Description
The large-scale atrocities committed in Prijedor municipality (Bosnia-Herzegovina) in 1992 have featured prominently in the ICTY’s development - from its establishment, its first trial (Dusko Tadic) to its final verdict (Ratko Mladic). As a result, it produced a lasting historical record of crimes committed in Prijedor and significantly contributed to the shrinking of the space for their denial, even if it did not qualify them as genocide. This presentation addresses civil society activities aimed towards facing the past and memorialisation in Prijedor and the question of how the ICTY has influenced the bottom-up mobilisation of survivors and returnees for the right to remember in an unfavourable environment. Inspired by previous work on the ICTY’s influence on democratisation (Nettelfield 2010; Rangelov/Teitel 2011), and by focusing on events in 2012, the 20th anniversary of genocide in Prijedor, I analyse how the court has influenced the mobilisation of activists locally and abroad and how they sought to influence its work. To address this bi-directionality, I first consider how two important cases then appearing in front of the ICTY (Karadzic and Mladic, both indicted for genocide in Prijedor and other municipalities) encouraged predominantly non-Serb protests sparked against local Serb-dominated authorities, and gave legitimacy to the activists’ decision to use the word ‘genocide’ in public commemorations. Second, I address how concentration camp survivors sought to influence the Tribunal’s work by filing an amicus request following a Trial Chamber decision to drop the count under which Karadzic was indicted for genocide in Prijedor and other Bosnian municipalities.
