yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 5
legal standards. There is no mechanism that obliges the government
to disclose that material to the wider public.
The West’s approach to transitional justice in the territories of
the former Yugoslavia has been flawed. It supports initiatives that
deal with justice exclusively from the perspective of victims, and
does not pay enough attention to presenting a narrative that explains
not only what happened, but also who was responsible for it. Dialogic
truth: Public hearings, inherent to all truth commissions and
included in the regional program for the region, 541 imply that victims
must tell stories. After fifteen years of icty work, this kind of activity
is surely superfluous: war crimes researchers agree that victims
are tired of telling their stories over and over again without any visible
results. Dialogic truth should be attained through interaction and
it precedes restorative truth. Republika Srpska was built on genocide
and no dialogue can smooth over that fact.
For many victims, the truth is even more important than justice
and punishment. Offering Serbian society a regional dialogue before
it has confronted its own past could lead to “dissolutive” truth rather
than to dialogic truth. Therefore, the regional approach may be yet
another step toward boosting the forces that deny and relativize the
fact that Serbia waged four wars in the 1990s.
FULL NORMALIZATION AND LASTING PEACE IN THE REGION
ARE CONDITIONAL ON POLITICAL AND PUBLIC RECOGNITION
OF THE TRUE NATURE OF THE CAUSES OF THE CONFLICT
Clearly identifying causes and responsibilities is essential if Serbia
is to recognize the consequences of its imperial ambitions. The
political and moral recovery of Serbia cannot be achieved without
international assistance. Serbia must become a member both of nato
541 The existing effort for reconciliation of the region is being supported by
the International Organization for Transitional Justice through three local
organizations . They have not achieved progress mostly because their concept of
working primarily from the victims’ angle has not been widely accepted .