Serge Brammertz, the Chief Prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, spoke for Dnevnik D.
“A lot has been done, but a lot still needs to be done,” Brammertz said at the beginning. Perpetrators like Mladić and Karadžić have been convicted, many victims have been buried, many are still being sought, and the denial of genocide daily insults the never-healed wound of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, Brammertz comes with the message “to celebrate the survivors,” saying that life must be celebrated and what has been lost must be acknowledged.
“A lot has been done, but I say, I will be very open about the international community’s obligation to fight against the celebration. We really cannot live in a region where people are convicted of the massacre of thousands of men, boys, and are heroes in their communities. We need a stronger response. Hate speech and denial of genocide must be punished as they are in other European countries. And a lot needs to be done,” said Serge Brammertz.
The chief prosecutor says that glorification and denial are present to an extent he could not have imagined, and that he was “more optimistic 15 years ago when there was no public speech about glorification, glorification, where political parties did not consider it an honor to have convicted criminals in their ranks”.
“You know, as a society and as a region, you cannot agree with the mistakes of the past, but how to move forward, how to seek and build the future – those irresponsible politicians, who do this every day, are really putting a burden on the shoulders of future generations. We see that the books in schools are different. Young generations are really getting the wrong picture of the responsibility of the past”, added Brammertz.
Denial, as the last stage of genocide, is dangerous, but also painful. Brammertz explains in an interview that the reaction of politicians in the region must be stronger, but also the reaction of the international community. Namely, the aspirations for Europe also carry the demand for respect for European values, he states, which are the rule of law, as one of the greatest European values, responsibility, and acceptance of the truth about past responsibilities.
On whether the Hague tribunal has finished its work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brammertz said: “161 indictees have been indicted so far. We have no open cases in The Hague. So our main activity is to provide assistance to national authorities. The work of the International Tribunal is only one chapter in this whole story. We have done our part, now it is up to the states to do theirs. You say that it takes a long time. Yes, that is true. We have hundreds of cases that have to go through trials, but we need to provide support to national courts now, mainly in your country. Next year in July our mandate ends. We hope that the mandate of the mechanism will be extended. We still have an important role to provide support to national courts. We still have 10 million documents in the court, in The Hague, and we have to continue to report to New York, sometimes to Brussels, on what is good and where improvements are needed.”
Brammertz went on to talk about reviewing the database, and evidence that was not used in The Hague, “because it concerns individuals at the middle and lower levels in terms of political-military importance.” He said his team meets regularly with local prosecutors to work on cases “to review the evidence, to prepare an investigation plan, whether any additional evidence is needed, to support the indictment. So it is an ad hoc initiative in relation to a specific case for which we have transferred thousands and thousands of pages to partners in the region.”
War crimes do not have a statute of limitations. Yet generations searching for their loved ones and waiting for justice die in that natural biological process, without receiving justice and truth. “Time doesn’t help,” said Brammertz, and continued:
“Witnesses die, and parents whose sons were killed die without knowing where their remains are – it really breaks the heart. We insist and call on all the governments of the region to put more emphasis on the search for the missing. There is always someone who knows something, who knows where these bodies are, and we hope, while we can understand that there is disagreement on the issue of criminal prosecution of war criminals, at least we hope that all governments will agree, that they will at least search for the missing – jointly, but “Maybe I’m just an optimist again, thinking it’s possible. Unfortunately, even the search for the missing is politicized.”
At the very end, the Chief Prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Serge Brammertz, said to the new generations, but also to all those who do not see and close their eyes to the truth:
“We always recommend to the new generations, unfortunately they are under the influence of political leaders, go to the website, go to the info centers, look at the transcripts, look at the witnesses, the survivors, look at the verdicts. There you will find that the reason why people were sentenced in The Hague is exactly the opposite of the fact that they are heroes. No one was convicted because they helped their community. They were convicted for violating the Geneva Conventions, because they ordered the execution of prisoners, because they ordered soldiers to use sexual violence as a weapon, because they destroyed churches, mosques, private homes, they destroyed, displaced people. These people are not heroes and everyone who wants to know the truth, look at the archives of the mechanism, look at the testimonies, transcripts, verdicts, so that you can better understand what happened in the past.”, Federalna writes.
