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More than a hundred participants, who discussed the transitional justice process from the point of view of victims, international and domestic justice institutions and human rights organizations, attended the forum entitled, “International Forum on Transitional Justice in post-Yugoslav Countries”.
Natasa Kandic, President of the Serbian Humanitarian Law Centre and one of the Forum organisers, said that NGOs and civil society organizations could help the processes relating to confronting the past, but those processes were “primarily the responsibility of government institutions”.
“It is time for domestic institutions to take the transitional processes over and the civil society organizations to have a supporting role only,” Kandic said.
Representatives of associations of victims and detainees from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina; Alija Behmen, Mayor of Sarajevo; Sadik Ahmetovic, Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and representatives of Justice Ministries of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia were among those who attended the Forum held in Sarajevo on June 27, 2011.
Mayor Behmen pointed out that “determining the truth and justice” was the only way for achieving reconciliation in the region.
“We must face the past. We need a commission that will help us build partnerships, because we must not live in lies. We must return dignity to victims and families of killed people,” Behmen said.
The Forum participants mentioned the importance of proposing strategies that would stimulate institutions and societies in the former Yugoslavia to assume responsibility for the establishment of justice for past war crimes.
The Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina pointed out that each government institution had a task to “work on reconciliation and the punishment of war crimes perpetrators every day”.
“We bear a heavy burden, because the Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina plays an important role as a service to judiciary. I would like to say that we are ready for the job. We are working and will continue to work in that field,” Ahmetovic said.
Representatives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague and many people from Serbia, Croatia and Kosovo were among the Sarajevo Forum participants too.
