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

Herzegovina that only serves to cause further pain and suffering in a society that has already
suffered so much.” 608 Then High Representative Paddy Ashdown said the report’s findings
were “so far from the truth as to be almost not worth dignifying with a response. It is tendentious,
preposterous, and inflammatory.” 609
The next two years brought a significant turnabout, however. During the 2003 anniversary
of the Srebrenica massacre, then RS Prime Minister Dragan Mikerević attended the
annual commemoration ceremony in Potoćari for the first time. 610 Mikerević also acknowledged
that the by-then well established crimes had to be addressed, although he apparently
did not use the word genocide: “These reports prove that there was a crime here. One needs
to learn from one’s mistakes, and there have been a lot of mistakes in our history.” 611
A mandate from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to conduct an investigation
to establish the full truth relating to the Srebrenica massacre led to the next milestone.
The commission established pursuant to the OHR mandate, which included one international
and one Bosniak member, issued its report (later supplemented) on June 11, 2004. 612 For the
first time, RS authorities themselves compiled data on almost 7,800 victims of the Srebrenica
massacre and identified 32 previously unknown mass grave sites. 613 The report also stated that
the perpetrators of the massacre “undertook measures to cover up the crime by moving the
bodies” to other sites. 614
Less than two weeks later, then RS President Dragan Čavić appeared on RS television.
In his extraordinary remarks, Čavić—a member of the party of Radovan Karadžić—said that
the report “undoubtedly establishes that in nine days of July 1995 atrocities were committed in
the area of Srebrenica.” Then, in words that Bosniaks quote to the present day, he continued:
“I have to say that these nine days of July of the Srebrenica tragedy represent a black page
in the history of the Serb people.” 615 The RS government itself issued an apology after the
commission issued its final report. 616 Even so, today Bosniaks often cite these events more
to illustrate the resilience of Serb denial than to celebrate a watershed in the road toward
acknowledgment. After quoting Čavić’s historic “black page in history” statement, our interlocutors
typically proceeded to note that Čavić lost his bid for re-election in 2006. 617
Another moment of truth came in February 2007, when the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) ruled that Bosnian Serbs committed genocide in Srebrenica. 618 The ICJ’s key
legal and factual conclusions relied heavily on the ICTY’s judgments, including in particular
in the Krstić case. 619
RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik’s first response to the judgment was to reject its
finding of genocide and attribute the Srebrenica killings to rogue elements of the Bosnian
Serb army. 620 Accordingly, he said, individuals had to be held accountable, not the institutions
or people of RS. 621 Two days after the ICJ rendered its judgment, the government of
Republika Srpska issued a statement “express[ing] its deepest regret for the crimes committed
against non-Serbs during the recent war in Bosnia and condemn[ing] all persons who
took part in these crimes.” 622 The government said it was “essential that a deepest apology be
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