Intent and Denial

Intent and Denial

Dr Edina Bećirević, University of Sarajevo

"...It is because ICTY trials give abundance of evidence that Serbian and Bosnian Serb leadership had the intent to destroy Bosnian Muslims as a group long before Srebrenica on the whole territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And now, in conversation with those who deny it I use that evidence and it is hard for them to battle that. So, the way to battle the denial and those in academia who ‘innocently’ deny, claiming that genocide intent is difficult to prove, is to actually quote them what the perpetrators themselves were planning and openly talking among themselves long before 1995. Perpetrator-based research is the best strategy to counter genocide denial. One only needs to research the archive of the Hague Tribunal or the State Court and read the documents whose authenticity even lawyers of the perpetrators do not deny. For example, on the May 12th 1992 session, Momčilo Krajišnik, the president of the so called Parliament of the Bosnian Serbs, read the six Serbian strategic goals. One of the goals is to physically separate the Serbs from other people in Bosnia..."

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Denial and Blocked Societies

Dr Daniel Feierstein, Director of the Genocide Studies Centre in Argentina

"...I used to say that this kind of process of remembrance can only think about what the perpetrators did with the bodies of the victims. That’s a real danger, because in that process of memorialisation one tends to forget who the victims were. So I think it is very important in any post-genocidal society to try to recover who the victims were, not only what the perpetrators did to the victims, but mainly who the victims were. How did they used to live? What were the ways of their culture? What did they do? So (it is important to) try to recover this identity that was subjected to killing and persecution, not only the bodies, but to try to recover the identity. I think that’s a fundamental step to try to confront the objectives of the perpetrators, not to make an abstract representation of the horror, the killings, the mass graves, the torture and rape, but to try to go beyond horror and to recover the identity of the victims, who they were. And that’s fundamental to understand and to reopen the possibility to think about who we are.

This is a problem. Of course, we are plural in our identity, so it is true that there were different identities in the former Yugoslavia and that there was a project during forty years trying to create one identity from these different identities. One plural identity. And it was quite successful in some parts of the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was less successful in other parts where nationalism was always important. The project in the 90s was clearly to destroy this plurality and to create these new republics with different nationalisms. I think that reaffirming these differences, the impossibility to live together and the essential differences among different groups, is a way to reaffirm the objectives of the perpetrators.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was the most pluricultural part, not only of the former Yugoslavia, but even one of the most pluricultural identities in the whole Europe. So it was quite interesting. And that’s why Bosnia was the focus of the killings and the focus of the genocide..."

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Revision of History and Denial

Dr Branka Prpa, Historian

"...Albert Camus wrote in his "Rebel" that propaganda and torture unite people in forced complicity. “The triumph of the man who kills or tortures is marred by only one shadow: he is unable to feel that he is innocent. Thus, he must create guilt in his victim so that … when the concept of innocence disappears from the mind of the innocent victim himself, the value of power establishes a definitive rule over a world in despair.” But all this, as Camus claims, occurs only in a world without direction. And he wrote that half a century ago, after World War II. How could it happen again today? How is Srebrenica possible? How is the concerted abolition of 20th century crimes possible? How is forced complicity possible?

Every historian must give a true account of what happened in the past. We historians must do our duty, and our will should be universalized as the good will of Man. Everyone, after all, can live according to the ethical and moral standards of what he should be and how he should act. "We are," in the words of Agnes Heller, "confined to a conjunction with other living beings with whom we share our lives. Indeed, the well of our past is very deep, and so is our responsibility. There is a desire that cannot be revoked by other desires, to participate in the responsibility of our community. We can live a dignified life. Why not try." This is the final sentence in "The Theory of History", but it must also be a final sentence not only for the historian, but for every human being as well, because it profoundly establishes the meaning of our historical existence..."

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