The fifteenth HLC Dossier on the unpunished crimes of the Serbian Volunteer Guard
On Thursday, 23 March 2023, Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) launched its fifteenth dossier on potential war crime perpetrators during the wars in former Yugoslavia, The “Serbian Volunteer Guard“ Dossier presents the facts on the creation, structure and characteristics of actions conducted by the Serbian Volunteer Guard (SVG/the Guard), as well as its participation in the crimes perpetrated during the armed conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The Dossier is based on the military and police documents admitted by the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), as well as on the ascertained facts, statements and testimonials, including those of former Guard members as well as media packages and witness statements collected by HLC’s researchers. During the research, HLC identified 189 SVG members who were under the command of Željko Ražnatović Arkan, whose names are among the annexes to this Dossier.
HLC’s Executive Director, Ivana Žanić, stated that the Dossier rendered the formation of SVG, its structure and actions through cooperation with other units, evidence of the Guard’s participation in the crimes committed in Croatia and BiH, via referral of forcefully mobilised refugees to the front, to the eventual disbanding of SVG. The crimes committed by SVG, as well as its links with the police, military and political structures of Serbia were part of the ICTY indictments against Slobodan Milošević, Goran Hadžić and Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović. Although the Milošević and Hadžić trials were curtailed by the demise of the defendants, during these two proceedings exhibits and witness statements were presented, clearly describing the SVG operations and indicating the perpetrated crimes. The ICTY Prosecutor’s Office issued an indictment against the SVG commander Željko Ražnatović Arkan in 1997, for the crimes committed in Sanski Most in 1995. The contents of the indictment remained confidential all the way until 2001.
The crimes committed by the Serbian Volunteer Guard (SDG/the Guard), a group formed by Željko Ražnatović (Arkan), and its links with the Serbian police, military and political establishment, were an integral part of the indictments of the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor against Slobodan Milošević, Goran Hadžić, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović.
On Thursday, March 23, 2023, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) will present its fifteenth Dossier, entitled “Serbian Volunteer Guard” (Dossier). The presentation will be held in the large hall of the Media Center in Belgrade (Terazije 3, 2nd floor), starting at 12 PM.
This paper discusses the strategies of commemorating and memorializing the armed conflict in North Macedonia since its formal ending in August 2001. It argues that there are two prevailing modes of remembering the 2001 conflict in post-conflict Macedonia, which match the domains of the two largest ethnic communities in the state, the Macedonian and the Albanian. Observation of annual developments, however, demonstrates that commemorative practices within the two domains are not as uniform as they might seem.
In order to establish the facts about the bombing of refugee columns on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Croatian military-police Operation “Storm”, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) is publishing the data and excerpts from the witness statements about those events, which it collected immediately after the refugees’ arrival in Serbia.