Narratives of Justice and War in Croatia

2020 ◽  
pp. 445-461
Author(s):  
Ivor Sokolić
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Self Defence

This chapter examines the relationship between war and justice narratives in Croatia, based on focus groups, dyads, and interviews conducted in 2014 and 2015. The war narrative is based on a pervasive conception of self-defence against a larger Serbian aggressor. It contrasts with a justice narrative that is focused on the norms of transitional justice and the expressivist effects of trials. The two narratives exist in the same space and interact with each other. This chapter outlines these narratives and analyses their reproduction. It argues that the emotional war narrative’s strength makes it difficult for the justice narrative to take hold and, consequently, for the trickle-down expressivist effects of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and human rights norms to occur. This tolerance for deviance was based on notions of legality that were defined differently in relation to Croats and Serbs.

Rape and Human Rights

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1662-1664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Franco
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
The United Nations

According to the report of the United Nations commission on Human Rights, rape is the least condemned war crime (coomaraswamy, Further Promotion 64n263). Although wartime rape was listed as a crime against humanity by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and by the Geneva Conventions, it was not until 2001 that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia identified rapists as war criminals. In that year the tribunal sentenced three men for violations of the laws or customs of war (torture, rape) and crimes against humanity (torture, rape) committed during the war in Bosnia during the 1993 takeover of Foca, where women were systematically raped and killed, the purpose being “to destroy an ethnic group by killing it, to prevent its reproduction or to disorganize it, removing it from its home soil.”

The Security Consequences of Bearing Witness

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-957
Author(s):  
James Meernik ◽  
Kimi King
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Exposure Risk ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Selective Targeting

It is a central assumption of our research that threats to a fragile security and violence can continue during postconflict peacebuilding and that these threats are driven by many of the same sociopolitical dynamics that initially led to war. We examine a critical but much less queried area of postwar societal instability—violence directed at segments of the population who may still be targets for those seeking dominance. Using a survey of 300 individuals who testified before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), we seek to explain violence, threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation directed at those who witnessed human rights violations during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Our theory of postwar violence emphasizes the vulnerability of the (potential) victims of postwar violence. We argue that victims are selectively chosen because of their vulnerability. We develop and test an alternative explanation for this selective targeting that emphasizes the level of exposure an individual may have because of testifying at the ICTY. The results demonstrate quite convincingly, however, that it is vulnerability rather than exposure risk that predicts who is most likely to be targeted with human security threats.

scholarly journals Traumatized War Criminal? Documenting the Case of Esad Landžo

2020 ◽  
pp. 105756772094078
Author(s):  
Olivera Simic
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Serious Injury ◽  
Main Protagonist

Perpetrators’ voices have been traditionally ignored in the transitional justice field and beyond. Esad Landžo was only 19 when he committed the crimes of willful killing, torturing, and causing serious injury to the detainees of notorious Čelebići camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2001, Landžo was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the crimes he committed in 1992. After serving two thirds of his sentence in 2006 and settling in Finland, Landžo and the Danish filmmaker, Lars Feldballe Petersen, embarked on the project of making a documentary movie about Landžo’s traumatic memories, remorse, and regret. Landžo had a strong urge to extend his apology to each victim individually and in 2015 went to Čelebići to meet his former detainees. This article will build on a scarce conversation in scholarly, and legal discourse, as to why psychological trauma is considered to be an experience that belongs to victims. It will analyze difficult and untold perpetrators’ experiences of criminal acts and explore whether in these experiences there is potential for inner and group understanding. This article draws on the author’s interviews with Landžo, the main protagonist in the movie The Unforgiven: A War’s Criminal Remorse, a film that documents the extraordinary story of Landžo: from his denial to redemption.

Memory at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-287
Author(s):  
Kristen Perrin
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Narrative Control ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

Scrutiny of the legal elements of international criminal tribunals such as the ICTY are frequent and important, but this article suggests that new avenues need to be taken in order to truly understand what is taking place within the courtroom sociologically. Embedded within courtroom interactions are symbolic exchanges that can stand as both reflections of and implications for the success or failure of transitional justice as a tool to promote community understanding post-conflict. Using a mixture of social psychology and cognitive linguistics, this article examines the significance of in-court references to memory, theorising that the concepts of remembering and forgetting as discussed in transcripts reveal greater struggles between the witnesses and the court over narrative control. This ultimately raises questions about the nature of the relationship between international legal bodies and the individual victim-witness, and demonstrates that there are failings occurring here that could make processes of reconciliation and community healing more difficult.

Some Kind of Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Orentlicher
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Local Impact ◽  
Over Time

Created in 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has operated longer than any war crimes tribunal in history. It thus offers a singularly important case study of how and why the local impact of an international criminal tribunal (ICT) evolves over time; the circumstances in which international justice can advance the normative, reparative, and other aims of transitional justice; and, more generally, the goals ICTs are either well-suited or unlikely to advance. The book explores the ICTY’s impact in Serbia, whose wartime leader plunged the former Yugoslavia into vicious ethnic conflict, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which experienced searing atrocities culminating in the Srebrenica genocide, over the life of the Tribunal. It focuses on the Tribunal’s impact in three spheres: victims’ experience of justice; official, elite, and community discourses about wartime atrocities, as well as official gestures of acknowledgment; and domestic accountability processes, including the work of a hybrid court in Bosnia. While highlighting the perspectives of Bosnians and Serbians interviewed by the author, the book incorporates a rich body of interdisciplinary research to deepen their insights.

scholarly journals The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Fair Trial Rights: A Closer Look

1996 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 479-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Body System ◽  
European Court ◽  
Treaty Body

In a recent article lamenting the perception of partiality created by an activist judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), one commentator observed the general lack of scrutiny to which the ICTY is being held in its treatment of the rights of the accused. He noted that it “is a court without legal critics: no complaint about its conduct may be made to the Human Rights Committee in Geneva or to the European Court [of Human Rights], and human rights lobbies have tended to look the other way.” Indeed, it is in a position that many governments, fatigued by what many of them consider to be cumbersome reporting obligations and troublesome individual complaints procedures under the United Nations treaty body system, would envy.

“I Would Do the Same Again”

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivera Simić
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
International Tribunal ◽  
Return Home

After more than 20 years in operation, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has closed down at the end of 2017. Biljana Plavšić made history by becoming the only woman, of 161 individuals, indicted by the ICTY. She was also the highest ranking official and the first Serb leader to plead guilty to charges raised against her before the ICTY. After entering into a plea agreement and serving two thirds of her 11-year sentence in Sweden, she returned to Belgrade in 2009 where she has been living ever since. In this article, I draw on interviews I undertook with Plavšić in the course of 2017. In the first part of the article, I briefly introduce Plavšić and situate the study within the field of international criminal justice and transitional justice. I then proceed to discuss four themes that Plavšić most frequently returned to during our conversations. These themes offer an original perspective into Plavšić’s experience of being tried and sentenced by the international tribunal and her subsequent release and return home. This article aims to fill a gap in the literature by analyzing the reflections on the ICTY from its only woman defendant.

scholarly journals The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: The Promise and Reality of Reconciliation in Croatia

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Parker
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Local Level ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Community ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
State And Local

The international community is increasingly interested in promoting post-conflict reconciliation in a variety of forms, with trials and truth commissions featured most prominently. The contemporary academic discussion over transitional justice (and the practice of transitional justice itself) is largely focused on whether and how these types of large-scale national transitional justice mechanisms contribute to reconciliation. This article examines the promise and reality of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to contribute to national reconciliation. Ultimately, the ability of state-wide policies to contribute to reconciliation rests on the active participation of local level actors. This requires political backing at the state and local level beyond that of just the international community. More attention needs to be paid to domestic cultural factors in the initial decision to implement state-wide transitional justice procedures, and bottom-up mechanisms must be built into any large scale approach to reconciliation.

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