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Ms. Mijatovic is a Bosnian human rights expert and former
commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe. Mr. Roth is
a former executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Friday is the 30th anniversary of the deadliest massacre in Europe
since World War II, when Bosnian Serb forces under Gen. Ratko Mladic
overran an area meant to be protected by the United Nations. Soon
after, they proceeded to execute more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men
and boys.
The magnitude and audacity of the slaughter shocked the world and
spurred international prosecutions, making it one of the rare times
that a genocide has been prosecuted since the Holocaust. The
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted
and took into custody 161 people. Some 90 were convicted, including
Mr. Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader,
both of them for crimes that included the genocide in Srebrenica.
The prosecutions played the important role of punishing and
marginalizing these leaders, individualizing guilt in lieu of broad
collective blame, reaffirming the rule of law and paying tribute to
the victims.
But Srebrenica also illustrates the limits of the law, especially
when societies fail to adequately acknowledge such atrocities and
eliminate the hatred that led to them. That has lessons for other
potential prosecutions for more recent and ongoing conflicts, from
Gaza to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Today, denial of the Srebrenica genocide is the shameful policy of
Republika Srpska, the largely Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina
where the killings occurred. Convicted war criminals are publicly
celebrated by some. A recent history curriculum for elementary
schools portrayed Mr. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic as heroes and omitted
their convictions. In neighboring Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic
also rejects the term “genocide,” despite the international
tribunal’s convictions and a parallel ruling by the International
Court of Justice.
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The most powerful voices for truth have come from the Mothers of
Srebrenica. These women, many of whom lost entire families in the
massacre, have spent decades demanding a full accounting of what
happened. They are still waiting for their society — and their
neighbors — to acknowledge what was done to their loved ones. They
face harassment and threats. Some are still waiting to bury their
dead.
Rwanda presents another particularly dangerous failure to
acknowledge abuses. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,
like its Yugoslav counterpart, was a resounding success. It
prosecuted perpetrators of the 1994 genocide of Tutsis by forces led
by Hutu extremists, convicting and sentencing more than 60 people
including former Prime Minister Jean Kambanda and the army colonel
who was the genocide’s mastermind, Théoneste Bagosora.
But the tribunal has failed to prosecute members of the Rwandan
Patriotic Front, the rebel group that ended the genocide and assumed
power, for its own atrocities. Under its commander, Paul Kagame, who
went on to become Rwanda’s long-serving president, the Front
executed an estimated 30,000 people, by some accounts, while
stopping the genocide, and then in the aftermath.
Mr. Kagame resisted any effort by the international tribunal to
prosecute his forces for this mass murder, going so far as to
threaten noncooperation with genocide prosecutions if it dared. In
Rwanda, discussion of these atrocities — and indeed, any public
criticism of Mr. Kagame’s dictatorial rule — can be a route to
imprisonment.
Emboldened by this impunity, Mr. Kagame presides over a police state
at home and periodically has invaded neighboring eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo to mine its mineral riches. The International
Criminal Court has opened an investigation into the most recent
round of atrocities in Congo but so far has not charged any Rwandan
official.
In Gaza, Israeli forces are alleged to have committed systematic war
crimes and face accusations of genocide. The International Court of
Justice has ordered provisional measures to prevent genocide, and
the International Criminal Court has charged Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with the
deliberate starvation and deprivation of Palestinian civilians.
Yet the Israeli government has responded contemptuously, ignoring
the I.C.J. orders and absurdly attacking the I.C.C. as
“antisemitic.” President Trump has reinforced this lawlessness by
outrageously imposing retaliatory sanctions on the I.C.C. prosecutor
who brought the charges against the Israeli officials, along with
several judges. That not only reinforces impunity for mass
atrocities. It also impedes the prospect for lasting
Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Some of the earlier examples of international justice, the Nuremberg
and Tokyo tribunals that addressed German and Japanese atrocities
during World War II, illustrate the complexities of prosecuting war
crimes. Both prosecutions were plagued by selectivity — war crimes
by victorious allied forces were ignored, denazification was limited
by Cold War competition, the role of Emperor Hirohito in the war was
deliberately overlooked — but they nonetheless set an important
precedent of accountability.
Yet Germany and Japan responded very differently. The German
government ultimately acknowledged its role in the Holocaust. A
memorial to the six million Jewish victims occupies a prominent
place in central Berlin. Each year the nation observes Holocaust
Remembrance Day. By contrast, Japan has largely swept its crimes
under the rug. Leading politicians have periodically visited the
Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, including some of
the most culpable war criminals. The Japanese government’s
acknowledgments of the sexual slavery that it imposed on women
across Asia under occupation — the euphemistically named “comfort
women” — have been grudging and partial.
This differing response has perhaps informed the distinct
international roles that the German and Japanese governments now
play. Germany has emerged as a leading voice for human rights in
Europe and globally. Japan, on the other hand, has been a study in
reticence, particularly regarding standing up to repressive regional
neighbors like China, Cambodia and Myanmar.
As the world gathers to honor the victims of Srebrenica, what
remains absent is any sincere recognition that genocide was
committed. While Serbia and the Republika Srpska have issued
apologies over the years, neither has accepted the tribunal’s
judgment — and both continue to glorify war criminals and deny
genocide, even 30 years later. Srebrenica should have been a model
for post-genocide accountability. Instead, it stands as a case study
in how legal truth, without official and societal acknowledgment,
can entrench exclusionary nationalism.
Along with the pursuit of justice, nations and international
organizations must pressure state and political leaders to
acknowledge their governments’ misdeeds. They must push for systemic
truth-telling through education and memorialization, including by
issuing public apologies, reforming school curriculums, removing
monuments to war criminals and supporting meaningful remembrance.
These political steps are needed to stop perpetrators from rewriting
the narrative, so that justice can take root and pave the way to
rights-respecting societies. |
