In Order to Kill - How to Neutralize the Srebrenica Genocide. Understanding the Perpetrators of Genocide and their Post-Facto Behavior

(1)

How to Neutralize the

Srebrenica Genocide

Understanding the Perpetrators of Genocide

and their Post-Facto Behavior

October 18th₂₀₁₈ D. N. Admiraal UvanetID: 6387578 Student Number: 10127011 MA Thesis Holocaust & Genocide Studies 1st_{reader: Johannes Houwink Ten Cate} 2nd_{reader: Karel Berkhoff}

Abstract – The aim of this thesis is to expand our knowledge on the perpetrators of

genocide by examining the way these génocidaires look back on and account for their own deadly behavior in a court of law, in particular the ways in which the perpetrators of the Srebrenica genocide account for their involvement in genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia. Perpetrator narratives produced at the ICTY form the main source for a qualitative research that uses the theory of neutralization to analyze the post-facto behavior of perpetrators of genocides. Ultimately, recognizing of the post-facto behavior as a valuable research dimension emphasizes the current consensus amongst genocide scholars that the génocidaires should not be regarded as an amorphous collective but rather as a heterogeneous group. The concept of a génocidaire, our shared humanity, and the neutralization theory form the guiding notions for this interdisciplinary thesis.

(2)

List of Tables and Figures

Table 1. Profiles of Srebrenica Perpetrators 93

Table 2. Mode of Arrival at ICTY of Srebrenica Perpetrators 102

Table 3. Srebrenica Perpetrators’ Utilization of Neutralization Techniques 144

Figure 1. Military Hierarchy of Srebrenica Perpetrators 94

List of Abbreviations

ABiH Armed Forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Armija Bosna i Hercegovina) BIA Serbian Intelligence Service (Bezbednosno-Informativna Agencija)

BiH Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina)

CAS Close Air Support

CaH Crimes against Humanity

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

DB Serbian State Security (Državne Bezbednost) FPRY Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia

HDZ Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica) HVO Croatian Defense Council (Hrvatsko Vijeće Obrane)

ICR ICTY Court Record

ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia IMT International Military Tribunal

JNA Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija) MICT United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals MUP Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Poslova) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NIOD Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie)

NMT Nuremberg Military Tribunal

NSDAP Foreign Organization of the Nazi Party

(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

OP Observation Post

RS Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska)

RSK Republic of Serbian Krajina (Republika Srpska Krajina) SDA Party of Democratic Action (Stranka Demokratske Akcije) SDS Serbian Democratic Party (Srpska Demokratska Stranka)

SFOR Stabilization Force

SFRY Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

SS Schutzstaffel

UN United Nations

UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force

VoW Violations of War

VJ Army of Yugoslavia (Vojske Jugoslavije)

(6)

Preface

Without a hint of a breeze in the cold winter sky the unmistakable blue flag of the United Nations hung motionless overhead as I walked up to the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia early on a December morning in 2014. I strolled passed the half-oval shaped basin in front of the building and as I let my gaze dwell on the reflection of the calm water within, I noticed how the grey of the walls were of a similar grey as that of the sky. I made my way past the gates surrounding the Tribunal and unto the entrance. Inside, two sturdy guards seemed quite chipper for the early hour as they scanned my belongings and checked my passport. More security guards and a metal gate awaited in the marble-floored entrance hall, before a narrow metal staircase would finally lead me to where I was headed: courtroom number one. It wasn’t hard to find a seat in the public gallery with only a handful of others who came to attend this

international criminal trial. Looking through the bulletproof glass separating the visitors from the trial proceedings, I saw a frail seventy-year-old man indifferently attending the trial against him. Just as the sky had imitated the walls, the defendant Ratko Mladić’s greyish hair matched his grey suit. While his defense lawyer cross-examined a witness of the Prosecution, Mladić rather passed the time by jokingly exchanging notes with another one his attorneys, as they were both clearly suppressing chuckles from time to time.

This was not the boastful General I had expected. Notorious for his courtroom antics and disruptive behavior, for making improper gestures at the public gallery and scorning witnesses who had survived the horrors of Srebrenica, former Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army Ratko Mladić seemed to care less that day about the events in the courtroom. Yet his indifference also seemed defiant, as if he was making clear that neither the proceedings nor the outcome bothered him in any way. When summoned to appear against his will as a witness at the trial of his former ally Radovan Karadžić, the former President of Republika Srpska, Mladić emphasized this contempt of the ICTY as he yelled: “I do not recognize this Hague Court. It is a NATO creation.” With a loud voice he continued his rant: “It is a Satanic court, not a court of justice, and it is trying us because we are Serbs, because we protect our people from you. It…” Judge Kwon had finally cut him off. 1

1 Ratko Mladić, “Trial Chamber Defence Case Witness Ratko Mladić Trial Transcript,” Prosecutor v. Radovan

(7)

Introduction

Man’s Inhumanity to Man

In Bosnia, a neighbour means more than a relative. In Bosnia, having coffee with your neighbour is a ritual, and this is what we trampled on and forgot. We lost ourselves in hatred and brutality. And in this vortex of terrible misfortune and horror, the horror of Srebrenica happened.2

Dragan Obrenović, The Hague, October 30th₂₀₀₃ The horror of Srebrenica happened. After Bosnian Serb and Serbian military forces overran UN troops and seized the safe area of Srebrenica in mid-July 1995, they divided the Bosnian Muslim population – who had taken refuge in the enclave – by separating the men and boys from the women. Those who attempted to flee through the mountains and seek refuge in the forest were chased, captured, and killed. Many of the Muslim men were brutally massacred at the deplorable detention centers in which they were held, whilst others were put unto buses and trucks, driven to execution sites throughout East-Bosnia, where they were lined up and subsequently murdered in mass executions. Over the course of just a few days, the Bosnian Serb and Serbian forces systematically killed approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men, many of whom were mere children.3

A few months after the Srebrenica genocide, Judge Fouad Riad of the

International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) described the events that took place after the safe area had fallen as “unimaginable savagery” and as “truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”4_{More than twenty} years later, the Prosecution in the case against former Commander of the Bosnian Serb ArmyRatko Mladić echoed this emotion: “No one can fathom the extent of the sufferings for whichRatko Mladić is responsible.”5_{The extent to which a human being can inflict} pain upon another human being is mind-boggling. Torture, rape, or mass murder: these words do not even come close to express the suffering that they try to convey.

Nonetheless, the need to try and put these horrors into words is understandable, for the opposite would mean to remain silent and thus implicitly condone these atrocious

2 Dragan Obrenović, “Trial Chamber Sentencing Hearing Trial Transcript,” Prosecutor v. Dragan Obrenović,

(Case No. IT-02-60/2-T), ICTY, October 30th_{2003, p. 1555.}

3 “Trial Chamber Judgment,” Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić, (Case No. IT-09-92-T), ICTY, November 22nd_{2017, p.}

1538, p. 12428-12429.

4 Judge Riad made these statements in the ICTY’s order confirming the Srebrenica indictment against

former Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, the former President of Republika Srpska. See: Judge Fouad Riad, “Review of the Indictment [English, 6 pages],” Trial Chamber Decision of Judge Riad Fouad to Confirm Indictment of Karadžić and Mladić, Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić

and Ratko Mladić (Case No. IT-95-18), submitted November 16th_{1995, p. 2, as found in the online archive of}

ICTY (icr.icty.org), last accessed February 28th_2018.

5 Alan Tieger, “Trial Chamber Prosecution Closing Arguments Trial Transcript,” Prosecutor v. Mladić,

(8)

crimes as well as those who perpetrated them. These crimes can’t remain hidden or forgotten; they need to be exposed and addressed.

Not until the Second World War had almost come to an end and the world was trying to come to terms with its shocking legacy did we formulate a word to describe – and single out for special condemnation – one of the “most grievous”6_{of crimes:}

genocide.7_{“It was left to the twentieth century to produce so extraordinary a killing that} even a new word had to be created to define it.”8_{Coined by Raphael Lemkin, the term} was used in the United Nations in 1948 to describe the group-based crime that requires the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”9_{Even though this formal jargon aptly describes the judicial meaning of the} “crime of crimes”10_{– it remains the basis of our legal formulation of genocide until this} very day – to fathom the actual meaning of genocide most people still remain at a loss for words: “Legalisms and legal definitions can never adequately convey the inhumanity of what happened, what was experienced, what was done to human beings.”11_{And as the} judges of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal during their judgment of the ‘Einsatzgrüppen Trial’ said: “[Genocide is] a crime of such unprecedented brutality and of such

inconceivable savagery that the mind rebels against its own thought image and the imagination staggers in the contemplation of a human degradation beyond the power of language to adequately portray.”12

6 William Drozdiak, “Milošević to Stand Trial for Genocide,” The Washington Post, November 24th_2001,

[online], as found on:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/11/24/Milošević-to-stand-trial-for-genocide/18441f0a-ed8b-41f8-8827-725434c088ae/?utm_term=.763466507425, last accessed November 10th_2017.

7 “Appeals Chamber Judgment,” Prosecutor vs. Radislav Krstić, (Case No. IT-98-33-A), ICTY, April 19th_{2004, p.}

12.

8 Judge Michael A. Musmanno, “Einsatzgrüppen Trial Judgment,” United States of America (USA) v. Ohlendorf

et al., Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10,

Vol. IV, April 1948, p. 412, as found in the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov):

https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_war-criminals_Vol-IV.pdf, last accessed March 10th_{, 2018;}

Also: “… while the term ‘genocide’ did not exist prior to the twentieth century, there were historical incidents that were genocidal, including the treatment of natives in the United States and the massacre of Europeans during the Thirty Years War,” in: Donald G. Dutton, The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres, and

Extreme Violence: Why “Normal” People Come to Commit Atrocities, (Praeger: Connectitut, 2007), p. 15-16.

9 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, United Nations, Article II, December

9th_1948.

10 Larry May, Genocide: A Normative Account, (Cambridge University Press: NY, 2010), p. 1, 6; Janine N.

Clark, “The crime of crimes: Genocide, Criminal Trials and Reconciliation,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, (March, 2012), pp. 55-77, p. 65-66; “Trial Chamber Judgment,” Prosecutor v. Milomir Stakić, (Case

No. IT-97-24-T), July 31st_{2003, para. 502; “Appeals Chamber Judgment,” Prosecutor v. Goran Jelisić, (Case No.}

IT-95-10-A), July 5th_{2001, para. 26.}

11 David Pressman, “Remarks at a UN Security Council Debate on the International Criminal Tribunal for

the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR),” United States

Mission to the United Nations, June 8, 2016, [online], as found in the “2009-2017 Archive for the U.S.

Department of State,” (https://2009-2017-usun.state.gov):

https://2009-2017-usun.state.gov/remarks/7317, last accessed March 10th_{, 2018.}

12 “Einsatzgrüppen Trial Judgment,” USA v. Ohlendorf et al., Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg

(9)

Nevertheless, throughout the years many descriptions of genocide have been constructed. More often than not they compare genocide to evil, be it “extraordinary evil,” the “banality of evil,” or the “epitome of evil.”13_{It is seen as ‘abnormal’ or ‘inhuman,’} as a “great, dark storm sweeping ordinary humans into a cruel vortex.”14_{Kjell Anderson} calls this is the “mystification of genocide” which has “the effect of making genocide seem a sort of inexplicable, and, subsequently, inexorable force.”15_{Correspondingly,} those who perpetrated this abominable atrocity are equally evil.16_{Wryly enough, while} perpetrators of genocide often dehumanize their victim group, for example by using diabolical representations of the victim group to rationalize their destruction – the victim is not innocent but the Devil incarnate and therefore must be destroyed17_{- the} perpetrator himself is stripped of his humanity as well. Demonizing18_{and dehumanizing} génocidaires19_{distances ourselves from them by separating the good from the evil,} ultimately excluding the perpetrators from humanity altogether.20_{This dichotomy} between good/evil and humanity/inhumanity is as appealing as it is misleading.21 Genocide is “man’s inhumanity to man,”22_{yet his inhumanity is as much part of the man} as is his humanity. It is the exaltation of inhumanity that takes it out of our realm of understanding, because it takes it out of the realm of human behavior. And it is precisely human behavior that is intrinsic to the crime of genocide.

13 Resp. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (New York, 1963), p. 30;

James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, (Oxford University Press: New York, 2002), p. vii; May, Genocide: A Normative Account, p. 3.

14 Resp. Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, p. 18, 58, 64; Kjell

Anderson, The Dehumanisation Dynamic: A Criminology of Genocide, [PhD], Irish Centre for Human Rights/National University of Ireland, 2011, p. 3.

15 This line of thought on the ‘mystification of genocide’ Kjell Anderson eloquently describes in his PhD,

see: Anderson, The Dehumanisation Dynamic: A Criminology of Genocide, p. 2-3.

16 For example, they are “monsters” and their actions “bestial.” See: Slavenka Drakulić, They Would Never

Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague, (Penguin: London, 2004), p. 77, 188, and: Saira Mohamed,

“Of Monsters and Men: Perpetrator Trauma and Mass Atrocity,” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 115, Is. 6, (2015), pp. 1157-1216, p. 1161.

17 Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacres and Genocides, (Columbia University

Press: New York, 2007), p. 255.

18 Anderson, The Dehumanisation Dynamic, p. 3.

19 Génocidaire is the French translation for a perpetrator of genocide, and is therefore often associated

with the Rwandan genocide and its perpetrators. However, in this thesis the term génocidaire is used synonymously for perpetrator of genocide, encompassing all those who have participated in genocidal acts.

20 Drakulić, They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague, p. 188; See also Uğur Ümit

Üngör, “Studying Mass Violence: Pitfalls, Problems, and Promises,” Genocide Studies and Prevention, Vol. 7, Is. 1 (April 2012), pp. 68-80, p. 70, in which Üngör describes this as “a manicheistic divide between purely evil perpetrators and purely pure victims.”

21 Christophe Busch, “Demonic Transitions; How Ordinary People Can Commit Extraordinary Evil,” in: Uğur

Ümit Üngör (ed.), Genocide; New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses and Consequences, (Amsterdam University Press B.V.; Amsterdam, 2016), pp. 49-82, p. 49.

22 The phrase “man’s inhumanity to man” is taken from Robert Burns’ poem Man was Made to Mourn: A

(10)

The challenge therefore lies in acknowledging that both the victim and the perpetrator are a member of the same humanity. In a way this proposes the challenge of “humanizing the killer”23_{: not by refuting inhumanity in a whole,}24_{but by realizing that it} is not the génocidaire who is inhuman, it is his crime that negates the very essence of the humanity of the victim he commits it against and should therefore be labeled as

inhumane. To do evil does not mean to be evil.25_{The perpetrators of genocide are not} monsters, but they have committed monstrous acts. Slavenka Drakulić came to the same conclusion after examining war criminals being prosecuted by the Yugoslavia Tribunal:

You sit in a courtroom watching a defendant day after day (…) You watch their faces, ugly or pleasant, their small habits of yawning, taking notes, scratching their heads, cleaning their nails, and you have to ask yourself: what if this is a man? The more you know them, the more you wonder how they could have committed such crimes, these waiters and taxi drivers, teachers and peasants in front of you. And the more you realize that war criminals might be ordinary people, the more afraid you become. Of course, this is because the

consequences are more serious than if they were monsters. If ordinary people committed war crimes, it means that any of us can commit them.26

Yet, if they are not monsters and any one of us is capable of committing genocide, then why does not everyone become a “killer, torturer, and perpetrator of extreme

violence?”27_{In times of war, upheaval, or other contexts of insecurity that generate} anxieties, so many people employ extreme violence. Horrendous acts, in a different context regarded as unjustifiable, can become acceptable. “Genocidal solutions” could start to make sense to someone in the ‘right’ situation or circumstances.28_{Therefore, if} we want to try and comprehend genocidal perpetration, both the situation in which the perpetrators find themselves and the way each individual reacts to that particular situation should be investigated.

The desire to understand the perpetrators’ point of view however does concern some scholars: “As we understand the perpetrators’ inner processes and attitudes, we

23 Mireille Delmas-Marty, “Violence and Massacres – Towards a Criminal Law of Inhumanity?” Journal of

International Criminal Justice, Vol. 7, (2009), pp. 5-16, p. 14.

24 “If one endeavors in understanding such occurrences [of genocide], one of the preliminary steps is

particularly to refute their alleged ”inhuman” nature.” This is what Roxana Marin proposes in her article, see: Roxana Marin, “Structural and Psychological Perspectives on the Perpetrator of Genocide,” Studia Politica:

Romanian Political Science Review, Vol. 2, pp. 235-258, p. 237.

25 Contradicting the phrase: “what does evil is evil,” see: Delmas-Marty, “Violence and Massacres – Towards

a Criminal Law of Inhumanity,” pp. 5-16, p. 6.

26 Drakulić, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, p. 190-191.

27 Philip Spencer, “Epilogue,” in: Üngör (ed.), Genocide; New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses and

Consequences, pp. 253-258, p. 254.

28 Donald Bloxham, “The organisation of Genocide: Perpetration in Comparative Perspective,” in: Olaf

Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (eds.), Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in

Comparative Perspective, (Palgrave MacMillan: Hampshire/New York, 2008), pp. 185-200, p. 187; Spencer,

(11)

come to see their crimes as considerably less heinous than how others judge them.”29 Moreover, others consider the examination of perpetrators of genocide “impertinent in the light of the immense sufferings these criminals caused.”30_{This tendency to shy away} from perpetrator-based research relies on the notion that the more we “see deeds from the perpetrator’s point of view,” the more we condone and eventually exonerate their behavior.31_{However, “explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving,” as} Christopher Browning firmly stated.32_{In agreement, Jacques Sémelin even proposed the} opposite to be true: “Refusing to seek understanding would amount to acknowledging the posthumous victory [of the executioners].”33_{It is not the act of understanding that} should be feared, on the contrary, it is ignorance that is far worse. Ignoring our capabilities as human beings of the most horrendous of acts is the first step toward tolerating their occurrence, and, vice versa, being aware of them the first step toward confronting them. Hence, it is the reluctance rather than willingness to understand that should raise our concern.

Understanding the Post-Facto Behavior of Perpetrators of Genocide Numerous scholars before me have devoted their time and intellect to further our understanding of the perpetrator of genocide; the bulk of this research is focused on the time period leading up to the perpetration, i.e. how people become involved in genocide. This analysis on the a priori decisions and circumstances of the génocidaires gives us an insight into the processes and factors that motivate and enable génocidaires to

participate in massive human destruction. Another significant area of inquiry focuses on the perpetration itself or once the perpetrators have “crossed the threshold into

violence”: investigating for example in what ways the killers try to ‘make sense’ of what they are doing.34_{All in all, this research on the behavior of perpetrators before and} during genocide shows that there is no mono-causal explanation to understand

génocidaires; an archetypal perpetrator does not exist. Accordingly, a consensus amongst genocide scholars is emerging that denounces the notion of a homogeneous

29 Roy F. Baumeister, “Human Evil: The myth of pure evil and the true causes of violence,” The Social

Psychology of Morality: Exploring the Causes of Good and Evil, (2012), pp. 367-380, p. 368.

30 Dick de Mildt, In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of their Post-War

Prosecution in West Germany, The ‘Euthanasia’ and ‘Aktion Reinhardt’ Trial Cases, [PhD], (Martinus Nijhoff

Publishers: Leiden, 1996), 7.

31 Arthur G. Buddie, Annie K. Gordon, and Amy M. Miller, “Accounting for Evil and Cruelty: Is to Explain to

Condone?,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, (1999), pp. 254-268, p. 255.

32 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,

(Harper Collins: NY, 1992), p. xx.

33 Sémelin, Purify and Destroy, p. 2, 7.

(12)

perpetrator group and instead emphasizes that there is heterogeneity in the causes and modes of their participation.

And although perpetrator research currently is flourishing, there still seems to be somewhat of a lacuna in regards to research into the ways perpetrators act after they have committed genocidal acts. While we are abundantly interested in their behavior before and during genocide, the post-perpetration or post-facto behavior of génocidaires is often overlooked or undervalued as a dimension of research when trying to

understand génocidaires.35_{Moreover, when the actions of génocidaires} post-perpetration are in fact assessed, we often resort to a simplistic explanation: a

perpetrator of genocide wants to avoid or reduce punishment for his actions as much as possible, and therefore consciously lies and uses outright deceit in order to do so. Unfortunately, this overgeneralization reduces the génocidaire once again to a one-dimensional evildoer as it glosses over the multifaceted behavior and attitudes of perpetrators of genocide. Furthermore, it closes our eyes and prevents us from seeing the post-facto behavior and narratives of génocidaires as valuable research material.

This thesis aims to reevaluate the post-facto behavior of perpetrators of

genocide, by examining how perpetrators of genocide behave after having participated in the genocidal violence and how they account for their participation in genocide when confronted with them. It contends that the génocidaires do in fact exhibit different kinds of post-facto behavior and account for their participation in varying ways, affirming the heterogeneity of the perpetrator group. More importantly, the thesis argues that the ways in which they account for their participation in genocide can be understood as more than mere lies; and that the theory of neutralization could possibly offer new insights into how we can understand the ways in which the perpetrators try to make sense of their involvement. According to the theory, techniques of neutralization are the ways in which people “define their behaviour, or the situation in which they find

themselves, so that it does not conflict with the prevailing moral code.”36_{In order for} perpetrators to participate in destructive or even deadly behavior that they otherwise would have considered unacceptable, they have to realign or redefine deviant actions in such a way that the génocidaire can maintain the perception that his moral prohibitions have not been violated.37

35 Exceptions, of course, do exist. For example: Richard Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands,

1945, (Allen Lane/The Penguin Press Group: London, 2001).

36 Gresham Sykes and David Matza, “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency,” American

Sociological Review, Vol. 22, No. 6, (December, 1957), pp. 664-670; Busch, “Demonic Transitions,” p. 81.

37 Alexander Alvarez, “Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust,” Social

(13)

Neutralization theory has found much traction among social scientists on order to explain deviant behavior, yet it has only scarcely been used in the field of genocide research. The first to apply the theoretical framework to the case of genocide, i.e. the Holocaust, is sociologist and criminologist Alexander Alvarez, who considers the techniques a valuable method to shed light “on the mechanisms whereby individuals accede to and perpetrate (…) even when this participation goes against their personal normative system.”38_{Another interdisciplinary researcher, Anderson, utilizes the} neutralization techniques as well in his thorough comparative research of perpetrators of genocide, albeit a modified and considerably expanded version of the five techniques originally identified by Sykes and Matza.39_{His version, consisting of twelve “genocidal} techniques of neutralization,”40_{will be explored, complemented,}41_{and subsequently} applied to the perpetrators of the Srebrenica genocide in order to answer the following research question: how and to what extent do the different ways in which the Srebrenica

génocidaires account for their deadly behavior when confronted with it at the

International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia correspond with or resemble techniques of neutralizations? By doing so, this thesis not only builds upon and expands

the limited existing research in this area, but also tests the merits of the neutralization theory to the field of genocide studies by practically applying it to a case study.

The analysis is done by delving into the utterances and statements made by the Srebrenica génocidaires during their court days at the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague. Even though their rhetoric and conduct in the courtroom of the ICTY forms the core and novelty of this study, the overall post-facto behavior of the perpetrators was taking into account. It is important to underscore that what defendants say in a courtroom should not be considered as the literal “truth” about the “reasoning of the individual perpetrator at the moment of action,”42_{but more so as “some version”}43_{of the truth as accounts,} explanations, and justifications made after the fact.44 _{What’s more, “in all courtroom} settings, defendants have particular incentives to portray themselves in a positive light

38 Alvarez, p. 144.

39 Anderson, Dehumanisation Dynamic, p. 65.

40 Idem.

41 The additions to the list are either explicitly and intentionally omitted by Anderson, are identified by

other scholars in more recent studies, or are identified during the course of this research. This ultimately culminated into a comprehensive list of comprising of nineteen separate neutralization techniques.

42 Inger Skjelsbaek, “The Military Perpetrator: A Narrative Analysis of Sentencing Judgments on Sexual

Violence Offenders at the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY),”Journal of Social

and Political Psychology, Vol. 3, Is. 1, (2015), pp. 46-70, p. 51.

43 Yet trials “aim to represent the truth, are relied upon to represent the truth, and do represent the truth –

or at least some version of it [emphasis in original].” See: Mohamed, p. 1166.

(14)

by rationalizing past actions, salvaging tarnished identities,”45_{and escaping culpability.} And on top of that, the legal and normative framework of the courtroom as well as its public and theatrical nature also influence the way in which the perpetrators talk about their involvement in the Srebrenica genocide.

Nonetheless, recognizing that these accounts should be considered as a “restricted, mediated”46_{version of the truth does not mean we should not use their} accounts for examination at all. To quote De Mildt on his study of Nazi perpetrators, this thesis does not “aspire to explore the outermost corners and curves of the mass

murderer’s mind,” since it is highly questionable “whether in fact any sources for such a purpose may exist.” 47_{Just consider the highly unrealistic idea of academics asking} perpetrators of genocide about their motivation and analyzing their train of thought in the very moment they are committing the acts, it goes to follow that “we can only come close to an understanding by examining narrative construction [or accounts] in

hindsight”48_{– i.e. after the fact.}49_{Accounts made after the fact by perpetrators are} valuable sources to be analyzed for when we want to try and understand how individuals themselves understand how they were able to join in or lead the way to genocide, since accounts are a “means by which non-normative social actions are explained, (…) to realign actions with cultural expectations, thereby reconciling identity incongruence and restoring the moral order.”50_{The context of the courtroom – in this} case that of an international tribunal - is one of the few places in which a génocidaire talks in great deal about his actions, behavior, and participation in the period of mass violence.51_{These trials often last years on end, in which the defendant is confronted day} in day out with the fact that his actions and the role he played – regardless how big or small – contributed to the horrifying crime that is genocide. How do génocidaires react to these hundreds of days of confrontation? What do they choose to say or to leave unspoken? Taking into consideration the contingencies surrounding them and the

45 Emily Bryant, Emily Brooke Schimke, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and Christopher Uggen, “Techniques of

Neutralization and Identity Work Among Accused Genocide Perpetrators,” Social Problems, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2017), p. 6.

46 Mohamed, p. 1166.

47 De Mildt, p. 16.

48 Skjelsbaek, p. 51.

49 Throughout this thesis these terms account and narrative have been used interchangeably. “Accounts,

vocabularies of motives, techniques of neutralization, and narratives—while distinct theoretically—can all be used to construct and negotiate non-deviant identities.” See: M.J. Gathings and Kylie Parrotta, “The Use of Gendered Narratives in the Courtroom: Constructing an Identity Worthy of Leniency,” Journal of

Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 42, Is. 6, (2013), pp. 668-689, p. 670.

50 Gathings and Parrotta, “The Use of Gendered Narratives in the Courtroom: Constructing an Identity

Worthy of Leniency,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 42, Is. 6, (2013), pp. 668-689, p. 671.

51 De Mildt described the records of the post-war trials of the Nazi genocide as the “single most

comprehensive source at our disposal (…) to understand and learn anything of the ‘logic of evil’ as it expressed itself in the Nazi genocide,” see: De Mildt, p. 15.

(15)

context in which they are uttered, it is interesting to discover what we can learn from these post-facto accounts derived from international criminal trials.52

Methodology

In order to analyze if and how the post-facto accounts of the twenty53_Srebrenica génocidaires indicted and subsequently tried by the ICTY correspond with or reflect neutralization techniques, the following approach is used: of each of the defendants all54 public55_{court appearances (both as a defendant in their own trial and as a witness in the} trials of others) as well as interrogations prior to their arrival at tribunal in The Hague (performed under the authority of the ICTY) have been manually sifted through and scanned to find the instances concerning their role in the Srebrenica genocide in which the defendants spoke or were required to speak.56_{Although the trial transcripts of those} days (during which defendants testified on their own behalf) make up for the bulk of the analyzed documents and could have provided for an extensive amount of research material on its own, using only these testimonies would have omitted numerous other significant instances in which defendants were confronted with their genocidal actions. Most importantly, the interesting confrontations between defendants during the

examinations-in-chief and cross-examinations in the Milošević and Karadžić cases would have been left out. Especially since these two men chose not to testify on their own behalf, using these confrontations as resources has provided for significant insights into their post-facto behavior.

52 Also: “Because ideal original data on genocide and mass killing are often rare, flexibility, creativity, and analytical rigor are necessary for the continued advancement of scholarship.” See: Peter B. Owens, Yang Su, and David A. Snow, “Social Scientific Inquiry Into Genocide and Mass Killing: From Unitary Outcome to Complex Processes,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 39, (2013), pp. 69-84, p. 72.

53 The ICTY has indicted a total of twenty men for crimes related to the Srebrenica genocide. See: “Key

Figures of the Cases,” ICTY, [online], as found on the website of the ICTY, last accessed August 1st_2018:

http://www.icty.org/en/cases/key-figures-cases.

54 In some cases this meant going through almost the entirety of trial transcripts and numerous legal

documents, e.g. those cases in which the indictments solely related to the Srebrenica genocide. In other cases the defendant was charged with more crimes than the Srebrenica genocide, for instance Milošević, Mladić, and Karadžić: only the transcripts and documents related to the Srebrenica part of the indictment have been used. However, these would still amount to a considerable number.

55 The adjective ‘public’ is added to indicate that while most transcripts and trial records were made public,

some were redacted or found inadmissible due to either safety measures for the defendant or to procedural decision which could render statements made by the defendant inadmissible: therefore not all statements made by the defendants at the ICTY concerning their role in the Srebrenica genocide were available for the public and thereby this research.

56 This material was found on the public website of the ICTY (www.icty.org) and in the online database of

the ICTY which provides access to ICTY public court records from 1994 up until the present (icr.icty.org). Often the limited search capacities and overall confusing structure of database would hinder my research to a great extent. For example: even though the exact name and number of a specific exhibit or other legal document relating to a specific case would be entered in the search engine of the database, the search engine would more often than not come up empty. This is probably due to the fact that while the document should have a specific name or number, this name or number could be cited in several ways. The important exhibit in the Karadžić case, the so-called Directive 7, is cited in the Trial Chamber as P383 but tendered in the database as P00838.E. If P838 is entered in the search engine, no documents are found.

(16)

As most of these trials went on for several years containing hundreds of days spent in court, the number of pages of trial transcripts and relating documents which were scanned through for each defendant often reached the thousands. The utterances found in these transcripts and documents through the scanning process were

subsequently selected and compiled, creating a database per defendant consisting of all their mentioning of their involvement in the Srebrenica genocide.57_{Subsequently, these} databases were analyzed by looking for the utilization of neutralization techniques by each defendant. The results can be found in Table 3. Given the variation in the length of the trials (and the amount of utterances found and analyzed) these findings are

standardized by using percentages rather than absolute figures: this gives a more accurate resemblance of which techniques each defendant used and how often. While compiling the results into tables and figures helps to give an overall impression of the utilization of neutralization techniques, it is far more interesting and useful to illustrate which defendant used which techniques (if any), and try to understand why. This puts each individual into their own context, rather than configuring these personal and human accounts of genocide into an abstract and almost dehumanized set of data. Therefore, each defendant will be given attention on his own accord.

Layout of this Thesis

The thesis starts out its first chapter by exploring the concept of a perpetrator of genocide: it establishes the core values of this thesis, such as the humanity of the

perpetrator and the notion of a shared humanity, and provides a concise exploration into perpetrator studies. This chapter concludes by explaining the current interdisciplinary status of perpetrator research in which the post-facto behavior of génocidaires is undervalued.

The second chapter introduces the reader to the subject area of the post-facto behavior, by exploring the ways in which the Nazi perpetrators behaved in the

Nuremberg tribunals. The analyzed repertoire of the post-facto behavior of the Nazi perpetrators will be used as a template to which the case of the Srebrenica perpetrators and perpetrators of genocide in general can be compared. The second half of this chapter explores how this post-facto behavior can be interpreted by using the theory of neutralization techniques. It explains each of the techniques and consequently amasses a comprehensive list with which perpetrator narratives can be analyzed.

57 These databases varied from not even a single page – for those who had stuck to their right to remain

silent – to almost ninety pages completely filled with comments made by the defendant about his

involvement in the Srebrenica genocide. For example: Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović remained silent, and Slobodan Milošević’s database consists of eighty-nine pages filled with Srebrenica-related comments.

(17)

The post-facto behavior of génocidaires cannot be analyzed without understanding the situational context in which the perpetrators of genocide found themselves. Both situation and disposition are important if we want to understand the perpetrators of genocide. Accordingly, the third chapter is devoted to provide the reader with a historic account of the context in which Yugoslavian men became involved in the perpetration of genocide. Moreover, it gives an overview of the events leading up to the genocide as well as the establishment of the ICTY.

We cannot overlook the Tribunal as an essential part of the context in which the post-facto behavior of the twenty men central to this thesis took place, just like we cannot understand the actions of the perpetrators of genocide when examined in a vacuum. Therefore the last chapter of this thesis will firstly focus on the ICTY and its function as a situational context. What follows is the core of this thesis: the analysis of the behavior exhibited and utterances made when the Srebrenica perpetrators were faced with their crimes at the ICTY, and how and to what extent the ways in which the perpetrators account for their actions correspond with or resemble the comprehensive list of neutralization techniques amassed in Chapter 2.

Finally, the conclusion will assess the key findings of this research and evaluate its implications, stressing the value of incorporation of the post-facto behavior of the génocidaires into the realm of human behavior. Moreover, the level of current literature on the subject is critical assessed. Ultimately, it suggests how future research can apply of the theory of neutralization in the field of genocide research.

(18)

Chapter One

From Willing Executioners to Ordinary Men

-Exploring the Perpetrator of Genocide

Those who kill are humans, just like those who are killed, that’s what’s terrible. You can never say: I shall never kill, that’s impossible; the most you can say is: I hope I shall never kill. I too hoped so, I too wished I could live a good and useful life, to be a man among men, equal to others, I too wanted to add my brick to our common house. But my hopes were dashed, and my sincerity was betrayed and placed at the services of an ultimately evil and corrupt work, and I crossed over to the dark shores, and all this evil entered my own life, and none of this can be made whole, ever. These words are of no use either, they disappear like water in the sand, this wet sand that fills my mouth. I live, I do what can be done, it’s the same for everyone, I am a man like other men, I am a man like you. I tell you I am just like you!

Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes), 200858 Preface

It is man who murders men.59_{Those who are involved in and bear responsibility for the} horror that is genocide; they too belong to the same human race as those they seek to destroy. And to seek to understand these génocidaires and why they did what they have done in a sincere scientific manner, the first hurdle to overcome is this reluctance to incorporate perpetrators “into a shared moral, ethical and ultimately human sphere.”60 As historian Yehuda Bauer pointed out in his speech to the German Bundestag: “Und das Fürchterliche an der Shoa ist eben nicht, daß die Nazis unmenschlich waren; das

Fürchterliche ist, daß sie menschlich waren - wie Sie und ich.” [“And what is terrible about the Shoah is precisely not that the Nazis were inhuman; what is terrible is that they were human – just as you and I.”]61

58 Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes), translated by Charlotte Mandell, (Harper Perennial:

New York, 2008), p. 24.

59 It is humankind itself that is capable of the most inhumane of acts, for “people are the weapons by which

genocide occurs.”See: James Waller, “Perpetrators of Genocide: An Explanatory Model of Extraordinary Human Evil,” Journal of Hate Studies, Vol. 1, Is. 1, (2002), pp. 5-22, p. 7, excerpted from James Waller’s book:

Children of Cain: How Ordinary People Commit Extraordinary Evil, (Oxford University Press: New York, 2001).

60 Jenni Adams, “Introduction,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 17, No. 2-3, (2011),

pp. 1-10, p. 1.

61 Yehuda Bauer, “Gedenkrede von Prof. Dr. Yehuda Bauer,” Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin, January 27th 1998,

as found on the website of the German Bundestag:

https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/geschichte/gastredner/bauer/bauer/199894, accessed last August 20th 2018.

(19)

We need to understand what the term génocidaire implies in order to be able to focus on the main quest of this thesis, which strives to make sense of the ways in which génocidaires behave after the killing has stopped, after these men – these real human beings – have committed such inhumane acts. What is genocide? Who is a génocidaire? How do we define and understand the perpetrator of genocide; is he a man or a

monster?62_{Accordingly, a description of the term genocide must first of all be given,} before those responsible for its implementation can be analyzed. A further clarification of the humanness of the perpetrator of genocide follows, establishing the so-called shared humanity as a core value of this thesis. Subsequently, a concise exploration into perpetrator studies will emphasize the establishment of the heterogeneity of the perpetrator group. Finally, this chapter concludes by explaining how the post-facto behavior of génocidaires is not only undervalued but also overgeneralized, which ultimately dehumanizes the perpetrators of genocide yet again. All in all, this exploration into the concept of the perpetrator of genocide serves as a necessary overview of our understanding of the génocidaire and highlights those areas deemed most relevant for this thesis.

1.1 Core Principles of Genocide and Génocidaires 1.1.1 Defining the Term

While society sought protection against individual crimes, or rather crimes directed against individuals, there has been no serious endeavour hitherto to prevent and punish the murder and destruction of millions. Apparently, there was not even an adequate name for such a phenomenon.

Raphael Lemkin, The American Scholar, 194663 Lemkin

Abhorred by the Nazi “butchery,” a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent named Raphael Lemkin struggled to find a way to define the atrocities committed against the Jews during the Second World War.64_{Mass murder, denationalization, and Germanization}65

62 In his provocatively titled book Man or Monster?, about the trial of former Khmer Rouge commander

Duch in Cambodia in 2009, genocide scholar and anthropologist Alexander Laban Hinton opposes the binary that is asserted when perpetrators of genocide are put into this frame of ‘either-or.’ See: Alexander Laban Hinton, Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer, (Duke University Press: Durham/London, 2016).

63 Raphael Lemkin, “Genocide,” The American Scholar, Vol. 15, No. 2, (Spring, 1946), pp. 227-230, p. 227.

64 Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation, (Princeton University Press:

Princeton/Oxford, 2003), p. 8; Roméo A. Dallaire and Andrew Coleman, “Genocide: Beyond Definition,” Review of Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning, and the Ultimate Crime by Payam Akhavan, Human

Rights Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3, (August 2013), pp. 778-785, p. 779.

65 Lemkin found it specifically “ridiculous to speak about the Germanization of the Jews or Poles in western

Poland, since the Germans wanted these groups eradicated entirely.” See: Lemkin, “Genocide,” The American

(20)

were words used to describe this “type of mass barbarity” which had shocked the “conscience of mankind.”66_{Lemkin, however, found these terms to be inadequate to} convey this “new kind of persecution,” 67_{and he consequently coined the term genocide:} a combination of the Greek word genos, meaning a nation or people, and the Latin suffix of –cide derived from the verb caedere, which translates into ‘to kill’ or ‘to murder.’68 Lemkin’s first definition of genocide was a novel interpretation of mass-scale massacre:

By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.… Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.69

This definition was aimed to distinguish genocide from massacres or mass killings by emphasizing its intent on destruction and annihilation.70_{Only four years after its} inception, Lemkin’s term genocide was codified by the United Nations when they convened in Paris in 1948 and adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.71

Genocide Convention

“In order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge,” the contracting parties of the UN Genocide Convention – as it is commonly referred to – established that “genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”72_{The Convention confirmed Lemkin’s} notion that genocide should be considered as a separate criminal category, distinct from other international crimes such as crimes against humanity or war crimes. The

Convention provided a precise legal definition of the crime genocide in its Article II:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

66 Lemkin, “Genocide,” p. 228.

67 Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals of

Redress, (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Washington DC, 1994), p. 80.

68 Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation, p. 8.

69 Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, p. 79.

70 Henry R. Huttenbach, “From the Editor: Towards a conceptual definition of Genocide,” Journal of

Genocide Research, Vol. 4, Is. 2, (2002), pp. 167-175, p. 167.

71 United Nations General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,

December 9th_{1948, [online], as found on the website of the UN:}

https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf, last accessed May 10th_{, 2017.}

72 UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December

(21)

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.73

Article III of the Convention specifies the following as punishable acts: (a) genocide; (b) conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) attempt to commit genocide; and (e) complicity in genocide.

Since the adoption of the Convention in 1948 this legal definition genocide as a crime has remained unaltered and has been reproduced word for word in the Statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,74_{International Criminal} Tribunal for Rwanda,75_{and the International Criminal Court.}76

Beyond the Law

The legal definition of genocide, as set out by the Convention, has by many academics been considered insufficient: it is often seen as either too narrow or too broad an approach.77_{By specifying the victim groups of genocide – that is to say national, ethnical,} racial or religious groups – the Convention excludes other potential victim groups, most notably those defined by political orientation or class.78_{This shortcoming of the}

Convention’s definition of genocide has been widely contested, especially since “it is clear that political groups were excluded from the definition for ‘political’ reasons rather than reasons of principle,” as Professor of Law William Schabas states.79_Nonetheless, Schabas does not see a need to modify and expand the definition, since in his view this “impunity gap” left by the Convention somewhat narrow definition of genocide has been filled by the “dramatic expansion in the concepts of both war crimes and crimes against humanity” during the 1990s.80

73 Idem.

74 United Nations Security Council, Updated Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former

Yugoslavia, September 2009, [online], as found on the website of the ICTY: http://www.icty.org/x/file/Legal %20Library/Statute/statute_sept09_en.pdf, last accessed May 10th_{, 2017.}

75 United Nations Security Council, Updated Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,

January 2010, [online], as found on the website of the ICTR:

http://unictr.unmict.org/sites/unictr.org/files/legal-library/100131_Statute_en_fr_0.pdf, last accessed May 10th_2017.

76 United Nations Security Council, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 2002, [online], as

found on the website of the UN:

https://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/ea9aeff7-5752-4f84-be94-0a655eb30e16/0/rome_statute_english.pdf, last accessed May 10th_2017.

77 Weitz, p. 9; Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons, “Introduction,” in: Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons

and Israel W. Charny (eds.), A century of genocide: critical essays and eyewitness accounts, 2nd_Edition,

(Routledge: New York/London, 2004), pp. 1-14, p. 4.

78 Take for example the genocide of alleged communists in Indonesia in 1965, or the vast repressions

carried out by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge against the educated elite. See: Weitz, p. 9.

79 William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, 2nd_{Edition, (Cambridge}

(22)

Another point of contention is focused on the latter phrasing of the Convention’s definition of genocide: “in whole or in part.” The intent to destroy a group in whole is easily understood: there has to be a specific intent to annihilate every single member of the group in order to meet the requirements of genocide. However, what constitutes destruction in part? Should there, for instance, be a “minimum numerical

requirement?”81_{Or does such a quantitative criterion merely serve to thwart “trivializing} genocide” and to meet the desire to “reserve genocide to the most egregious and

widespread atrocities?”82_{That the recognition of genocide is approached with}

incredible precaution is furthermore underlined by the burden of responsibility – i.e. the obligation of prevention and punishment – that comes with it.83_{In an attempt to answer} this question of quantities, the ICTY considers in its most recent judgment rendered that the destruction “must constitute a substantial part of that group such that it is significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole.”84

The dissatisfaction following the definition of genocide as composed by the Convention evidently started plenty of debates.85_{And although genocide scholars} generally still disagree about whether to use the legal definition as a basis for their research, neither have they been able to agree on an alternative common definition of

80 Moreover, “the coverage of crimes against humanity expanded to include acts perpetrated in time of

peace, and to a broad range of groups, not to mention an evergrowing list of punishable acts inspired by developments in international human rights law.” See: William A. Schabas, “Genocide Law in a Time of

Transition: Recent Developments in the Law of Genocide, ‘The United Nations Genocide Convention: A 60th

Anniversary Commemoration,’” Rutgers Law Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, (Fall 2008), pp. 161-192, p. 190-191.

81 Michael Bazyler, Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World, (Oxford

University Press: New York, 2016), p. 51. According to Üngör: “Although it makes little sense to quantify genocide, it is clear that a genocidal process always concerns a society at large, and that genocide often destroys a significant and often critical part of the affected communities.” See, Üngör, “Introduction,” Üngör (ed.), Genocide, p. 15.

82 David Alonzo-Maizlish, “In whole or in part: Group rights, the intent element of genocide, and the

quantitative criterion,” New York University Law Review, Vol. 77, Is. 5, pp. 1369-1403, p. 1374. In like manner, Sémelin also talks about the “banalization of the word genocide.” See: Jacques Sémelin, “Around the ‘G’ Word: From Raphael Lemkin’s Definition to Current Memorial and Academic Controversies,” Genocide Studies and

Prevention, Vol. 7, Is. 1, (April 2012), pp. 24-29, p. 26.

83 Also: “The prospect of the term genocide arising in policy making too often imposes an intimidating

brake on effective responses.” See: Bazyler, Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a

Post-Holocaust World, p. 61.

84 The ICTY based this substantiality on jurisprudence from the Krstić Appeal Judgment, and in order to

determine this substantiality the “relative numerical size of the targeted part, the prominence of the part of the group within the larger whole, and the area of the perpetrators’ activity and control” may be considered. See: “Trial Chamber Judgment,” Prosecutor v. Mladić, p. 1755-1756, 1806-1808.

85 There also appears to be a chasm between the restrictive legal definition and the popular understanding

of genocide. Extremely violent events that did not meet the legal requirements to be called genocide could nevertheless by public and scholarly opinion be considered as such. An example is whether the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina as such, beyond Srebrenica, could be characterized as genocide: the ICTY and the ICJ have ruled that this did not meet the legal definition of genocide, whilst scholars and NGOs have rejected these judgments as resp. a “travesty of justice” and a “exercise in denial.” See: Martin Mennecke, “Genocidal Violence in the Former Yugoslavia,” in: Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons (eds.), Century of Genocide:

Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 3rd_{Edition, (Routledge: New York/London), 2009, pp. 507-554, p.}

529; and David Luban, “Calling Genocide by its Rightful Name: Lemkin’s Word, Darfur, and the UN Report,”