“Oslobođenje”, 16.12.2018.
By: EDIN SALČINOVIĆ
On Human Rights Day (10 December), the Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo/Belgrade presented the Peacebuilding Strategy in Belgrade.
Social Reconciliation. Dealing with the Past. Culture of memory. Peacebuilding. These phrases of false promises keep jingling through public speech, eliciting a feeling of distrust in reconciliation narratives. The social pessimism, caused by various factors, has seeped into narratives about building a lasting peace, in a vacuum of distrust where activists working on this process are finding it increasingly more difficult to do good.
The Centre for Nonviolent Action (CNA) Sarajevo/Belgrade has been working on building a lasting peace in the former Yugoslavia by promoting a culture of nonviolence, dialogue and trust building among individuals and groups, and through activities in aid of constructive dealing with the past as a key factor of peacebuilding. On Human Rights Day (10 December), at the Parobrod Cultural Institute in Belgrade, CNA presented the Peacebuilding Strategy it has worked on since August 2010.
Vučić has no comment
The development of the Strategy, in the words of CNA activist Katarina Milićević, came about out of a desire to constructively approach criticism of society and state authorities.
“We criticise state authorities for what they do and more frequently, for what they do not do. It occurred to us that this was a completely unconstructive approach to things, because criticism for criticism’s sake is not something we support. So, we decided to design a document to propose to the state as our constructive approach to things, as what we think needs to happen and needs to be done in order for Serbia to deal with the burning issues it faces, and in order to change the image it projects to the region, primarily its closest neighbours with whom it had been at war, to transform those relations into something conducive to reconciliation, to dealing with the past and to building a new trust,” Milićević pointed out.
The first phase of development of the Peacebuilding Strategy involved interviews with activists from across the former Yugoslavia and a number of scholars from Germany with extensive experience in peacebuilding and nonviolent conflict transformation.
“We consulted with a lot of people who had experience in developing national policy documents, but also with NGOs from the region, because this document should have its mirror. Also, its message should be addressed to the people living in the region. We wanted to know whether they thought it could be meaningful, how and why,” said Katarina Milićević.
In the second phase, we developed a draft that we presented to the administration. The reactions of the national authorities were varied.
“I must say that we had two diametrically opposed responses. The state authorities either completely ignored us or set up meetings right away and were very positive about the document. In the end, it all came down to the fact that no one had the strength, or the political will, or desire to accept the document as their own and push it through institutional procedure,” explained the CNA activist.
“Our last step was to write to the Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić and President Aleksandar Vučić and send them the document.
“We received a reply from the office of Ana Brnabić that the document had been forwarded to the Ministry of Justice, which we had approached a number of times ourselves and never got a response. The fact that we did not receive any reply from the office of Aleksandar Vučić perhaps best illustrates the response of the highest levels of government in Serbia,” Katarina explained.
It is important to point out that CNA had never claimed that the document was unchangeable or the only possible version. They just wanted to present the state with their proposal, to be considered and modified in consultation with interested individuals, citizens and organisations, in order to ultimately arrive at a version that would satisfy all sides and become Serbia’s state policy.
In a circle of hatred
Nenad Vukosavljević, a CNA activist who has been working with war veterans from BiH, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Kosovo for a long time, told us what Serbia’s policy would look like if it were aligned with the main points and objectives of the Strategy.
“What is specific about this strategy is that it is not focused only on Serbia, even though it was designed as a national strategy for Serbia because this was the method for its adoption, but we took a different approach to the problem. We involved people from neighbouring countries through rounds of interviews, asking them what kind of Serbia they would like to see as its neighbours. How should Serbia look and function in order to be a good neighbour. Of course, we also involved a great number of people from Serbia, from different fields,” explained Vukosavljević, adding that the idea was to shift the paradigm of national policy away from the usual concept of security that relies on intimidation by force towards a concept of freedom that liberates people from fear and builds trust.
“My understanding of reconciliation is that it means abandoning hatred. It does not mean forcing individuals to reconcile. People have the right not to want to reconcile, but they don’t have the right to hate and they don’t have the right to publicly advocate for hatred,” Vukosavljević pointed out.
He believes our societies are poisoned by this circle of hatred and responses to hatred from the other side. Finding a way out of this spiral of hatred will probably be difficult, but this activist for one, who has long worked with war veterans, believes that each of us can make a difference.
“A number of measures proposed in the Strategy are meant to encompass diverse groups of people that can have a role. I would particularly emphasise war veterans and people from victims’ associations. They can be very influential when they advocate for changing the dominant narratives that oppress us and tell us who our enemies are supposed to be. New generations are growing up and we are seeing the past repeating itself,” Vukosavljević stressed, noting that given Serbia’s role in the 1990s wars, it bears the biggest responsibility for starting the peacebuilding process.
The strategy aims to offer guidelines about the lessons to be learned from the wars. Primarily about how to re-examine the national past, which is presented as black-and-white in the dominant narrative.
People have the right not to want to reconcile, but they don’t have the right to hate and they don’t have the right to publicly advocate for hatred
Peace as the absence of war
It is hard to imagine re-examining the national past and building peace without the participation of war veterans. Edin Ramulić was a soldier in the Army of RBiH, today he is a human rights activist working through the Culture of Memory Foundation in Prijedor. He describes how he was involved in the development of similar strategies in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Unfortunately, none of them became official. But it was worth the effort. When it comes to this Strategy, I think it is well written. Of course, the measures are key. I think that is precisely the reason why no one wants to read it or put it up for public debate,” Ramulić says.
In his opinion, the general perception among the public is that the dissolution of Yugoslavia started in Belgrade, which is why it is important for a peacebuilding initiative to start in Belgrade. He also points out that it is important to start anti-war campaigns early.
“What the majority of people see is important, because the majority in BiH and in Serbia and in Croatia produces political elites that keep sabre-rattling, procuring new weapons, their high officials hinting at the possibility of a new war. This is more than enough to make us act on time and do everything we can to prevent war. I remember that before the war, there was a strong initiative for peace, the League for Peace, anti-war demonstrations brought out tens, even hundreds of thousands of people, but it was too late,” Ramulić says.
Novica Kostić was a JNA soldier in the wars of the 1990s. Today, he says he was part of a structural violence and his war experience tells him that the peace we are living now is a negative peace.
“It’s merely the absence of war. It is precisely in national parliaments, and here I refer mostly to Serbia, that we often hear hate speech. Human rights are threatened. ‘War heroes’ are glorified. That is why in dialogue, we must return to key topics such as understanding the other, empathy and solidarity,” says Kostić. He points out that victims on the other side must be recognised and that we cannot “expect others to condemn the crimes committed in their name while we glorify our crimes and proclaim our criminals heroes.” Kostić believes we should have a Day of the Righteous.
“We have Srđan Aleksić, and his example should serve as a model for the Day of the Righteous. Because in war, there are those who commit acts of humanity, who rescue people from the other side. We must at least convey to young people that violence does not pay. War veterans can play an important role if they are aware and prepared to take on personal responsibility for what they did and did not do in the war,” says this war veteran.
In a justice vacuum
The term ‘reconciliation’ has proven to be controversial throughout the region. It is multifaceted, heterogeneous and means different things to different people. That is why Jelena Krstić, an analyst at the Humanitarian Law Centre, believes it should be replaced by the term transitional justice.
“In my personal opinion, that term was imposed. It came at a time when similar processes were wrapping up in other societies, such as South Africa, where the term is probably most firmly rooted in the work of their Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It made its way to our region and to this day, it is used by representatives of the international community as a term that should show us the goal we are meant to reach, but it does not tell us how to get there,” she explains, suggesting that “transitional justice” should be used instead, because it denotes the first stage in rebuilding relations following a conflict, which should come in the immediate aftermath of the war.
“What should happen in this transition period is for crimes to be acknowledged, recognised and punished, victims should receive reparations, victims should be named, they should be committed to permanent memory, and institutions should be reformed so as to guarantee that similar conflicts cannot happen again,” Krstić explains.
The next stage would concern dealing with the past, and it would last in our post-conflict societies until we can say that we have built peace.
“If you ask me, I think we are currently in a justice vacuum, between the phase of transitional justice and that of dealing with the past. We should already be well into dealing with the past, by now we should have prosecuted an impressive number of war criminals, we should have paid reparations to victims, offered at least symbolic reparations, or we should have demonstrated by building memorials, issuing public apologies or establishing national holidays that we remember them and feel remorse for their suffering. We should also have reformed the education system so that children do not leave school without knowing anything about the 1998/99 armed conflict in Kosovo, so that they learn facts that have been confirmed by both international and domestic courts, as well as independent research bodies and organisations,” says Krstić, adding that all of this is lacking today and that Serbia is under an imposed transitional justice process.
When it comes to establishing criminal justice in Serbia, she pointed out that some 190 individuals indicted for war crimes have been prosecuted in the past 15 years, of which some 60 people have been found guilty in final judgements.
“On balance, our results in criminal justice are poor,” concludes Krstić.
A strategic approach to peacebuilding should go through all these phases, taking into account the specificity of our societies in the region. However, mere strategic profiling by the state will not achieve much if it does not have support from below, from society itself. It would oblige all citizens, civil society activists, reporters, media outlets, teachers at universities and schools to set an example and build peace directly with each other, but also to demand peacebuilding from institutions.
We received a reply from the office of Ana Brnabić that the document had been forwarded to the Ministry of Justice. No reply came from the office of Aleksandar Vučić.