in communal areas where they will be visible to the current inhabitants and serve an educational purpose. To signal their reparative role and the reinstatement of non-Serbs as equal citizens to whom local authorities have an obligation, such memorials should be publicly funded.

The positive effect of these basic acts of acknowledgement will be significantly increased if they are accompanied by a set of reparations. The primary aim should be to address the harm inflicted on non-Serbs by the Karadzic-led criminal enterprise and finally transform them from enemies into fellow citizens.

Contrary to the propaganda, which surrounded the ICJ lawsuit Bosnia filed against Serbiafor genocide and aggression, such reparations would not amount to hundreds of billions of dollars, but could be a mix of symbolic and material reparations which could be easily afforded by Republika Srpska and Serbia.

The first step could involve settling numerous cases of former camp detainees who have filed lawsuits against the RS for non-material damages before national courts. Such settlements could include a combination of symbolic payments and benefits under a program designed first and foremost to acknowledge the RS obligation to those who suffered harm at the hand of its security apparatus. One source of funds to support such a program could be located in the millions of Euros the RS government pays out every year to the families of the accused and convicted for war crimes, while the remainder could come from a fund established for this purpose with the help of international community.

Such funds could be used to support employment of families of victims who reside in the RS, and scholarships for the children of victims and survivors. Additionally, victims’ families and survivors should be afforded benefits such as free health care, tax breaks and housing assistance. In reality, this would not incur huge costs to the RS budget, as the number of victims’ families and survivors residing in the RS is relatively small, but the recognition of their rights would have a huge impact in distancing the current government from Karadzic’s policies.

Lastly, the areas inhabited predominantly by non-Serbs which were specifically targeted for destruction by Serb forces need to be classified as areas of special interest for the RS government in relation to development and reconstruction. This would potentially encourage a more permanent return of non-Serbs, who have so far been left to themselves and international assistance to repair the damage inflicted by intentional destruction and plunder. The policies adopted by local authorities at present are nothing short of discriminatory, with Prijedor a prime example: this year’s municipal budget allocated more money for a stray dog refuge than for assistance to non-Serb returnees. Development of these areas could only benefit local communities, as the improved infrastructure and a change of attitude by local authorities could attract investment from non-Serbs currently living abroad, whose economic potential is significant.

“In the long term, we could have a chance of a lasting, stable peace, with constitutional arrangements built on the basis of a consensus reflecting present political, economic and cultural factors, rather than on the rotten foundations of the legacy of Radovan Karadzic.”

The time to act is now

The possible effect of such new approach by the authorities of Republika Srpska and Serbia could be transformative, and not only in dismantling the reality Karadzic created. It would signal a clear break with his methods of pursuing political goals, which have now been authoritatively documented and judged as criminal in the ICTY verdict.

Such distancing from Karadzic’s crimes would help legitimize the Bosnian Serb political position within Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international community. It would go a long way to delegitimize Bosniak perception of Republika Srpska as a security threat and provide Serbs with a platform to rightfully demand reciprocity in acknowledgement and reparations action from Federation of BiH in relation to Serb victims of war crimes. Lastly, it would force Bosniaks to abandon victimhood as the primary source of political legitimacy in building their relations with counterparts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and internationally, finally forcing them to discern legitimate Serb political interests from the genocidal effort of Karadzic’s joint criminal enterprise.

And this is just a start. In the long term, we could have a chance of a lasting, stable peace, with constitutional arrangements built on the basis of a consensus reflecting present political, economic and cultural factors, rather than on the rotten foundations of the legacy of Radovan Karadzic.

I fully understand that this proposition may be dismissed as naïve in view of the current reality shaped not only by Karadzic’s crimes but also by the violent plunder that has over the last 20 years created a Hydra of intertwined political, criminal and business interests. Likewise, an increasingly chaotic regional and broader geopolitical context is far from conducive to the political will necessary for such changes, to say nothing of the broader challenges posed by climate change and an aging population. I am aware that this text may draw no more than laughter upon one look at the people currently in charge, to whom it is supposedly addressed, and their politics.

Such reactions would certainly be understandable. For these solutions may indeed require true statesmen whose vision extends beyond short-term political and material gains for themselves and their party colleagues, and considers benefits to their people and the peoples with whom they share this country.

But if we have not been irreversibly changed by Radovan Karadzic’s attempt to extinguish every ability in us to regard the pain of others, then we will embrace the moral imperative and human rights dictums that should catalyze such policies. At the same time, the bleak alternative of the continuation of frozen conflict and a real prospect of its escalation make them a matter of pure political necessity. And urgency.


Panel at the Belgrade Faculty of Political Sciences. Nemanja Stjepanovic addressing students. (Credit: YIHR)


Belgrade, evening of March 29, 2016, amphitheater of the Faculty of Political Sciences. The room is full of twentysomething first and second year students eager to hear panelists cross swords over a loaded question “Do law and justice exist in The Hague?” The panel comprises Kosta Cavoski, an ultranationalist law professor and a fervent Karadzic supporter, Goran Petronijevic, one of Karadzic’s lawyers, and Nemanja Stjepanovic, a journalist and researcher from Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center. The discussion quickly escalates into Cavoski and Petronijevic competing in throwing insults at the ICTY and openly misrepresenting mostly everything about Karadzic’s verdict. Their vulgar remarks draw thunderous applause from the students. Stjepanovic tries to bring the discussion back to the evidence on which the judgment is based, but his voice is drowned out in shouts from the audience and the other two panelists.

At one point Cavoski starts mocking the judgment about the systematic campaign of rape of Muslim women and girls in Foca (which includes the testimony of witness FSW-75). His “jokes” about Foca women are met with deafening laughter and mockery from the audience. Students of Belgrade’s University are laughing at the harrowing stories of rape and sexual enslavement of girls as young as 12. Astounded, Stjepanovic asks how they can laugh at something so horrific, at all the evidence about these crimes contained in the judgment. A young, beautiful girl from the third row responds: “We laughed when we read the judgment, why shouldn’t we laugh now?”

We are running out of time.

Satellite Images Reveal Devastation of Palmyra

By Brittani Howell

Impunity Watch Reporter, The Middle East

 

DAMASCUS, Syria – The Syrian army, backed by Russian forces, recently retook the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra from ISIS control. ISIS seized the ancient city in May 2015 and after committing terrible atrocities, including a mass execution, ISIS destroyed the ruins of century old civilizations.

Picture taken on March 31, 2016 of photographer holding picture of the Temple of Bel on March 14, 2014. (Photo courtesy of the Huffington Post)

Initial reports indicated that the damage to the city was not as bad as many feared, but satellite images obtained by DigitalGlobe showed unreported destruction in Palmyra. Monuments that had been in tact in September, as evidenced by DigitalGlobes previous batch of images, have been destroyed. The recent destruction included five more partly destroyed Roman-era tower tombs and a funerary was reduced to rubble.

Only two columns are left standing from the Arch of Triumph as the rest of the arch was brought down by explosives. The Arch of Triumph, dating back to the era of the Roman emperor Severus, by be easily repaired as it had been last restored in the 1930’s. At the entrance of the 2,000 years old Temple of Bell, members of the Islamic State allegedly wrote on the rocks, “The Islamic State. No entry for civilians or brothers [fighters].” The courtyard of the Temple was left standing but the prayer chamber was destroyed.

Allison Cuneo, project manager for the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Cultural Heritage Initiatives, stated “What’s strange is there hasn’t been any propaganda related to these tower tombs at all.” While she did acknowledge that the towers could have been damaged in combat she stated that the satellite images show signatures of intentional destruction.

Michael Danti, a Boston University archeologist, emphasized that a lot of damage to Palmyra was there prior to ISIS’s arrival. He stated, “That might get lost in translation over time. They were the primary culprit, but not the only culprit.”

Mamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s antiques director stated that it would most likely take as long as five years to restore the site. He further stated that most of the important works were transported to government held Damascus at the time ISIS captured the town. However, he warned  “there are still large items, like the sarcophagi, which weigh three to four tons and we could not move. Those are what worry me.”

The head of antiques for Palmyra, Khaled al-Assad, was killed after he allegedly hid artifacts and refused to give their location to ISIS. The Syrian army also uncovered a mass grave which contained over 25 bodes, including women and children.

A plan to detonate 4,500 mines that were linked to a telephone network had not been carried out, because the man responsible was killed by Assad loyalists. Russian army experts are starting to remove the mines which would take months.

For more information, please see:

CBS News – Devastation Left Behind by ISIS in Syrian Town of Qaryatain – 4 April 2016

Atlas Obscura – Newly-Released Satellite Images Show Shocking Destruction of Palmyra – 1 April 2016

The Guardian – ISIS Destruction of Palmyra Antiques Revealed in New Pictures – 1 April 2016

The Huffington Post – Palmyra Taken Back From ISIS But Striking Photos Reveal the Full Devastation They Caused – 1 April 2016