For over thirty years, Serbian activist Nataša Kandić has been fighting to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s. Her work has provided crucial evidence to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, including the famous video showing the summary execution of six Bosnian Muslim prisoners, carried out in the summer of 1995 in Srebrenica by a Serbian paramilitary unit known as the “Scorpions”. She has received the most prestigious international awards, but in her own country, Serbia, she continues to be targeted by extremists for her dogged search for the truth, which has led her to point the finger at her own government on several occasions. We met her in Belgrade, at the headquarters of the Humanitarian Law Center of Belgrade, founded by her in 1992.
Thirty years later, there are still many – too many – answers missing about Srebrenica and the exploitation of that genocide on the skin of civilians continues as much as ever. What kind of anniversary will this year be?
In Serbia, it will not be different from all those that have preceded it. Politicians and institutional representatives will once again remain silent and will be careful not to acknowledge the guilt of the Serbian state. As always, it will be up to civil society organizations and the many citizens who care about reconciliation to organize initiatives to commemorate the victims. This year, for the first time, we will publish in Danas, the country’s main daily newspaper, the complete list with the names of the 8,372 people who were killed or disappeared during the genocide in 1995. It will be our silent tribute to the victims and will occupy sixteen pages of the newspaper in the July 11 edition. We must also not forget that, thirty years after the end of the war, there are still about eight thousand people missing in Bosnia, about a thousand of them in the Srebrenica area alone.
How has the work of your Humanitarian Law Center evolved over three decades of activity?
We continue to collect evidence of war crimes committed in the Balkans in the 1990s and are trying to transform the organization into an independent documentation center on justice and memory. Our main task will be to publish analyses and reports on what happened in the past, based both on our research and on the documents and judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Another work that we have recently completed, which is very important to me, is the book containing the detailed stories of all the people who disappeared during the conflict in Kosovo. There are over a thousand of them, 1036 to be precise. The volume is a kind of “monument” to the missing people, an attempt to keep their memory alive, because their families are still waiting to find their mortal remains and do not have a grave to mourn them over.
In the meantime, you continue to suffer violent attacks from many politicians in your country.
Unfortunately, the political situation in Serbia has changed dramatically since Aleksandar Vučić came to power. At first, we thought that he had changed (in his youth he was a minister in Milosevic's government, ed.) and had understood the importance of establishing good relations with neighboring countries, acknowledging all the victims and putting aside his nationalist ideas and plans for the creation of a Greater Serbia. He was the one who deceived us, right after he came to power, claiming that he was young at the time but now he saw the future in a different perspective. I am not too worried about the attacks against me, although some have even threatened to have me arrested, claiming that I had accused Serbia of being a genocidal nation, with reference to what happened thirty years ago in Srebrenica. I have never said that the Serbian people are a genocidal people: I have only tried to point out that there are many judgments of the Hague International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, of the International Court of Justice and even of many national courts that have accused the Serbian state on the basis of the serious evidence gathered in Srebrenica and elsewhere.
Why, three decades after the Dayton Agreement, are relations between the Balkan countries still so difficult?
Essentially because that agreement served to stop the massacres but did not guarantee friendly relations between all the countries in the area. The situation is not much different from thirty years ago, both because the international community has done very little to promote reconciliation, and because many of the current political leaders in the Balkans are the same as those from the war. I would say that today the political climate is even worse than before the outbreak of the war.
In recent months in Serbia there have been massive student demonstrations against political corruption. What are, in your opinion, the prospects of this protest? Do you think it will succeed in bringing about some change in your country?
I hope so. My hope is that the situation does not degenerate, and that the students - and not only them, since many citizens support their demands, I would say more than half of the Serbian population - will succeed in obtaining what they have been asking for a long time, namely early elections. Unfortunately, today both the President of the Republic and the President of the National Assembly are sending very dangerous messages accusing the students of being fascists and Nazis. These are more or less the accusations they have always made against me when I pointed the finger at their responsibilities.
I believe that in the end the students will succeed in getting early elections, but what we see in the field of information in my country is very worrying. Most of the media are pro-government, or openly governmental, the tabloids and the big televisions, including the public television, are all on the side of the government. I think it will be very difficult to stop the government's propaganda because it has great economic resources. Money of dubious origin, obviously. Furthermore, Vucic and his people have organized fake protests by alleged "students" who are against the protests and would like to have access to universities to complete their studies. In the center of Belgrade, in the Pioneers' Park, a campsite has been set up that is supposed to be a student counter-protest but is frequented by shady characters who are apparently members of paramilitary groups. On the one hand, the government accuses citizens, students and opposition leaders of being enemies of the state paid by foreign agents; on the other hand, it is itself very close to dangerous criminals. It is a paradoxical situation.
Do you think that what is happening in Gaza marks, as many claim, the end of international law and the definitive loss of credibility of the Western world?
It is a truly sad moment in history. The global political situation appears to have changed profoundly compared to the years of the Balkan wars. The United States has become a completely different country since then. It is no longer the country of civil rights that we knew and this inevitably affects the rest of the world. Even the EU seems to have new priorities that we struggle to understand, because sometimes they appear distant from the same founding values of Europe. The issue of reconciliation in the Balkans is not among these priorities and in fact EU representatives no longer seem interested in promoting it. However, there are also small positive signs. I am very happy, for example, that the president of Slovenia has openly said that a genocide is taking place in Gaza. But it is clear that when Trump speaks out in favor of expelling the population of the Strip to build luxury hotels and resorts, he is simply legitimizing a project of ethnic cleansing. Frankly, I don't see who could be able to stop him and, yes, I believe that something like this marks the end of international law.
