Press release: Minister Vulin continuously in the company of war crimes convicts
According to some media reports, Saša Cvjetan, a member of the “Scorpions” unit who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2005 for war crimes against Albanian civilians during the Kosovo war, was an honoured guest at the commemoration of Srebrenica Municipality Day on March 11 this year. At the ceremony, seated in the same row as Cvjetan, was Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who also gave a speech on that occasion.
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) believes that it is inadmissible that state officials of Serbia be found in the company of war criminals, thereby knowingly affording them the legitimacy to participate in political life. It is in this way that the rehabilitation of those convicted of the most serious crimes during the wars of the 1990s and historical revisionism of court-established facts are carried out.
In Serbia’s public discourse, the dominant interpretations on the Yugoslav wars not only ignore or devalue judicially-established facts about crimes committed during the wars, but deny and falsify the facts into distorted narratives. Media work in a context of increasing monopolisation by revisionist memory politics from above. At the same time, media themselves are becoming a crucial instrument in revisionist memory politics.
Following June 1999 the Serbs in Kosovo have been having a hard time. After the withdrawal of the Serbian army and the police, they became the targets for the KLA and criminal groups. Numerous murders, abductions and property destruction happened in the presence of the international forces. The absence of KFOR’s reaction persuaded even those Albanians who were against the violence that the international community was supporting the idea of the extreme political groups that Kosovo should be free of the Serbs. On 17 March, with the exception of Mitrovicë/Mitrovica, UNMIK and KFOR, once again and primarily through their omission to act, encouraged the Albanian extremists.
The Humanitarian Law Center accepts applications for the first round of Memory Activism Fellowships, including two fellowships of up to 6 months, starting in May and October 2022. We welcome fellowship applications from researchers, journalists, practitioners and artists who work on the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia from different perspectives. The fellowship is non-residential and does not require a presence in Belgrade. During the fellowship, the fellows are expected to generate outputs that will be published and promoted by the HLC. The outputs can be in the form of analysis, a report, a series of blogs or organisation of events.
On Sunday, February 27, 2022, it will be 29 years since the crime in Štrpci (Bosnia and Herzegovina), in which members of the Army of the Republic of Srpska (VRS) kidnapped and killed 20 non-Serb civilians, passengers on a train travelling from Belgrade to Bar. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), Women in Black, Sandžak Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms and Youth Initiative for Human Rights recall the public’s attention to the fact that victims’ families have been waiting for judicial justice in Serbia, and the recognition of their status as family members of civilian victims of war, for 29 years now. For 29 years the public has been waiting for the recognition, accountability and memorialisation of victims by the institutions of Serbia.