"Only We Committed Genocide? We Are not that Kind of "People: Failed Transitional Justice and Sociopolitical Reconciliation in Former Yugoslavia

Faruk Hadžić
Independent Researcher/Scholar

Abstract

In genocidal war crimes cases, failed transitional justice, ethnonational and socially defensive collective confutation, and generated victimization narratives lead societies into a "new state of conflict." These adverse processes influence the perspective of "positive peace," i.e., unlock the structural factors of "negative peace" and decrease state-building potentials in some former Yugoslavia countries. Consequently, such social and political circumstances prolong the suffering of victims (war survivors, detainees in concentration camps, raped women) and families of deceased and missing victims. Moreover, these methods contain non-violent social-psychological dimensions and are active mechanisms that constitute various social and political agencies. Consequently, such occurrences affect peaceful coexistence and integral assimilation into the EU of Western Balkan nations. Accordingly, raising social awareness and stricter legislation related to the dominant mainstream sociopolitical approach to denying internationally sentenced crimes against humanity and genocide is required. Moreover, the rational and pragmatic approach to collective defensive "victimization" and denial narratives (with periodical ideological-mythological elements) is vital. Additionally, the EU and USA's sincere objectives and support for "democratization, the rule of law and political ethics" in the Western Balkans are required and significant. Furthermore, regionally, how to make universal transitional justice a means of positive peace shift and Reconciliation is imperative. It is a fundamental open question that must achieve global implication and visibility after the lethal 1990s. Thirty years of disputable sociopolitical, legal, and human security progress in the Balkans demonstrate it. Keywords: former Yugoslavia, Crimes against humanity, Genocide denial, Ethnopolitics, Confutation & denial agency, Reconciliation

Presentation