Interview with Branko Todorovic: Judicial reform is not complete

Branko Todorovic, President of Republika Srpska branch of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, speaks to Justice Report about judicial reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina and about putting war-crimes indictees on trial. He says Bosnian society has still not confronted the past, and that judicial reform has not been successful.

Q: What has Bosnian society achieved in terms of transitional justice since the war?

A: Bosnia and Herzegovina has started the process of facing the truth, of rebuilding confidence, of damage repair and of establishing the rule of law by punishing war criminals and eliminating ideologies that led to the war. If we look at this society, which is characterized by ethnic division, religious mistrust, frustration and general dissatisfaction, we see that transitional justice has partially been initiated in those segments where NGOs and civil society have been strong. This is not enough. Many things have not even started. This is mainly due to the fact that this society is governed by political elites that participated in and led the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They do not want any significant change to happen.

Q: What needs to be done in order to kick-start the process of facing the past?

A: I think that there needs to be a letting go, a stepping back and a change in ideology. We should not press the ideologies that led Bosnia and Herzegovina to tragic division and suffering. Institutions at the highest level, including the state and Entity parliaments, and local institutions must condemn war crimes. However, the question arises as to how they are going to do that, bearing in mind that the wartime actors and carriers of those ideas work in those institutions. The rhetoric has not changed.

The National Assembly of Republika Srpska and the Federation Parliament have not discussed or declared themselves regarding these crimes, but, at the same time, they have thought it important to discuss Kosovo. The rhetoric that generated war crimes has not been defeated and now it is taking a new shape. We still justify those crimes and I think that we are taking a wrong direction.

Q: To what extent can this society be satisfied with its achievements related to putting war-crimes indictees on trial?

A: Up to 2001 not one war-crimes indictee was tried in the RS and there were about one hundred second-instance verdicts in the Federation. We expected judicial reform to yield certain changes. Unfortunately, judicial reform should not have been considered as a job that had to be completed in a year or two. Judicial reform should have been treated as a process. The completed reform has not produced the expected results, and this particularly refers to the RS, where there are courts that have not tried any war-crimes indictees, such as the courts in Bijeljina, Doboj and Eastern Sarajevo. This goes to show that the judicial institutions have embedded themselves in a political pattern according to which war crimes are a relative term. As a result, many war criminals are still at large, victims are dissatisfied and unhappy and we have not managed to secure justice.

The process of trying war criminals is not moving as fast as we expected. Civil society can point to this fact, as well as the media, but I think that the issue should be raised by the Bosnian Council of Ministers. It should also initiate the strengthening of the State Court and its Prosecution. I cannot understand why we need foreign donations in order to have the local institutions do their work. If they had any pride at all – the people who love this country – they would not let the State Court, as the most important institution, operate on foreign donations. Bosnian citizens are poor, but the institutions are not. During the first three months of this year collected taxes were KM 300 million (around 150 million Euro) higher than planned.

Q: Why do you consider that judicial reform has not been successful?

A: It should continue. Only ten per cent of the work has been done. The international community should complete the work, in cooperation with local experts. The international community made a major mistake because it did not pre-mediate the reform. It had the mandate and the authority, but it produced something like “personal solutions for certain positions”. These were not systematic or long-term solutions, and they were not implemented with the aim of making the judiciary more functional or more responsible. There is no system for punishing people who do not do their job in the proper manner, no system for dismissing them. We have a system that suits those who are inside the system.

Q: Is the local public sufficiently informed about war-crimes trials?

A: I do not think it is. The media present the war-crimes issue from apolitical, ethnic and other standpoints. They simply want to distribute false information to the public and readers, rather then provide them with correct information. The public TV stations completely ignore the war-crimes trials conducted before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Information is often very brief and superficial and we never know for sure why someone is being tried before the Court.

Q: We often point to violations of human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What do you see as the biggest problems we are facing now?

A: Ethnic and religious discrimination, which is done systematically, is the most frequent form of human-rights violation. A short time ago we conducted research and we found that the constitutional amendments related to the equal right to employment, as per the census conducted in 1991, are not being implemented in the municipalities in Bosnia. The amendments are simply not respected. There are almost no public corporations steering board members or parliamentary working group members in Sarajevo, Tuzla, or Banja Luka who belong to minority ethnic groups.

I think this is a result of a tacit political agreement, according to which each ethnic group controls its area. Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in Banja Luka have almost no chance at all of getting employment and I think that the Bosnian Serbs who live in Sarajevo and Mostar face the same problem. It is not true that there are not enough candidates belonging to other ethnic groups, because there are members of those groups in the municipalities, bureaus etc. What we have here is a political message saying: “You should not be here!” In reality, the Entities are working on long-term ethnic cleansing. The failure to employ those people is one part of the ethnic-cleansing mosaic.

Q: Stojan Zupljanin was arrested a short time ago. Do you think that the three remaining ICTY fugitives will be arrested as well?

A: Zupljanin’s arrest came as a result of a process that is underway in the region and in Serbia. This is an indication that politics is superior to law. This is some kind of political bargain. I would say that the remaining fugitives – Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and Goran Hadzic – might be arrested as a result of political agreement. Those persons should be arrested. Otherwise, one nation will continue to suffer the consequences of an individual’s responsibility.

Erna Mackic and Merima Husejnovic are BIRN – Justice Report journalists. Justice Report is BIRN weekly online publication.