Well-known human rights activist and founder of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, Natasa Kandic, has stated that Serbia continues to avoid a real confrontation with the war crimes committed during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, refusing institutional and political responsibility for thousands of victims.
In an interview for News, Kandic said that the failure of the regional initiative RECOM – the Regional Commission for the Establishment of the Facts on War Crimes – is a direct consequence of the unwillingness of the Serbian authorities to acknowledge the role of the state in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.
According to her, RECOM was conceived as an official inter-state mechanism that would document war crimes, register all victims, and clarify the circumstances of murders and disappearances. However, the involvement of Serbian state institutions in these investigations was considered unacceptable by the political structures in Belgrade.
“The testimonies of victims were accepted only on a personal level, but any attempt to determine the systemic responsibility of regimes and state institutions was rejected,” Kandic stressed.
She recalled that Serbia has been directly or indirectly involved in several wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, but has never accepted state responsibility for crimes committed by the army, police and paramilitary formations affiliated with Belgrade.
Speaking about transitional justice, Kandic assessed that war crimes trials in Serbia are limited, selective and under constant political pressure. According to her, the war crimes prosecution operates in an environment where political power controls the narrative and hinders investigations that could lead to accountability at high state levels.
One of the most serious problems, according to Kandic, is the manipulation of the issue of missing persons. She stressed that Serbian authorities possess information about mass graves and locations of bodies, but refuse to make it public for political reasons.
"The failure to discover mass graves is not a coincidence. It is a political decision to avoid responsibility for what happened," she declared.
Despite this climate, the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade continues to document crimes and victims, especially in cooperation with the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo. Kandic also mentioned the publication of a book on missing persons in Kosovo, as an effort to preserve memory and give dignity to the victims.
In conclusion, she warned that without Serbia's honest confrontation with its violent past, without the admission of crimes and without institutional accountability, the region will remain hostage to nationalist narratives and denial, while the victims will continue to remain without justice.
