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Governments Not Interested to Document Facts about War Crimes
At the meeting of human rights NGOs from the region, discussing the instruments and initiatives to document and present facts about war crimes in former Yugoslavia, Natasa Kandic expressed her concerns over the fact that the governments of the newly independent states are not prepared to deal with that issue.
In her words, the experiences from transition and post-conflict societies show that Governments don’t take systemic approach to collecting and documenting facts about war crimes, but also that national courts can’t try all suspected perpetrators.
- In our specific case, we believe that neither the Hague Tribunal nor Serbian courts will manage to take to justice one tenth of the total number of war crimes suspects, says Kandic.
Kandic emphasized the importance of the creation of an official regional-level body or commission that will work to determine that facts, i.e. to collect the data, names and documents about committed crimes. Such body should gather individual bodies of committees backed by their respective states.
- An umbrella regional body should have the institutional support from the UN, so that nobody could question its legitimacy. The body should have access to the complete files and records kept by ICTY, which is the key source of information on war crimes in these parts, explains Kandic.
Biljana Kovačević - Vučo from Human Rights Lawyers Committee – YUCOM agreed with the initiative, but noted that it would be difficult to establish individual national bodies, having in mind that “political elites demonize the nongovernmental organizations”, since they don’t deal with war crimes in a similar way as NGOs do.
Vehid Šehić from the Tuzla Citizens’ Forum believes, on the basis of his organization’s experiences, that such alternative commissions and bodies should be established as soon as possibly, having in mind that the passage of time makes it increasingly difficult to collect the data and locate the victims and witnesses.
- Such committees should be set up as soon as possible, the period they will cover should be determined, together with their mandate and competences. The truth may be in Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo, but UN support is needed, since it is almost certain that NGOs won’t get much support from the governments, says Šehić.
About 40 representatives of NGO sector and human rights organizations from Central Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, B&H, Montenegro and Macedonia, participated in the forum.
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