The Coalition for RECOM, which is campaigning to establish a regional truth commission for the Yugoslav wars, is working to create the first full list of all those killed in the Balkan conflicts from 1991 to 2001.
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Sorry, this entry is only available in srpski.
War criminals were celebrated, verdicts convicting Serbs were questioned and atrocities were denied, while Serbian prosecutors again failed in 2019 to indict any high-ranking suspects for crimes committed in the 1990s conflicts.On May 9, retired Yugoslav Army general Vladimir Lazarevic, a convicted war criminal, headed a World War II Victory Day parade through the streets of the southern Serbian city of Nis. The showpiece event was organised by Russian war veterans with the backing of the Serbian authorities.
Lazarevic’s prominent role in the parade highlighted how in 2019, Serbian officials continued their practice of celebrating war criminals as military heroes.
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On Monday, 23 December 2019, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) presented its fifth Report on the Implementation of the National Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes (Report). Opening a discussion on the Report, Ivana Žanić, Executive Director of the HLC, said that the National Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes (the National Strategy) had been adopted with the aim of improving war crimes prosecution in Serbia, but also of shifting society’s attitude towards dealing with the past i.e. with the crimes committed during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Given that the National Strategy expires in 2020, continued Žanić, it cannot be said that it has accomplished its overall aim to date, since war crimes trials prosecution has not improved, nor has public perception regarding these themes changed.
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) has been monitoring and providing support to war crimes trials ever since the first war crimes proceedings conducted in Serbia in 2002. The HLC is the only organization that has been continuously monitoring and analyzing war crimes trials in Serbia and informing the public at home and abroad about them. The HLC has been filing criminal complaints against suspected perpetrators with the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutors (OWCP), and it has also been identifying witnesses and victims and encouraging them to give evidence in court, and thus contribute to achieving justice for past crimes.
In 1991 and 1992, while conflict took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the international community was interested in allegations by the media and non-governmental organisations that sexual violence was frequently committed. As a result, certain domestic and international organisations, began investigating those media allegations, and the UN Security Council formed the Panel of Experts, with the aim of determining whether sexual violence was strategically used as a weapon of war. The report submitted by the Panel of Experts influenced the establishment of the ICTY in 1993 and the creation of a new legal framework dealing with sexual violence.
Around 20 people indicted for 1990s wartime crimes in Bosnia have died over the past five years, causing the cases to be halted, while ten more cases are at a standstill because the defendants are ill.