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

makes the point this way: “They weren’t just hit by a bus. Someone did terrible things many
times over.… People don’t expect perfect justice but they want some kind of justice.” 126 In this
chapter we explore the kind of justice Bosnians hoped to receive when the ICTY was established,
as well as their evolving expectations of justice from The Hague some seventeen years
after the Tribunal was created. For the most part, we defer until later chapters our assessment
of the degree to which their expectations have been met and the underlying reasons. 127 To a
limited extent, however, our discussion in this chapter reflects not only the goals that Bosnians
associate with ICTY success but also their views of how well the ICTY has achieved the goals
they consider important. In general, this follows from the way in which many expectations
were presented during interviews: Often, our Bosnian interlocutors implicitly conveyed their
views of what the ICTY should have achieved by commenting on how well it has achieved
those goals. With respect to one of the goals to which many attached great hope—the ICTY’s
ability to prevent further atrocities—this chapter provides a somewhat more extended discussion
of Bosnians’ perceptions of the ICTY’s record.
While this chapter identifies several distinct justifying aims of the ICTY that emerged
in interviews as important to Bosnians, these do not fall neatly into separate categories. For
example, as the discussion that follows makes clear, some Bosnians’ conception of reconciliation
as a byproduct of prosecution shades into others’ notion of acknowledgment as one of the
most important hoped-for consequences of ICTY verdicts. Some of the positions set forth in
this chapter could reasonably be cited to illustrate several different positions—that the ICTY
serves an expressive function or that it serves a preventive role, for instance. To the extent
possible, we have tried to capture and reflect speakers’ conceptions of the ICTY’s contributions
and/or unachieved goals in their own terms rather than in terms that are widely used
in academic literature.
Although we interviewed victims from all three major ethnic groups in Bosnia, the experiences
of Bosniak victims loom especially large in this chapter and the next because—as even
many Serbs we interviewed acknowledge128 —Bosniaks suffered the vast majority of atrocities
during the 1990s war and were especially supportive of the Security Council’s action in creating
the ICTY. 129 This is not to say that Bosniaks are the only citizens who believe the ICTY’s
work to be important. We interviewed individuals of all ethnicities in Bosnia who believe the
work of the ICTY to be important (if imperfectly realized), and this chapter reflects their views
as well as those of Bosniaks. (And as our discussion in Chapter IV makes clear, we also interviewed
individuals across ethnic lines who are highly critical of the Tribunal’s achievements.)
While significant, ethnicity is by no means the only meaningful difference among Bosnian
victims. As our analysis makes clear, a victim’s experience of justice is a function of his
or her individual personality and personal experiences. Also relevant, as this chapter and
others reflect, are differences in victims’ educational level. In general we found that highly
educated urban Bosnians are more likely than rural victims to value the symbolic importance
of the ICTY’s work—or at any rate, they were more likely to verbalize the importance of the
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