Graduate School of Social Sciences
MSc International Relations
Master Thesis
Perpetrators of violence against non-combatants in
the Bosnian War
Seeking the logic behind the incomprehensible
By Yael van Pomeren
10458743
❖
Under the supervision of
Dr. Jana Krause
Second reading by
Dr. Darshan Vigneswaran
❖
Word count: 21.059
3
een volk dat voor tirannen zwicht
zal meer dan lijf en goed verliezen dan dooft het licht…
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Acknowledgments
First, I want to thank my supervisor Dr. Jana Krause, both for her encouragement during the process as for her lasting patience with me and my method of working. Additionally, I express my gratitude to Dr. Darshan Vigneswaran, as he kindly accepted taking time of his schedule to be the second reader of this thesis.
Lastly, I want to express sincere appreciation, tremendous amounts of gratitude and everlasting gratefulness to whomever has helped me in these past months. Your patience, your listening ears, your time and overwhelming efforts to keep me both mentally sane, inventive and productive have been more than valuable. You know who are: Thank You.
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Abstract
What makes individuals able to perpetrate atrocities and horrible acts of violence, without preceding criminal records or systematic exposure to violence in general? This research, focusing on the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, aims to show both the complex situations perpetrators in which perpetrators operate, to demonstrate the role malicious regimes play in creating the conditions for perpetrators to thrive in and to prove that there should be a focus on the importance of situational factors and context, for there are no personality traits that distinguish genocidal perpetrators from other human beings. It draws upon perpetrator-based research – primarily from the Holocaust and Rwanda, and researches documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in particular pleas and statements by the defendants.
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Table of contents
* For the purpose of maneuvering easily through the (online)document, hyperlinks are embedded within the table of contents
1. Acknowledgments ……… 4
Abstract 5
2. Illustrations………... 7
3. Preface………...…..
8
4. Introduction……….. 10
Gap in the literature 11
Methodological Approach 12
5. Perpetrator-based research……….. 14
6. Concepts ……….. 21
Ethnicity and anti-Semitism 21
Genocide and the dynamics within 24
Ethnic cleansing 29
7. Case study……… 32
8. Macro-level context………. 36
Befehl ist Befehl 38
Brotherhood and Unity 40
9. Ordinary men ……….. 44
Findings
5410. Discussion, Limitations and Recommendations……….. 55
11. Conclusions .……… 57
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Illustrations
1
1https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/atrocities/map.html
Figure 1: The Serbian concentration camps; within this thesis, both in the body text as in the embedded statements, names of towns and villages are mentioned. Figure 1 serves as a tool to keep overview of both the conflict in general and the place of certain events in specific.
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Preface
In regard to my ongoing research, many people ask me why I focus, to such an extent, on the Holocaust. The subject of this thesis is the behaviour of perpetrators in the Bosnian war, with all its mayhem and bloodshed. Why focus on the Holocaust, a totally different event, in a totally different time, by a totally different regime? To understand this paradox within this research I found the quote by French archaeologist and historian Paul Veyne to be very useful: History exists only in relation to
the questions we pose it. Knowledge about a certain event depends on the varied fields of research,
who have varied methods, approaches, and languages in perceiving and understanding a certain event. All these different kinds of research obtain different outcomes, therefore broadening and deepening the knowledge of one event. Within the field of genocide studies, the Holocaust holds a historical uniqueness against all other events. According to many scholars, this uniqueness faces the Holocaust with fundamental problems of historical narration and explanation. It might even not be explained or narrated at all, withal comparing other genocides with the Holocaust is even more off bounds.2 This
research does not hold that same view; ‘the Holocaust is no more exempt from perspectival reframing than any other historical occurrence’.3 Its uniqueness reveals the overall limits and boundaries of
historical interpretation.4
In comparing the Holocaust with other genocides we compare events of a similar kind (extermination) but not of a similar degree of perceived historical significance. No other genocide constituted such a historical and epistemological break as the Holocaust. The Holocaust as a
foundational past, an event that represents an age because it embodies a historical novum that serves as a moral and historical yardstick, as a measure of things human. The foundational element exists in people’s subjectivity and therefore is a historical construct.5 In the West – the importance of the
Holocaust is less pronounced in the rest of the world – it can be perceived as ‘ the core event of our time’. The core rupture in contemporary historical time, morality, representation and experience.6 The
Holocaust is the foundational past in our age, the paradigm shift that marked the beginning of ‘our way of thinking’, the icon to which one refers and where everything relates to. [emphasis intended]
Albeit the Holocaust exists in the past, it still shocks and is part of the present. Not only new research by historians have resulted in a vast new body of knowledge regarding the Holocaust, but also new
2 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge
University Press (2012), p.3
3 Donald Bloxham, ‘Europe, the Final Solution and the dynamics of intent’, Patterns of Prejudice, nr.4 (2010),
p.317-318.
4 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge
University Press (2012, p.3
5 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge
University Press (2012, p.5-6
6 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge
9 ways of representing the Holocaust have created a new level of understanding about the extreme event.7 New ways of thinking therefore have altered the way in which we nowadays think about an
event that occurred in the past. Although the event itself did not change, the way of thinking or the additional knowledge have made the representation of the event different. Therefore it does not only exist in the past, but also in the present. These new ways of thinking may also have the effect of the Holocaust receding in the past, this sense of ‘pastness’ itself opens up new ways of understanding and interpreting the event.
Although the understanding and interpretation of the Holocaust may have altered in decades following the event, the sheer fact that the Holocaust is the turning point in human history, remains unchallenged. This again is subjective, for someone living before 1933, this point of reference might have been the French Revolution of 1789. For our understanding is both dependent on its foundational past, the current paradigm, and the questions we choose to pose regarding our field of research. The association between the French Revolution and the Holocaust, together with the phenomenal concept of foundational pasts have been made by Alon Confino. His work is a must read in the field of memory studies in general and the field of genocide studies in specific. For me, a researcher from the West, my point of reference is the Holocaust. I am surefooted that this event influenced me in my choice of study, thesis subject and general interest. Nothing in our contemporary thinking is not influenced by it. This insight forces me to relate the events in Bosnia to the Holocaust. Forces me to interlink the knowledge of Holocaust studies to my thesis. To be aware of the relativity of this knowledge, to understand it has altered and changed depending on the questions we posed and the knowledge we had available, obliges me to use different angles, but most importantly to shift between scopes of analysis within this research. While doing this, I accept that others may have a different view or contrasting opinions.
7 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge
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Introduction
On the territory of the country in which I was born, shooting from firearms was usual when
celebrating the birth of a male child. These shots tell you everything, what a new male member of the family means and what is expected of him - strength, protection; he should be a warrior, a soldier, the head of the family, as they say in our parts. Unfortunately, when other kinds of shooting started in the former Yugoslavia, shooting in war, it was normal for every man, every male child, to put on a uniform, take up a weapon, and go to protect his homeland, his nation, and ultimately his family. This was expected of him. This was his role, a sacred role. 8
Bosnia-Herzegovina was a centuries old mosaic of Orthodox, Catholic, and Islamic believers. The rise of nationalism brought their transformation into Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims (later
‘Bošnjaks’) respectively. 9 In the citation above, Dragan Obrenović, a Serb senior officer and
commander indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, reveals an image of a divided land in which violence was almost inescapable. He almost makes it seem as if the war, which broke out in 1992, was inevitable. While urban areas developed a more complex cultural landscape, the villages of Bosnia were indeed vastly Serb, Croat, or Muslim. However, ‘territorial separation appeared a possibility only after outbreak of war in 1992, with ethnic cleansing central to campaigns of territorial aggrandizement’.10
Stevan Todorović, who was a Police Chief and a member of the Bosnian Serb Crisis Staff in Bosanski Šamac, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1993, endorses this; before the war, I had not
planned ethnic cleansing or persecution, nor was I aware of any such plan. Albeit he did not have
these plans before the war, Todorović persecuted non-Serb civilians on political, racial and religious grounds. Over a period of eight months, Todorović beat and tortured men, and ordered and
participated in the interrogation of detained persons ordering them to sign false statements. He issued orders and directives that violated the rights of non-Serb civilians to equal treatment under the law.11
The statements by Obrenović and Todorović lead to the most intriguing questions raised by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Yugoslav Wars in a broad sense, that is to say: what made so many ordinary men, without prior convictions or simmering hatred, become perpetrators of violence against defenceless non-combatants. What stands out in the Bosnian war in particular is the amount of violence against people the perpetrators were acquainted to. How were they capable hereof?
The Bosnian War has been the subject of many researches, has been analysed to a great extent, had a tremendous amount of media coverage at the time it occurred and produced countless
8 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Obrenović (IT-02-60/2).
9 Lynn M. Tesser, Ethnic Cleansing and the European Union; An Interdisciplinary Approach to Security, Memory and Ethnography, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, p.158.
10 Lynn M. Tesser, Ethnic Cleansing and the European Union; An Interdisciplinary Approach to Security, Memory and Ethnography, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, p.158.
11 articles related to it. The focus on why individuals in these conflicts have been able to perpetrate atrocities and horrible acts of violence, without preceding criminal records or systematic exposure to violence in general, however is heavily understudied – a few brilliant exceptions aside. This gap in the literature is partly due to, from a comparative perspective, two main weaknesses of micro-level research in the field of political violence. Namely; an empirical focus on the Holocaust and Rwanda on the one hand and the relative absence of systematic comparison across cases.12 ‘There has been
little direct study of either decision makers or direct perpetrators. Social scientists have rarely approached them’.13 The absence of sufficient research on perpetrators seems remarkable, for at a
fundamental level, conflict originates from the behaviour of individuals and their ‘repeated interactions with their surroundings, in other words, from its micro-foundations. A micro-level approach advances our understanding of conflict by its ability to account for individual and group heterogeneity within one country or one conflict’.14
Next to this, especially the field of genocide studies suffers from an ‘unhealthy academic cloistering’. In particular, a lack of dialogue with kin literature on political violence.15 This thesis will
integrate the concepts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass violence against non-combatants in general, to create a unique and comprehensive model to understand the motivations of perpetrators.
Why do individuals participate in mass violence against civilians? I base this research on one fundamental assumption: people are not naturally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. These terms are vague and cannot be tested. But if people are not naturally good or bad, what makes them become perpetrators of violence?
This leads to the following research question:
What makes ‘ordinary people’, without prior criminal record, perpetrate acts of violence against non-combatants?
This thesis argues that situational factors, context and group dynamics alter the state of mind of ordinary men and enable them to perform atrocities against defenceless non-combatants.
In order to answer this question I have studied ICTY documents – in particular sentencing judgements –, which include pleas and statements made by ICTY defendants and moreover will further draw upon already existing literature, primarily concerning Rwanda and the Holocaust. The next section describes the methods I used and how this research will further unfold. Hereafter this thesis is divided into six sections. First, I will explain on the basis of existing literature why it is
12 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and
Future Areas of Inquiry’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, nr.1 (2012), p.61.
13 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 422.
14 Philip Verwimp, Patricia Justino, Tilman Brück, ‘The Analysis of Conflict: A Micro-Level Perspective’, Journal of Peace Research, nr. 3 (2009), p. 307.
15 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and
12 plausible to assume that context provides a motive for murderous behaviour within mass led violence. Second, based on the literature I propose definitions to the concepts of ethnicity, genocide and ethnic cleansing which are most appropriate for the context of the Bosnian War. Third, I present a case study of the Bosnian War. Fourth, I will provide macro-level context, these will include counterfactual explanations. Fifth, I will follow a trail of thought which has become almost foundational within perpetrator based research and will substantiate this with my empirical analysis. Lastly, I will discuss the findings and limitations of my theory next to possible alternative explanations before I move towards my conclusions.
Methodological Approach
I have executed qualitative research during the process of this master thesis. This method is focussed on a small number of cases, which has allowed me to use intensive interviews, statements and/or pleas, to be argumentative in method and to be concerned with a rounded or comprehensive account of an event.16
The selection of the case study is partly ambiguous. As a scholar, I choose my research methods partly depending of the questions I pose it, and the data that is available. The databank of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia offers a tremendous wealth of resources the Tribunal has collected over the years of its existence, from 1993-2017. The case study of the Bosnian War, both strengthened and clarified by the personal accounts of the, meticulously in-depth, ICTY-data has offered insights in the characteristics and dynamics of the real life situations of the Bosnian War. Throughout this thesis, I will use statements from defendants to illustrate that these are coherent with my theory and which therefore shows that it is plausible. I use a combination of the findings from the ICTY-data and the already existent literature to develop a model to conceptualize my theory. This theory includes five categories of argumentation of why individuals participate in mass violence, with claims about (1) collective and horizontal peer pressure; (2) deprivation and frustration and in particular the idea that hardship causes stress that is channeled into violence; (3) fear and insecurity; (4) legitimacy, perpetrators commit violence because of their obedience to or vertical relationships with superiors and (5) identity, in particular the idea that individuals harbor outgroup antipathy or in-group solidarity which would lead them to harm others.17 It is my objective to test these arguments in
the case of the Bosnian War. I have explicitly omitted and dismissed psychological predispositions, such as sadism, as a general explanation for individuals to commit violence. In an addition to these micro-level explanations, the forthcoming section will postulate a theory regarding the cause of the outbreak of mass violence – a pathway to mass violence.
16 Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1994), p.4.
17 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and
13 This research focusses, on macro-level, on Serbs in general and the propaganda of Milosevic and his allies in specific. This choice has been made in part to frame the research and not to make it too broad, however I do realize this might have the implication of missing an explanation for the war as a whole. I propose others to fill this void and to further test this theory and its limitations. As a consequence of the choice to highlight the Serbian role in the conflict, the testimonies of individuals are almost exclusively that of Bosnian Serbs, with the exception of Ivica Rajić – a Bosnian Croat. His statement has been selected for it shows valuable insights in certain group dynamics and interplay between individuals. With his role within these group dynamics, he served as a counter-factual explanation. Besides are these group dynamics not strictly or exclusively reserved for Serbs, Croats or Bosnian Muslims respectively, either way.
The forthcoming section will prove the ‘ordinariness’ of perpetrators, demonstrate my theory and postulate a pathway to mass violence.
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Perpetrator-based research
‘On the one hand, I carried weapons in Sušica, I wore a uniform; and on the other hand, there is the fact that there were women there, aged the same as my mother, there were children there, there were people who used to be friends of mine, whom I used to see over the years in cafes, on sports fields, and playgrounds, with whom I spent summer vacations. And when I think about all of this, it turned into a nightmare that is pursuing me these days and that I see over and over again in my sleep. The question arises why did I do all that?‘ 18
Dragan Nikolić killed nine non-Serb detainees. The oldest of his victims was a 60-year-old man whose ordeal lasted for seven days during which he was beaten unconscious on several occasions. He was relentless: regardless of the victims’ calls for the beatings to stop, Nikolić continued to punch, kick and beat the detainees with weapons such as wooden bats, iron bars, axe handles, rifle butts, metal knuckles, metal pipes, truncheons and rubber tubing with lead inside. These were not sudden ups and downs, not sheer moments of emotional frailty: Dragan Nikolić beat two detainees with iron bars, wooden bats and rifle butts for approximately ninety minutes. He also admitted torturing three other male detainees in a similar manner, the injuries inflicted by him during the beatings were in some instances fatal. Nikolić personally removed and facilitated the removal of female detainees from the hangar where they were interned, in the knowledge that the removal of the women was for the purposes of rape and other sexually abusive conduct. To say that he created and maintained an atmosphere of terror in the camp, is an understatement. He was terror.19 `
In Vlasenica, eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serb forces drew up a detention camp for Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs; the Sušica camp. Between late May and October 1992, as many as eight thousand Muslim civilians and other non-Serbs from Vlasenica and the surrounding villages were successively detained in the hangar at Sušica camp. The number of detainees in the hangar at any one time was usually between three hundred and five hundred. The building was severely overcrowded and living conditions were deplorable.20 Here Dragan Nikolić, also known as
Jenki, was commander from early June 1992 until its closure in late September 1992. Here, a normal
man became able of committing heinous crimes against people he used to be his friends.
The burning question remains, both with Nikolić, his victims, their families and international society as a whole, how someone is capable of performing such extraordinary crimes. To believe, like Chalk and Johassohn, that ‘mass killing is extremely difficult for ordinary people to carry out’ and therefore ‘requires the recruitment of pathological individuals and criminals’ would be the preferable answer to
18 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolic (IT-94-2). 19 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolic (IT-94-2). 20 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolic (IT-94-2).
15 this question.21 This would imply that an ordinary human being, someone ‘such as you and I’, would
not be capable of performing such atrocities, such unimaginable horror. A focus on this
psychopathology of perpetrators, the idea that perpetrators possess a ‘criminal personality’ or an extraordinary personality in general, reveals more of our own personal vision on how one wants the world to work, a personal dream, then that it is a truthful reflection of reality. This way of thinking helps to create an emotional distance between ‘them’, the perpetrators, and ‘us’, ‘normal human beings’, helps to believe that these mass murderers are intrinsically different from you. This does not create answers within the reality of perpetrator behaviour, but serves emotional needs of people whom cannot cope with the ordinariness of perpetrators.22
In fact, a broad and strong consensus dominates the social sciences, more specific:
perpetrator-focused research, that ‘ordinary men’ can and do commit genocidal crimes. 23 There are no
personality traits that distinguish genocidal perpetrators from other human beings,24 there is nothing a
priori that would predict the average perpetrators to commit violence. Heterogeneous, complex and
mutability all characterize the perpetrators of mass violence. 25 The majority therewith is not
composed of pathological killers, albeit a small percentage of the killers, roughly the same as in society in large, say five percent, may indeed ‘show psychopathologies that make them impervious to the suffering of others and even cause them to enjoy it’. 26 To cite Bloxham: ‘..while personal
disposition and/or belief seem generally to be insufficient to forestall involvement in genocide or persecution if the ‘right’ socio-political context is in place, character and personal attitude assuredly can influence the zeal the perpetrator brings to the task..’27 This research does not focus on these
zealous killers. One can imagine that pathological killers flourish during genocidal events, it lies in line with expectations. The limits of our understanding, however, are sought up when we
acknowledge that the majority of operating masses within a genocide are composed of ordinary men.
21 F. Chalk, K. Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, New Haven:
Yale University Press (1990), p 28.
22 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford: Oxford
University Press (2007), p 20.
23 For instance: Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 19.; Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 426; and Christopher Browning,
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins
(1992), p.188-189.
24 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 19.
25 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and
Future Areas of Inquiry’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, nr.1 (2012), p.62.
26 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 19.
27 Donald Bloxham, ‘The organisation of genocide: perpetration in comparative perspective’, in: O. Jensen,
C.C.W. Szeynmann, ed., Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p 187.
16 The term ‘ordinary men’ was adopted by Christopher Browning in his marvellous work regarding Police Battalion 101, which showed the effect of social context on individual choices and actions, the importance of a cultural background of shared convictions and sentiments regarding ‘other people’ on the one hand, 28 and exhibited simultaneously the ‘ordinariness’ of the perpetrators of mass violence,
and how ghastly the work of killing at close range is. Something the Battalion of reserve policemen experienced when they marched thousands of Jewish civilians into the forest near Józefów and shot them in the back of the neck. For ordinary men, to be able to carry out such a shocking act of cruelty, a mental blockade needs to be penetrated. A psychological barrier also is raised when a person has to kill someone who is regarded as occupying the same ‘moral universe’ as oneself, therefore this person is entitled to the same norms of protection.29 But what is perhaps the most difficult, and perhaps the
most difficult to imagine, is to kill a person who is a known one and one regards in positive terms, for ‘killing kith and kin is more than just a physical act; it is an act of social violation. It destroys not just bodies, but bonds’.30 This intimate mass killing – mass violence against one’s own neighbours,
friends, and/or family – was not infrequent to the Bosnian genocide, as the example of Dragan Nikolić showed. People who before the war were neighbours, who shared coffee and drank Rakija – the popular fruit brandy, often made of plums– together, whose children played together and fell in love. These people were intimate before the war, something almost impossible to detect during the conflict. This research aims to find ‘context and motive for murderous behaviour’. Herewith it builds upon the psycho-sociological theories – based upon the assumption of inclinations and propensities common to human nature, but not excluding cultural influences – which provide important insights into the behaviour of the perpetrators. 31 Interviews, statements and pleas before the ICTY show valuable
insights in both the situations in which the perpetrators found themselves, as of the background of the individuals; in what situations did they perpetrated their atrocities, how do they look back at it, why did they do it? It enables a level of understanding within the lowest-levels of analysis and grants us valuable insights within the complex social and political influences that affect motivations of respective perpetrators.
So, the aim is to understand the actions of individuals, for their reasons to perform genocide remain uncertain. Genocides are ‘performed’ by the masses, though from a rationalist perspective, popular participation in mass slaughter is baffling for conditions of peace are preferred for the masses above situations of violence. Likewise, support from the masses for elite projects of genocide or ethnic cleansing is incomprehensible, for it is the masses who endure most of the costs, and elites,
28 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, p. 35.
29 Helen Fein, Accounting for the genocide: National responses and Jewish victimization during the Holocaust,
New York: Free Press (1993).
30 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.3. 31 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
17 who gain most of the benefits.32 Logic therefore does not explain the isolated behaviour of the
individual in the run-up towards a genocide. Therefore it is necessary to involve other ‘scopes of research’ within this research. For this aims to be a micro-level research, but what is a sole perpetrator without its group, what is a group without steering from the capital based elite?
Two of the most postulated pathways to mass violence are the models of ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘ethnic fears’. The ethnic hatred thesis views collective hatreds as an ‘integral part of ethnic group identities, which can ‘simmer’ for generations, through myth, memory or both, until someone pushes the lid of the pot, at which point, they may ‘erupt’ or ‘explode’ into mass-led violence against the hated group’.33 The ethnic fear thesis focuses not on cultural constants, but is ‘focused on elite ambitions
and moves’. Elites foment mass fear of the ethnic ‘other’ using extremist media, organized riots, arbitrary arrests, and other know techniques, in pursuit of their political goals’.34 This Ethnic fear
mobilizes and fuels ethnic hatred to create an antagonism between ethnic groups, in the advantage of the state. I act in accordance with Fujii and propose to view this ‘state-sponsored ethnicity’ not as an external force that acts on people, but as a ‘script’ for violence that people act out.Where a script is referred to as play, whose performance constitutes an event or a moment in daily life.35
The architects of this script are usually threatened elites in the capital, for these groups genocide, or mass-led violence in general, is perceived to be the best strategy for maintaining power.
36 It can become ‘equally or more murderous when the motive is revenge, and descend to the worst
levels of slaughter when there is great fear that the survival of the enemy group might endanger the survival of one’s own group’. The most perverse of genocidal killings surfaces if a group feels that the very presence of ‘the other’, tarnishes the environment that ‘the other’ must be exterminated to make ‘normal life’ possible again.37 To achieve this, the text, or script, works as a plan to create a new
social and political order, which ensures the political goals of the powerful groups in the capital. Through controlled channels, party rallies, meetings and mass media, they try to make others see this world as well.38 In this sense, a genocide, campaign of ethnic cleansing and other forms of mass-led
violence against a hated group, is not a home grown project; it is sponsored and conceived by a small group of powerful extremists which want to maintain/expand their power through mass violence.39 By
the creation and the dehumanization of ‘the other’, mass-led violence is explained as an instrumental
32 Rui de Figueiredo, Barry Weingast, ‘Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict’, in:
Barbara Walter, Jack Snyder, ed., Military Intervention in Civil Wars, New York: Columbia University Press 1999, p.262.
33 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.4. 34 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.4. 35 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12. 36 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12. 37 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), p.2.
38 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12. 39 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.2.
18 component, located in the desire of political leaders to gain power.40
For local leaders and powerholders this text, or script, is not a set of instructions or a list where they can systematically check the boxes. The script is rather an opportunity for local leadership, to express, gain or reclaim power within its communities; ‘to profit from the moment, motivated by personal, not ideological, interest’.41 To apply their own interpretations to the text, in order to get the
best out of the situation given to them, for them. An example hereof is visible during the implementation of the Dayton peace agreement. This may seem as a contradiction, for a peace agreement is the end of a conflict and the broadcasting of the script marks the beginning or the run-up to a conflict. Yet, the problems the United States and NATO officials had with the implementation of the political clauses of the agreement show the opportunity conflict offers for local leadership and therefore exemplifies their willingness to accept and implement the division the script proposes – either on the basis of religion, ethnicity or social status. ‘The cease-fire holds because each of the
Bosnian factions is led by authoritarian-nationalist figures, who can give an order to halt the fighting and it will be obeyed right down the line. The reason the political clauses are not being implemented is because they threaten the power bases of many of these same leaders, who have an interest in keeping Bosnia divided and the conflict defined in nationalist terms to insure their hold on power’.42
Another example of the importance of local leaders and powerholders was visible in Rwanda, where at neighbour level, the most important actors were local leaders. Local leaders who had the backing of their ‘bourgmestre’ or higher level officials were responsible for organising their communities for violence. Despite the extremist leanings of their patrons or backers, leaders where not necessarily true believers. Local leaders sought power. Genocide, in this sense, was a means, not an end. 43
In times of crises, people are inflamed with fear and hatred, driven by the insecurity and opportunity of the moment. Once these emotions are in play, they drive Serbs to kill Muslims,
Muslims to kill Hindus, and Hutu to kill Tutsi. Immitigably, these steps follow each other up. Motives and interests become immaterial to the outcome, under the conditions imposed by the crisis, motives and interests converge. They become shared by all members of the same ethnic group. There is group wise identification with and disidentification from other human beings. [emphasis embedded in original text]44 This convergence is exactly the build-up the masterminds of these projects had in
mind: masses of one group go after masses of the other.45 Herewith, the local leaders and
powerholders fulfil the role of director of the play, written by the national-level elite.46
40 Kristen Renwick Monroe, ‘Cracking the Code of Genocide; the moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders, and
Nazis during the Holocaust’, Political Psychology, nr. 5 (2008),, p.701.
41 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda Cornell University Press (2009), p.129. 42 Thomas Friedman, Foreign Affairs;The Real Bosnia Debate, New York Times, May 8 1996.
43 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.129. 44 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 36.
45 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.5. 46 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12-13.
19 Notwithstanding, a play is nothing without its actors. The director is dependent on the actors – their skills, interests and commitment level. The reasons for joining ‘the play’ are different for
everyone; some of the actors are truly supportive of the cause, believe in it. Some of the actors are forced to join, or see it as the easiest way to survive the conflict. Others may have different reasons to join. The vision of the director, nonetheless, is dependent on how well the actors perform their roles. 47
State sponsored ethnicity as a script for violence, not a cause, alters our view of ethnicity. If ethnicity operates as a script, we can expect its ‘actors’ to have a differentiating response to this script;
‘perpetrators’ are not a monolithic group without distinction. Whereas this both can be between individual actors or between individual ‘performances’ by respective actors. For, an actor can be more convincing or ‘close to the text’ in some instances than another. So, where Browning and Hilberg use a spectrum of roughly three variations of perpetrators; from enthusiastic participation, through dutiful, nominal, or regretful compliance, to differing degrees of evasion.48 This research
acknowledges that every perpetrator fits somewhere within this spectrum, but emphasizes the possibility of one actor shifting back and forth alongside this spectrum, differing from situation to situation. Therefore, by conceptualizing state sponsored ethnicity one can ‘disaggregate the violence and investigate the complexities and ambiguities embedded within the genocide’.49
These arguments are not meant to reduce the vehemence of the atrocities or to shift responsibility for that matter. They show how the populist appeal of politicians can incite violent passions against ‘rival groups’ and provoke those groups to take a defensive stance against opposite groups in other to defend themselves.50 That politicians can see opportunities for themselves in
rallying support by creating antagonism between groups of different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, for instance after the fall of authoritarian or dictatorial regimes or similar power vacuums of that nature.51 Within this research by and large it is necessary to move beyond the typing
of perpetrators as evil or as inhumane. By demonizing and dehumanizing perpetrators, we thereby engage in the very same processes that helped to make their crimes possible in the first place, for perpetrators often minimize and diminish their victims to help justify their behaviour.52 The most
extreme form of this diminishing is dehumanization; ‘the Nazis, for example, branded the Jews as,
inter alia, ‘parasites’, ‘vermin’ and ‘demons’; in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, those identified by the Khmer
Rouge as ‘enemies of the people’ were labelled as ‘sub-people’ (anoupracheachon); during the
47 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.13. 48 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
York: HarperCollins (1992), p.221; and Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders: The Jewish
Catastrophe 1933–1945, New York: Harper Perennial (1992), p. 51.
49 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.13. 50 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 45.
51 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 45.
52 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford: Oxford
20 genocide in Rwanda, Tutsis were denounced as ‘cockroaches’ (inyenzi); and the late Serbian
paramilitary leader Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, referred to the Bosnian Muslims as ‘wild dogs’.’53
By emphasizing the fact that a genocide is performed by normal people, like you and me, we are forced to carry out further research into the causes, instead of simply shifting them to acts
performed by psychopaths and pathological killers. We are obliged to see the perpetrators as human beings, for ‘by robbing the perpetrators of their humanity, we thus regard them in the very same way that they viewed their victims’.54 In order to understand perpetrators, a degree of empathy for them is
inherent. This can be seen as an evasion, a way to shift attention from the horrors. Trying to understand the perpetrators of violence can be seen as the first step to simply forgive them for their atrocities. To explain away or to minimize the significance of by or as if by explanation. Browning parries this criticism by rejecting the old clichés that to explain is to forgive, to understand is to forgive. Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving. Not trying to understand
perpetrators as human beings would make this study, and any perpetrator bases studies, impossible, if one wants to go beyond one dimensional caricature.55 About this the French Jewish historian Marc
Bloch, who himself was captured and shot by the Gestapo for his work in the French resistance, wrote:
When all is said and done, a single word, understanding is the beacon light of our studies. 56
53 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), perpetrators, p. 424.
54 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 424.
55 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
York: HarperCollins (1992), p. xviii Preface.
56 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
21
Concepts
Ethnicity and anti-Semitism
The United Nations’ definition of genocide, which is ‘the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group’,57 obliges us to think about ‘ethnicity’, or anti-Semitism
or any other sort of hatred towards a minority, as the primary reason for genocide. In the forthcoming section both the problem with this focus on ethnicity, with its presumed authority over genocide in specific and mass violence in general, and the problems of the limitations in the manner the ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘ethnic fears’ models treat key concepts, such as ‘the masses’, ‘elites’ and ‘ethnicity’, will be discussed on the basis of the rhetoric as formulated by Fujii. The latter will be the outset of this section.
The ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘ethnic fears’ models, both take a bird’s eye view of the dynamics that support violence. From afar it is facile to perceive all political conflicts to be of an ethnical nature and concluding thereof that ethnicity is the primary source of violence, instead of one of the several possibilities among many other factors.58 Next to this, the previous sections have demonstrated the
problems with perceiving certain groups as ‘a monolithic whole without distinction’, hence treating ‘the masses’ as such an undifferentiated whole conceals the distinctions within this group. Some members might be more ambitious or more passive, some might have ties with ‘elites’ and some not.
59 The tendency to view groups as to be unitary actors is a limitation perceptible in the treatment of the
concept of ethnicity by the models. Members of ethnic groups are not necessarily unitary actors which behave in the same manner under conditions of threat or insecurity, nor do all its members share the same interests and goals. 60 Conjointly, ‘privileging ethnic divisions over other types of cleavages’
not only risks omitting other factors which might serve as a cause for conflict, but it comes close to accepting the ideas of hyper nationalist leaders, who require people outside of their country to believe that the conflict within their borders is ethnic rather than political. This reframing of political
problems as ethnic is, according to Fujii, done with consideration and intent. For ‘deeply entrenched ethnic problems require radically different solutions than political contests’. 61
That political violence can be ethnic is well established, maybe too well established. But why people like Dusko Tadic, who was portrayed by the Defence as ‘an intelligent, responsible and mature adult raised by his parents in a spirit of ethnic and religious tolerance and capable of compassion towards and sensitivity for his fellows’62, became a perpetrator of ‘ethnic violence’ remains a
57 Helen Fein, Social Recognition and Criminalization of Genocide, Current Sociology, nr.1 (1990), pp.1-7. 58 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.9. 59 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.9. 60 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.10. 61 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.10. 62 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Tadić (IT-94-1).
22 conundrum. This research argues that genocidal scripts create divisions between certain groups within society, albeit based upon a distinction in ethnicity, religion or social status. Ethnical hatred did not create genocidal violence, for genocidal mass murder is politically motivated violence.63 This is also
perceivable in Nazi-Germany, where it was defeat in World War I and the subsequent economic crisis which brought the Nazis to power, not Anti-Semitism.64 After that, the legitimizing and organizing of
mass murder on a staggering scale was not exclusively dependent on Anti-Semitic motivation of the perpetrators and the Jewish identity of the victims; seventy to eighty thousand mentally and physically handicapped Germans; tens of thousands of Polish intelligentsia; tens of thousands non-combatant victims of reprisal shootings; more than two million Russian POWs were murdered by the organized mass murder machine of the Third Reich.65 The absence of ethnic motives to kill are also perceivable
with Darko Mrđa, who was a member of the so-called ‘intervention squad’, a special Bosnian Serb police unit in the town of Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The absence of ethnic divisions in pre-war Yugoslavia is clear, from his point of view:
Frankly speaking, until the very last moment I believed that I would be a member of a generation that would live its lifetime in peace. I grew up in a socialist system. At school I learned about brotherhood and unity between various peoples living in my country. However, I knew that a number of my
ancestors perished in the previous war. I knew about the Jasenovac camp66. However, at the time I was convinced that that was part of a distant past, something that did not concern me. I had peaceful relationships with my neighbours, Muslims and Croats. We lived together and socialised together, and I even had girlfriends that were non-Serbs. 67
Dragan Kolundžija – a guard shift commander at the notorious Bosnian Serb-run Keraterm detention camp in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 – is of the same mind: Before the war, I socialised
with all people. I was friends with everyone, regardless of their nationality and faith. Even today, I have no prejudice in that respect. I am aware now that at the time I was a tool in the hands of others, and this I deeply regret.68
Political violence can be ethnic, although the citations above contradict that these actors had ethnic motives for participating in the violence. Kolundžija even considers the cause of his participation in
63 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), p.17.
64 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2015), p. 44.
65 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
York: HarperCollins (1992), p.203.
66 Jasenovac was a concentration and extermination camp in Croatia during the Second World War. It was
established and operated by the Ustaše regime of Croatia, not by the Nazi’s. Although the estimates vary, presumably between 77.000 and 99.000 people died in Jasenovac.
67 The Prosecutor v. Darko Mrđa (IT-02-59).
23 violence to lie outside of his own grasp; he was a mere tool in the hands of others. This is a sharp contrast, with the image of hatred towards the targeted group, simmering for generations. In the forthcoming section the distinction will be made between what this thesis considers acts of genocide, what as acts of ethnic cleansing and what not, in order to clarify the concepts within this study and to distinguish different actions perpetrated within the context of the Bosnian war. This will be done on the basis of both literature and a connecting case study.
24 In order to understand the behaviour of perpetrators of mass atrocities it is important to not only define what possible causes for genocide are, but also what this research considers as acts of genocide. What are the limits within we study genocide and where we begin to study, for instance, ethnic cleansing or civil war? But also; who are perpetrators of mass atrocities, who are genocidal killers and who are neither? At first sight it is easy to brand some people as victims and others clearly as perpetrators, but in the chaos of genocide, the desperation of conflict, in the midst of a devastating crisis, where people are torn between choices in order to survive, are distinctions as easily made as one might perceive it? The forthcoming section will begin to discuss the concept of genocide, afterwards the concept of ethnic cleansing, after which a case study follows.
Genocide and the dynamics within
The United Nations’ definition of genocide, ‘the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group’,69 is only applicable if one is studying genocide from a state-level
view. To define if a conflict as a whole ‘qualifies’ for the predicate ‘genocide’. It does not clarify which acts can be constituted as acts of genocide. However, this does indicate the dynamics of typing certain events as ‘genocidal’ or not; the crime of genocide has two elements: intent and action. Where intentional means purposeful, it can be proven from certain statement or orders. There must be intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. This is derived from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts. Intent is different from motive. Whether the motive is land expropriation, national security or territorial integrity. If the perpetrators commit acts intended to destroy a group, even part of a group, it is genocide. Genocide needs not to encompass the desired destruction of an entire ethnic group, ‘destruction of only part of a group (such as its educated members, or members living in one region) is also genocide’. This can be drawn wider: an individual perpetrator may be committing genocide even if he kills only one person, so long as he knew he was participating in a larger plan to destroy the group. Acts of genocide need not kill or cause the death of members of a group, it is for instance a crime to plan or incite genocide, even before killing starts, and to aid or abet genocide. Criminal acts include conspiracy, direct and public incitement, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the targeted group, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.70 Therefore, this research defines genocide in broad terms – as anyone who
took part in any activity that related directly to the genocide (as opposed to the civil war). These activities include searching for members of the targeted group to kill, denouncing the hiding places of members of the threatened group and raping members thereof .They do not include such activities as carrying supplies for the regime’s army, fleeing one’s home because of war-fighting or the forcible removal of members of the threatened group from their homes. The definition must be broad to
69 Helen Fein, Social Recognition and Criminalization of Genocide, Current Sociology, nr.1 (1990), p.1. 70 Gregory H. Stanton, ‘What is Genocide?’, http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/whatisit.html, accessed on
25 capture all the different ways people participated in the genocide, but narrow enough to differentiate genocidal violence from war violence – despite the fact that genocidal leaders did their best to link the two into a seamless whole – and campaigns of ethnic cleansing. 71 Within this research, testimonies of
perpetrators of mass atrocities are included. Whilst within this research a distinction is made between war, genocide and ethnic cleansing, this distinction is not necessarily true for the
respondents/perpetrators.72 If I mention ‘the war’, I refer to the struggle between the forces of the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia which were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia, respectively. For the respondents/perpetrators, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing may be perceived as being a part of the war as a whole.
Renwick Monroe describes three types of people in a genocide: rescuers, bystanders and perpetrators. Where she argues that the boundaries between rescuers, bystanders and perpetrators are more porous in reality.73 Albeit these categories are useful to typing certain actors in certain settings,
genocides are dynamic, while categories are static. In dynamic settings, contexts and conditions change, sometimes in an instant. These changes, in turn, can shift actors’ relations, perspectives, motives, and identities. Static categories cannot capture these shifts.74 Therefore, whilst these
typifications are inescapable – they have the natural tendency to clarify the role of actors in a given situation -, they are not more than just that; a typing of a certain actor in a certain situation. They do not distinguish between different levels of moral or legal culpability.75 Primo Levi argued that
although human beings have a natural desire for ‘clear-cut distinctions’, the history of the death camps ‘could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors. He proposes a ‘grey zone’ between simple images of perpetrator and victim, the grey zone of corruption and collaboration that flourished in the concentration camps of Nazi-Germany. From low-ranking functionaries having minuscule advantages, through the truly privileged Kapos (prisoner functionary or Funktionshäftling) who committed the worst atrocities – in the sense that they were used by the Nazis to take care of the ‘dirty work’. Perhaps the most gruesome and compelling example of the defectiveness of static categories are the Sonderkommandos. These work units were usually composed of Arbeidsjuden, who were forced under threat of their own death, to aid with the disposal of the gas chambers victims.76
In Levi’s opinion, the Sonderkommandos were National Socialism’s ‘most demonic crime’.77 Levi
focussed on the spectrum of victim behaviour within the grey zone, but he suggested this grey zone
71 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.14. 72 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.15. 73 Kristen Renwick Monroe, Cracking the Code of Genocide; the moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust, p. 422.
74 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.8. 75 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.14. 76 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, New York: Summit Books (1989), p.36-39.
77 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
26 might be applicable to perpetrators as well. Albeit the grey zone of Levi might be applicable to both perpetrators as victims, it must be perceived with caution. ‘Perpetrators and victims in the grey zone were not mirror images of one another. Perpetrators did not become fellow victims in the way some victims became accomplices of the perpetrators. The relationship between perpetrator and victim was not symmetrical. The range of choice each faced was totally different.’78
We must not examine them strictly as perpetrators, but look at the range of actions they took, both in support and defiance of the atrocities.79 An example hereof in the Bosnian War is Damir Došen. He
was a guard shift leader at the Keraterm detention camp in 1992, the camp was located in a former ceramics factory and storage area complex located just outside the town of Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He permitted the persecutions and violence towards detainees in the camp. This included beatings, rape, sexual assaults, harassment, humiliation, psychological abuse and killing. However, the amount of aggravation was limited in light of the restricted nature of his authority, and the fact that as a shift leader he often acted to improve the terrible conditions that prevailed in the camp. Damir Došen was sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment: I wish to say that I was in Keraterm,
that I was sent there as a reserve policeman, that I spent two months there guarding innocent people who were imprisoned there. I wish to say that at that time I was young, thoughtless, that I had lost a son, that I was caught in the chaos of war and death in which I found it difficult to find my bearings. The people who are imprisoned were my fellow townspeople. They were innocent and they were suffering grievously. I tried to help them, to make it easier for them, to talk to them, to protect them. The conditions under which they were imprisoned were below human dignity. I am guilty because I agreed to be in Keraterm. I am guilty because I did not help them more. For this I am guilty before God, before those people, and before you, Your Honours. I am sorry for every man who suffered, every family that lost a family member, every child that has lost a father. I am sorry for every mother who has lost a son. I want everybody to hear my words, especially my neighbours, who were
imprisoned only because they were not Serbs. Evil happened, and evil must not happen again, nor must it be forgotten. I am conscious of all this today. I'm conscious that a man, however small and impotent he may be, must not allow himself to be overcome by lack of courage and that he must sacrifice himself in such situations. This is the only way in which we can help future generations to overcome injustice and inhuman actions. I hope that the Trial Chamber will give me a chance to return to my family and to my children, to return to my neighbours of all religious and nationalities, and I hope that we will again have an opportunity to live in my town of Prijedor with my fellow
78 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New
York: HarperCollins (1992), p. 187.
27
townspeople with whom I lived and kept company before the war. I hope that we shall live together again in harmony, as we did before the war and before the evil that befell us.80
Even though one might perceive a guard Keraterm, one of the most horrible concentration camps of the Bosnian war, who agreed to be there and carried out the tasks that were asked of him to be a horrible human beings, whatsoever. The citation above shows how people can be drawn into a situation under false pretences, not fully aware of the situation, overall misinformed or simply naïve. This does not make their choices just or better, but it does give a valuable example of the possibility of one actor shifting back and forth alongside this spectrum, differing from situation to situation. Another example hereof is Dragan Kolundžija, who was aware of the inhumane conditions the detainees were kept in. He knew they were beaten, raped, sexually assaulted and killed, but made an effort to ease the harsh conditions at the camp for many of the detainees. Kolundžija was sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment:
I would like to add my sincere human regret. I'm sorry for all the families of the people who were in Keraterm. All my life I tried not to do unto others as I would not like to be done unto me. About the existence of the camp, I learnt only when I was assigned there as a reserve policeman. Throughout the time I worked there, I viewed all people equally, regardless of whether I knew them or not. The events that followed demonstrated that I was naive. It is true that I complained many times about the
conditions for the people in Keraterm, but I see that it was not enough. It is true that I allowed of my own will people to be brought food, blankets, and clothing for the detainees, but I see that that, too, was not enough. I prevented all sorts of harm to be done to the detainees. I see now that it was not enough, although this did not happen while I was so-called shift leader. I never protected only those people whom I knew. I think I acted the same towards everyone. For all my mistakes, I bear
responsibility. It is true that the massacre in Room 3 happened in the night shift, when I was on duty. God is my witness that I tried everything to save the people, to prevent the crime, but unfortunately I did not succeed against a large number of armed people. For the rest of my life, I won't be able to forget that bloody night, nor will I be able to forget all that happened to my townspeople who were unjustly contained in the Keraterm camp. It is hard for me to remember those people in those
conditions and to realise that I didn't do more for them. I never wanted to stay in Keraterm, and I did not agree with the conditions, but I believed if I stayed, I could help to lessen the evil and to ease the suffering. As an ordinary reserve policeman, or the so-called shift leader, I thought I had done all I could. 81
Around 20–21 July 1992, Room 3 at the Keraterm camp, which had previously held residents from Kozarac, was emptied. New detainees from the recently cleansed Brdo area were incarcerated. For the
80 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Sikirica, Damir Dosen and Dragan Kolundzija (IT-95-8). 81 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Sikirica, Damir Dosen and Dragan Kolundzija (IT-95-8).
28 first few days, the detainees were denied food as well as being subjected to beatings and abuse. On the day of the massacre, witnesses observed the arrival of a large number of armed persons in the camp, wearing military uniforms and red berets. A machine-gun was placed in front of Room 3. That night, bursts of shooting and moans could be heard coming from Room 3. A machine gun started firing. The next morning there was blood on the walls in Room 3. There were piles of bodies and wounded people. The guards opened the door and said: ‘Look at these foolish ‘balijas’ – they have killed each other’. A truck arrived and transported the bodies away from Keraterm, there were 128 dead bodies on the truck. As the truck left, blood could be seen dripping from it.82 This was the ‘bloody night’
Kolundžija witnessed.
This research does not focus on personality traits, because the spectrum of perpetrators is too broad; their respective motives for perpetrating mass atrocities are not the same. Plus, personality-based accounts seem to imply that perpetrator behaviour is fixed and unchanging. However, perpetrators can both be cruel and kind, roles are not fixed. This section argued that genocides are dynamic, while categories are static. In dynamic settings, contexts and conditions change, sometimes in an instant. These changes, in turn, can shift actors’ relations, perspectives, motives, and identities. Static
categories cannot capture these shifts.83 Therefore this study does not rely on personality, but focusses
on circumstances and context. A key explanatory factor is context, that is to say ‘the particular circumstances within which a perpetrator’s crimes were committed’. Indeed, ‘personality itself cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader social milieu’.84
82 The Prosecutor v. Milomir Stakić (IT-97-24-T)
83 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.8. 84 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 430.
