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<\/a><\/p>\nAlen Curtic met his father for the first and only time when he was eight years old.<\/p>\n
He was taken to Kiseljak, the small town in central Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) where his father and extended family \u2013 all Croats \u2013 lived. He recalls seeing an ornamental knife on display in a shop window.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I was a boy, I said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s really nice \u2013 I\u2019d love to have that.\u2019 My uncle said, \u2018I\u2019ll get it for you if you learn how to cut a Turk\u2019s throat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtic was too young at the time to understand that the \u201cTurks\u201d were the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), whom Croat forces fought during the 1992-95 war.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat meeting wasn\u2019t a typical meeting between father and son. He and his family were trying to teach me how to hate other ethnicities, to be intolerant,\u201d said Curtic, now 21. \u201cAt that time, I didn\u2019t even know what it meant to belong to an ethnic group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three or four years later, he found a newspaper article that named his father as a member of a Bosnian Croat army unit which massacred 31 men, women and children in Stupni Do, a tiny village built into the steep mountains that surround the town of Vares, on October 23, 1993.<\/p>\n
His father, Ermin Curtic, received a five-and-a-half year prison sentence in 2011 from a local court, but the verdict was later quashed by a higher court. After a retrial in 2013, he received the same sentence again.<\/p>\n
Curtic has had no contact with his father since that first meeting because of a parental dispute about child support. His mother never wanted to talk about her ex-husband or about what happened during the war.<\/p>\n
When his father was indicted by the cantonal court in Sarajevo, it was featured on the television news and the other kids at his school in his hometown of Vares teased him incessantly. For a while, Curtic said, he was afraid that one of the victims\u2019 relatives would try to take revenge on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest wish is to move away from this town and go somewhere no one knows about this,\u201d Curtic told IWPR.<\/p>\n
Despite the pain and confusion caused by the situation, Curtic never attempted to deny what his father did.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be stupid to say it isn\u2019t true, because there is evidence. That\u2019s why I have to believe it; I cannot deny the facts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I\u2019m telling my story to release this pressure that\u2019s inside me, but also because I want to say that nationalism and dividing people into categories are not good for the future, it isn\u2019t good for young people,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should not hate each other. All this really did inspire me to be a better person and a better man. When I\u2019m a father, I\u2019m going to be a good role model for my kids and I\u2019m going to repair this legacy. I will prove that you can choose to be a better person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtic is something of a rarity in a country where, nearly 20 years after the war in Bosnia ended, denial is widespread and each ethnic group tends to adhere to a narrative that often ignores judicially established facts, especially when these implicate them.<\/p>\n
While Curtic\u2019s father stood trial at a local court in BiH, most of the higher-profile judgements have come from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1993, when the war still raging, the Hague tribunal was established with an official mandate of \u201cbringing justice to those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the former Yugoslavia since 1991, and thus contribute to the restoration and maintenance of peace in the region\u201d.<\/p>\n
The tribunal, however, has always been about more than formal justice. The ICTY\u2019s website sums up its wider aims by saying its judgements have \u201ccontributed to creating a historical record, combating denial and preventing attempts at revisionism and provided the basis for future transitional justice initiatives in the region\u201d.<\/p>\n
While intercommunal reconciliation is not explicitly mentioned in its mandate, ICTY officials have discussed it repeatedly over the years.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Prosecutor Serge Brammertz told the UN News Centre that \u201cwe are only fulfilling one part of this job, which at the end of the day has to lead to reconciliation\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a Tufts University interview, Brammertz noted that \u201creconciliation must come from within society and cannot be achieved only by justice or imposed from the outside\u201d.<\/p>\n
ICTY President Theodor Meron told the United Nations General Assembly in 2012 that \u201cthe remarkable achievements of the tribunal have contributed to bringing peace and reconciliation to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, forging a new international culture of accountability\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the ICTY completes its last few trials and hands over the final elements of its work to its successor, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, justice experts are paying close attention to the impact it will leave behind on the ground, particularly in BiH, which was the subject of the most trials and which endured some of the worst carnage.<\/p>\n
Have the facts established by the tribunal, then, made a difference in the places where the most gruesome crimes took place? Has the creation of a historical record helped to combat denial and promote reconciliation? Finally, should reconciliation ever have been cited as an aim in the first place?<\/p>\n
CONTESTED HISTORY Andricgrad rises up from the banks of the Drina River like a gleaming miniature Disneyland.<\/p>\n The pedestrian streets in this newly built city-within-a-city are made of polished, sand-coloured marble, with the stone facades on its main thoroughfare crafted in the style of the Ottoman Empire, which once ruled the eastern town of Visegrad and all of BiH.<\/p>\n There are gift shops, a bookstore, a cinema, a film school, a hotel, and two vast town squares \u2013 one of which has a replica of a famous Serbian Orthodox monastery in Kosovo. Clusters of locals gather at outdoor tables, drinking coffee and enjoying the afternoon sun.<\/p>\n In Andricgrad\u2019s main square sits a prominent statue of Ivo Andric, the Nobel prizewinning author to whom the complex is dedicated. His 1945 book The Bridge on the Drina tells the story of Visegrad when it was under Ottoman and later Austro-Hungarian rule. The intricately arched stone bridge referred to in the book\u2019s title was built at the end of the 16th century and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.<\/p>\n Above the curved top of the cinema is an elaborate mosaic depicting five men tugging on a rope, trying to loosen it from the grasp of other, invisible hands.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is symbolic of how Andricgrad was built,\u201d said Ljubomir Jelesijevic, its project manager.<\/p>\n The figure standing at the very front of the rope is Milorad Dodik, president of one of BiH\u2019s two entities, Republika Srpska (RS), and an outspoken Serb nationalist. His government financed the 20-million-euro project. Standing behind him is filmmaker Emir Kusturica, who will teach in Andricgrad\u2019s film school and stage a version of The Bridge on the Drina at the newly constructed opera house. His company has a 51 per cent stake in the Andricgrad project.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city is meant to be a time machine showing 500 years of history,\u201d Jelesijevic said enthusiastically. \u201cIt\u2019s educational, historical, artistic and touristic.\u201d<\/p>\n But more than 20 years after conflict ravaged the country, history itself remains a hotly contested topic. There are no references in this little city to the Bosnian war or the terror that engulfed Visegrad after Serb forces captured the town in May 1992.<\/p>\n Foreign tourists like the Koreans and Japanese who Jelesijevic says are beginning to arrive on tour buses would have no idea that Visegrad was anything other than a picturesque relic of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian eras.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s true,\u201d Jelesijevic mused. \u201cWe didn\u2019t include anything about the war because those wounds are quite fresh. The courts will decide the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n The truth about what happened in Visegrad has in fact been established in multiple judicial findings at both the ICTY in The Hague and at the State Court in Bosnia.<\/p>\n In the verdicts against two local Bosnian Serb men, cousins Milan and Sredoje Lukic, ICTY judges found that after the takeover of Visegrad, large numbers of non-Serbs were rounded up, beaten, raped and then forcibly expelled or killed.<\/p>\n Several witnesses testified that the historic bridge was used as an execution site from which bodies were tossed into the water below.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of those killed were simply thrown into the Drina River, where bodies could be seen floating,\u201d the judgement states, adding that one witness recalled pulling nearly 200 bodies out of the river between May and September 1992.<\/p>\n Judges found that on two separate occasions in June 1992, large groups of Bosniak men, women and children were herded into barricaded houses and burned alive. The sole survivor of one of these burnings likened the sounds coming from the other victims to \u201cthe screams of cats\u201d.<\/p>\n Milan Lukic was convicted of personally killing at least 132 people in Visegrad. He was found to have committed crimes of extermination, persecution, inhumane acts and cruel treatment, and sentenced to life in prison. His cousin Sredoje Lukic received a 30-year-sentence, reduced to 27 on appeal.<\/p>\n Andricgrad\u2019s freshly-scrubbed newness provides a somewhat jolting contrast to the town it was built in. Tucked in a valley surrounded by green mountains, Visegrad enjoys staggeringly beautiful scenery, but there is a general feeling of decay in the town itself. As in other parts of BiH, the unemployment rate is high.<\/p>\n According to pre-war 1991 census data, Visegrad had a population of 21,000 people, 63 per cent Muslim and 32 per cent Serb. Now, in a pattern common to other parts of Bosnia that saw mass wartime atrocities, Visegrad is almost entirely Serb, except for a few Bosniaks who have returned to surrounding villages.<\/p>\n Jelesijevic said a lawsuit had been filed by a Bosniak family claiming that land on which Andricgrad had been built actually belonged to them, but he argued that there was no merit to the case.<\/p>\n \u201cThe property was sold to the municipality in the 1970s, and now the family wants it back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Jelesijevic denied that Andricgrad was an attempt to whitewash history and impose a completely Serb narrative, but said the issue of what happened in the war \u201cshould be left for future generations\u201d to deal with.<\/p>\n GENOCIDE ISSUE DIVIDES COMMUNITIES The local government in Visegrad has taken an aggressive stance on attempts to memorialise the past. In January, police in riot gear arrived at the town cemetery to scratch the word \u201cgenocide\u201d off a memorial erected by victims\u2019 groups there. The groups returned and rewrote \u201cgenocide\u201d in lipstick and pen.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are trying to hide the truth and rewrite history,\u201d said Hida Kasapovic, the head of one of the victims associations. She has vowed to have the word \u201cgenocide\u201d etched into all the tombstones of Bosniak victims whose bodies were recovered from mass graves after the war.<\/p>\n Kasapovic, along with several other victims IWPR spoke to, insisted that what happened to them was genocide and that no other term could adequately describe it.<\/p>\n Serbs counter that genocide charges were never included in the indictments against the Lukic cousins, much less established by the tribunal.<\/p>\n Events in Visegrad were originally included in a count of genocide against wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, relating to several municipalities and separate from the count of genocide in Srebrenica. But Visegrad and other municipalities were later removed from this count in an effort to speed up the trial.<\/p>\n Because genocide charges relating to Visegrad were dropped from the allegations against Karadzic and were not part of the Lukic indictment, events in the town will never be categorised as genocide at the ICTY.<\/p>\n Tribunal prosecutors have not yet succeeded in establishing that genocide took place in any municipality except for Srebrenica, the site of the July 1995 massacre that left more than 7,000 Bosniaks dead. The crime of genocide in Srebrenica was established for the first time at the tribunal in 2001, with the judgement against wartime Bosnian Serb army general Radislav Krstic. The genocide finding has been upheld in other trials since then.<\/p>\n The trials of Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic will be the last opportunities for prosecutors to secure a genocide conviction for municipalities outside Srebrenica.<\/p>\n The word \u201cgenocide\u201d has huge emotional and historical weight for victims. At the ICTY, however, it is a strictly legal category that specifically defines \u201cthe intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such\u201d. For that reason, it is incredibly difficult to prove in court.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a black-and-white thing. Reasonable people can disagree about whether a particular set of events is properly characterised as genocide or not,\u201d said Marko Prelec, executive director of the Balkans Policy Research Group.<\/p>\n Prelec, who has worked in the prosecutor\u2019s offices at both the ICTY and the State Court of BiH, says the fixation on genocide by both survivors and politicians \u2013 even when a slew of other crimes have been established, as they were in Visegrad \u2013 creates a situation where \u201cif it doesn\u2019t have the seal of approval of genocide from an international body, then in some way it didn\u2019t happen\u201d.<\/p>\n Some experts say that while the ICTY\u2019s establishment of genocide in Srebrenica was a major milestone in legal terms and for the victims, it has led to confusion and resentment among survivors of other acts of mass violence in BiH.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the court finds that your group was a victim of genocide, that\u2019s [seen as] far more significant than the court saying that your group was a victim of crimes against humanity. I think it\u2019s dangerous. It can create rivalry between victims,\u201d said Janine Clark, a lecturer in international politics and ethnic conflict at the University of Sheffield who will soon release a book about the ICTY\u2019s impact on reconciliation.<\/p>\n The victims in Visegrad were subjected to unthinkable violence, but the real history of what happened \u201cgets submerged under this genocide debate\u201d, said Rachel Kerr, a senior lecturer at King\u2019s College in London.<\/p>\n It is a debate that is unlikely to go away any time soon.<\/p>\n \u201cThe essence of the \u2018G word\u2019 \u2013 its attraction, its danger, its efficacy \u2013 is that if you take it away, so many victims feel like you\u2019re taking away their right to be who they are,\u201d said Christian Nielsen, a historian at Aarhus University in Denmark who has testified as an expert witness in several ICTY trials.<\/p>\n In Visegrad, Serbs interviewed by IWPR prickled at the use of terminology like \u201cgenocide\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Visegrad, we didn\u2019t commit crimes \u2013 we just defended ourselves,\u201d said Bojana Sikiras, a 27-year-old school counselor. Her family moved to the town after the war ended, and their home in Vogosca, a suburb of Sarajevo, became part of the Federation, the larger, mainly Bosniak- and Croat-populated entity in BiH. However, she finds terms like \u201cextermination\u201d, \u201cmass murder\u201d and \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d just as unacceptable. \u201cBecause those things didn\u2019t happen,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we really killed them all, how is it even possible that five or six buses [full of Bosniaks] are coming for the commemorations?\u201d<\/p>\n The current mayor of Visegrad is a member of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), which was headed by Karadzic during the war. Today, the SDS is pitted against Dodik\u2019s party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). The two parties have similar nationalist platforms.<\/p>\n The deputy mayor, Milan Nikolic, told IWPR that the municipal authorities no longer support the Andricgrad project because they have not received financial reports or information about the ownership structure, despite numerous requests.<\/p>\n Asked about the current demographic makeup of Visegrad compared with the pre-war situation, Nikolic bristled.<\/p>\n \u201cI know why you’re here. You really want to reopen the issue of removing the word \u2018genocide\u2019. We\u2019re sick of that story. It was the media that constructed the whole campaign in the first place. I do not wish to comment on that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Nikolic said that according to the 2013 census, the full results of which have not yet been released, there are actually 5,000 Bosniaks registered as resident in Visegrad.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that they only apply for residence here in order to reclaim their property, whereas in fact they live elsewhere, is not the municipality\u2019s problem. It\u2019s their personal choice,\u201d Nikolic said.<\/p>\n He declined to comment further on what happened in Visegrad in 1992. Asked whether Andricgrad would encourage tourism, he again declined to comment. He added that he and other officials were \u201csick and tired of the media which can constantly generate negative publicity\u201d about the municipality.<\/p>\n RECONCILIATION A DISTANT PROSPECT IN FOCA In other parts of Bosnia where atrocities occurred, landmark legal decisions have had a questionable effect on attitudes and community relations.<\/p>\n In 2001, rape as a crime against humanity was defined under international law for the first time, when the ICTY convicted three Bosnian Serb army soldiers \u2013 Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic \u2013 of raping and sexually enslaving women and girls in Foca, after this eastern town was taken over by Serb forces in 1992.<\/p>\n The judgement was not only a legal breakthrough, but also brought attention to the horror suffered by women in war. The case allowed victims to tell their stories in court for the first time, with face and voice distortion to protect their identities.<\/p>\n \u201cOf the women and girls so detained, one was a child of only 12 years at the time. She has not been heard of since she was sold by one of the accused,\u201d Judge Florence Mumba said when she read out the verdict in February 2001. \u201cThe women and girls were either lent or \u2018rented out\u2019 to other soldiers for the sole purpose of being ravaged and abused. Some of the women and girls were kept in servitude for months on end.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides detailing the systematic rape and enslavement of women, the judgement also found that \u201cas a consequence of the concerted effect of the attack upon the civilian population of Foca and surrounding municipalities, all traces of Muslim presence in the area were effectively wiped out. Muslim civilians, but for a handful, had been one way or another expelled from the region.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, it is difficult to gauge what – if any – impact the judgement has had on the town itself, especially since two of the three convicted perpetrators have already been released from prison.<\/p>\n When IWPR visited the town recently, a main road featured a red-and-white banner celebrating the Foca Brigade and the \u201cliberation\u201d of the town in April 1992, when Bosnian Serb forces took over.<\/p>\n While the town\u2019s former mayor Zdravko Krsmanovic was praised for his efforts to promote reconciliation between Serbs and Bosniaks, he was replaced in 2012 by Radisav Masic, who ran on a more nationalist platform for a SDS\/SNSD coalition, with Dodik\u2019s support.<\/p>\n As in Visegrad, the few Bosniaks who have come back to the area live not in the town itself, but in surrounding villages. All of Foca\u2019s mosques were destroyed during the conflict, including the Aladza mosque, dating from 1551. Some people, mainly elderly, come to pray on Fridays at a mosque that was subsequently rebuilt.<\/p>\n The Partizan Sports Hall \u2013 the location of one of the \u201crape camps\u201d \u2013 was renovated after the war and is now a table tennis school. Ten years ago, when victims tried to place a memorial plaque there, TV cameras captured local Serb women screaming at them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey must have had such a great time that they came back for more,\u201d onlookers shouted.<\/p>\n Today there is nothing to indicate what happened at the Partizan hall in 1992.<\/p>\n Veljko Lasica, an 87-year-old Bosnian Serb army veteran who now lives in Visegrad, said he resided in Foca for a time and followed wartime events there.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t deny that sporadic rapes took place, but not rape camps. It wasn\u2019t organised. I would have heard about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What about the judgements in The Hague that established otherwise?<\/p>\n \u201cThe Hague was tricked by false testimony. Those women were lying,\u201d Lasica said.<\/p>\n IWPR approached numerous people in Foca\u2019s leafy town centre for their views on the tribunal and the legacy of war in their town. None agreed to be interviewed except for Sonja Pavlovic, 35, who grew up in Foca and now works for the municipality. She does not deny that rape camps existed here.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the war, I was young, and I didn\u2019t realise what was going on in terms of the rape cases. The fact is, rape and crimes did happen on all sides. I\u2019m saying that personally as a woman, not as a Serb,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Pavlovic said that in general, people in Foca were \u201ccompletely unsatisfied\u201d with the tribunal, and that it had not contributed to reconciliation at all.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone has their own story. Of course Serbs will say Muslims are the worst, and vice versa,\u201d she said, noting that there was still virtually no interaction between Serbs and Bosniak returnees.<\/p>\n But she does not deny what happened here during the war, nor does she reject the tribunal\u2019s judgements.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot explain the denial. I don\u2019t see the point. The fact is, we had a war, and it was a difficult period. We cannot forget, but we should move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n GRASSROOTS RECONCILIATION NEEDED In some areas, communities live alongside each other in uneasy coexistence. The village of Stupni Do lies wedged into the side of a mountain in central Bosnia. A few Croat villages sit further up the hillside, while below is the town of Vares, which is also Croat-majority now.<\/p>\n Stupni Do has always been a Bosniak hamlet, and even before the war it consisted of only about 50 houses, according to Mujcin Likic, 59, a lifelong resident.<\/p>\n In the early morning hours of October 23, 1993, the village was attacked by Bosnian Croat forces. Everyone who did not flee was forced out of their homes, robbed of valuables and \u2013 in the case of several women \u2013 sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n After that, most of the village was burned to the ground. At least 31 civilians were killed that day, including five children and two elderly women.<\/p>\n In 2005, Ivica Rajic, a commander in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), pleaded guilty at the ICTY to wilful killing, appropriation of property and extensive destruction not justified by military necessity.<\/p>\n Rajic offered his apologies to the victims\u2019 families but maintained that he did not order the attack on Stupni Do. Since the attack was carried out by \u201cindividuals and groups to which I was superior\u201d, he told judges, \u201cthat is why I am held accountable\u201d.<\/p>\n In their sentencing decision \u2013 which resulted in a 12-year prison term \u2013 the bench concluded that Rajic\u2019s guilty plea \u201chelped to establish the truth surrounding the crimes committed in Stupni Do and Vares. This may contribute to the reconciliation of the peoples of the former [Yugoslavia] and to the restoration of a lasting peace in the region\u201d.<\/p>\n However, residents of Stupni Do scoff at the notion that the court\u2019s findings might aid reconciliation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s made no difference,\u201d said Likic, who survived the massacre and later returned to the village, which was rebuilt after the war with international assistance. \u201cHis apology made no difference. It was a tactical play to get less prison time. We don\u2019t have a willingness from the other side to say what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Likic\u2019s friend Saban Beganogic pointed up the mountainside towards a few Croat houses and said, \u201cOn the day when we have our commemoration, [they] have a celebration.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Croats in Vares, a dilapidated town that was once a vibrant mining centre, have a more positive view of community relations than their neighbours in Stupni Do.<\/p>\n Sitting with friends in a small caf\u00e9, Sasa Sormaz, 45, said, \u201cWe don\u2019t look at who is who any more. Vares was always multiethnic. What happened [in the war] was political.\u201d<\/p>\n He acknowledged that Croats celebrated the day Vares was taken back from Bosnian government forces, but said this event was usually held in early November, well after the annual Stupni Do commemoration on October 23.<\/p>\n At the same time, Sormaz acknowledged that Bosniak and Croat children living in the area are still educated separately and that there are sporadic outbreaks of nationalist fever, especially during football matches.<\/p>\n Sormaz, who was an HVO soldier during the war, claims to have saved three or four Bosniak women who fled from Stupni Do during the massacre. He does not deny the crimes committed by Croats and says he sympathises with the victims in a \u201chuman\u201d way.<\/p>\n \u201cI think many people are aware that this happened and no one wants to forget the victims, but I think it\u2019s possible to reconcile. There is willingness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n However, according to Sormaz, this is not something the Hague tribunal can assist with.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tribunal is a political institution that hasn\u2019t contributed to reconciliation. This needs to happen on a grassroots level. What\u2019s important is that there is peace and people aren\u2019t killing each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\nSikiras said that most people did not have a problem with memorials being built, just with the use of the word \u201cgenocide\u201d.<\/p>\n
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