Local Justice: Digitising Detainees’ Personal Records
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In 2009 the Association of Detainees of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the support from the UNDP started creating a database of victims who were subjected to torture in detention camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They also worked in strengthening local and cantonal associations of detainees through their networking and mutual support in the implementation of this task.
Up to now, about 10 percent of the total number of records kept at the Detainees’ Association archives have been digitised.
The Project was presented to members of the Association of Detainees from the Zenica-Doboj Canton, as well as local prosecution and police staff, which may find the unified database very helpful in their future war crimes investigations.
Samir Pojskic, President of the Association of Detainees in Zenica, explained that, among other things, the detainees’ records contained basic identification data, information about the period prior to detention, how their human rights were violated, the names of perpetrators and other data pertaining to the detention period.
“Our detainees were held in more than 100 detention camps. Our archives contain awful and startling testimonies. We therefore consider that the digitisation project offers a possibility for scientific and research work that will contribute to solving their status institutionally in an adequate way bearing in mind their suffering, processing of crimes and putting an end to data manipulation,” Pjskic said.
Murat Tahirovic, President of the Association, said that the Hague Tribunal had extensively used the Association’s archives, while local judicial institutions did utilised them to a lesser extent. He said that, in 90 percent of the cases the information contained in the archives contributed to proving numerous war crimes. Nevertheless, Tahirovic says that the Association of Detainees has still not received support from local authorities.
“There is still no law on torture victims, which confirms my previous statement. The Association of Detainees lacks the necessary material resources, but we are trying to prevent the deterioration of the archives, because remembrance is important to victims,” Tahirovic said.
In 2009 and 2010 UNDP supported the design of a database of detention camps torture victims as part of its project on transitional justice.
