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

Sali-Teržić believes that justice is needed for reconciliation, and continues: “If you just
push it under the carpet it will grow and be a real problem.” 198
E. The Truth
People can always say it didn’t happen but now there are documents. 199
We still had the hope that establishing this court will help to reveal the truth so that justice
will be reached. 200
Apart from “justice for its own sake,” the theme that emerged most often as Bosnians described
what they consider important about the Tribunal’s work is that it can establish “the truth.”
At the broadest level, Bosniaks attach considerable value to the Tribunal’s ability to establish
through the rigors of an impartial judicial process the fundamental facts of what was done to
them, who was responsible, and the nature of the crimes committed.
While the rest of this section focuses on the broader truth that many count on the ICTY
to establish, survivors often place special importance on a more personal truth. Those who
have not yet learned the fate of loved ones hope that the work of the ICTY (and, now, of the
Bosnian War Crimes Chamber) can help answer questions that consume them: What happened
to their sons, husbands, brothers, parents? Where are their relatives’ bodies buried? For
some, the ICTY holds the promise of answering a fundamentally different but also haunting
question: Why did their lifelong neighbors turn against them, hunting them down like animals?
And for victims who testify before the ICTY, its trials can offer the “chance to tell their
personal history and to have it officially recognized.” 201
F. “The Hague Has Made It Harder To Deny
Abuses” 202
The most salient quality of prevailing Serb responses to massive and systemic atrocities committed
by Serbs against other ethnic groups has been denial or distortion of the truth about
past crimes: 203 They argue that what Serbs did was a “gesture of revenge” 204 for what Muslims
had already done to Serbs, and that it takes at least “two sides to fight.” 205
In the Justice Initiative’s 2008 report on the ICTY’s impact in Serbia, we noted that one
of the foremost reasons cited by the Serbians citizens who support the ICTY on principled
rather than pragmatic grounds is that they hope the Tribunal’s judgments can help dispel their
society’s pervasive denial of the nature and extent of wartime offenses committed by Serbs and
42 VICTIMS’ JUSTICE