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

extended to the victims, their families and friends, regardless of their ethnicity,” 623 but apparently
stopped short of acknowledging political responsibility for genocide committed by its
own armed forces. Again, the picture was mixed: While the RS government’s response to the
judgment went farther in condemning the crimes committed in Srebrenica than would have
been imaginable ten years earlier, it also took care to avoid language of unqualified acceptance
of responsibility, if only political.
In somewhat similar fashion, in late March 2010 the Serbian Parliament adopted an
unprecedented declaration “condemning in strongest terms the crime committed in July
1995 against Bosniak population of Srebrenica” and apologizing to the families of the victims.
Notably, however, the declaration avoided any reference to genocide. What was still a
landmark acknowledgment of the underlying facts was then further undermined by the parliament’s
“expectation that the highest authorities in other states in the territory of the former
Yugoslavia will in the same way condemn crimes committed against the Serbs, and apologize
and express condolences to the families of the Serb victims.” 624
To the extent that there has been movement in the direction of Serb acknowledgement
of the Srebrenica genocide, a question of special relevance to this study is whether or to what
degree the ICTY’s work has been a contributing factor (compared to, for example, the RS
Commission report released in 2004). Damir Arnaut, a senior legal advisor to the Bosniak
member of the BiH Presidency, is convinced that the ICTY’s finding in Krstić that Bosnian
Serbs committed genocide in Srebrenica had a significant impact in this regard. Arnaut concedes
that there are enduring indicators of denial, such as the opposition of Serb members of
parliament to a resolution that would declare July 11 a day of remembrance for the victims of
genocide in Srebrenica (the interview in which he expressed this view took place some eight
months before the aforementioned declaration by Serbia’s Parliament). 625 But Arnaut believes
that Krstić changed the dynamic between members of the ethnic groups who are represented
in Bosnia’s trifurcated national government. Whereas in 1998–1999 it was common to hear
Serbs deny that there was a genocide in Srebrenica, he notes, now “there is no denial that
genocide happened.” 626 On the level of daily interactions, Arnaut continued, “it helps that
there are judicial findings. … When you talk about other issues, this elephant isn’t in the
room” anymore. 627
Like Arnaut, journalist Ivan Lovrenović thinks that the Krstić judgment had a discernible
impact on the way that Serb politicians talked about Srebrenica. He attributes this to the
judgment’s reminder that the international community is aware of what happened and will
not allow the issue go away. And yet, Lovrenović continued, “that’s when [Serb politicians]
intensively started working on discovering victims on their side.” Whereas they had previously
been “completely quiet even about their own victims,” after Krstić they were trying “to equalize
[by saying] that Serbs were victims the same as others.” 628
96 TRUTH AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT