That Someone Guilty Be Punished - International Center for ...

there was such a silence ... that you can hear. It’s a horrible silence. And it lasted for [a]
long [time]…. And for me it was the most important moment of the day. Then we had
a lunch break, and you could see the change. Now the people …are leaving the room,
looking down, some were commenting, “You know, we really didn’t know this, it is a
horrible crime.”
Todorović thought that many would not return after the lunch break but they did, and
everyone stayed until the end of the program. Todorović said, “I really think that they left a
bit different.” 676 Describing this same program, Nerma Jelačić said, “people were genuinely
shocked.” 677
Todorović shared another perception of the dynamics at play during programs like
the one described above. In his view, many of the “ordinary people” who were not involved
in committing war crimes had a chance “to make a distance” from those who did. Todorović
recognized that the premise of their reaction—that participants believe that what they heard
in the ICTY program “has nothing to do with me”—may itself seem to be a form of denial.
But he noted that, if you insist that all Serbs are guilty, “you don’t give them a chance to
change. And if you push a man to the wall, what can he do but say ‘yes, yes, I am the same,
so what?’” 678 Beyond their potential impact in advancing acknowledgment of crimes and condemning
them, these programs, Todorović believes, can help people understand that people
from their communities “weren’t convicted because they were Bosniak, Serb, or Croat but
because they committed crimes.” 679
While the programs described above suggest the potential impact of effective outreach
efforts, it would be misleading to suggest that an occasional conference can fundamentally
change deeply entrenched attitudes. Describing the seemingly transformative Bridging the
Gap programs, Jelačić said, “You can genuinely plant that seed, and then you need to go back
and water it.” 680 This is not to say the follow up work has to be done by the ICTY, but it has
to be done.
Refik Hodžić, who played a central role in designing the Bridging the Gap project, was
(once again) the Tribunal’s liaison officer in Sarajevo at the time of our July 2009 interviews.
When we spoke with Hodžić then, he expressed concern about the project’s long-term impact.
The day before we spoke, a nationalist group had disrupted the annual commemoration of
the Srebrenica massacre, “chanting insults” against the Muslim survivors. 681 Like many with
whom we spoke, this came as yet another alarming marker of Bosnia’s increasingly heated
political climate. And in this setting, it was hard to be optimistic about the ICTY’s ability to
foster change. With limited resources—the ICTY has only one outreach officer in all of Bosnia—the
ICTY is vastly outmatched when it comes to creating a compelling narrative. People
living in the communities where Bridging the Gap programs have been convened “are exposed
to other rhetoric” on a daily basis. 682
104 TRUTH AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT