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A bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, that brings you the voices of human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials. Vital voices addressing one of humanity's most vital issues. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Museum.

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Justice in the Courts
Interview: Diane Orentlicher, professor of International Law at Washington College of Law at American University, discusses recent decisions related to impunity made in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and how these decisions will play out over the next few months.
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Genocide Prevention Roadblocks
Interview: Former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights from 1993 – 1998, and the United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1998 – 2000, John Shattuck now heads the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. In this interview, he discusses the politics of responding to genocide and the roadblocks encountered and caused by government agencies, the syndromes of past interventions gone bad, the public opinion stalemate, and the conflict resolution paradox. Mr. Shattuck concludes with ideas for bursting through these roadblocks and responding to low level conflicts before they turn into genocide.

This interview is the second of three that Voices on Genocide Prevention is producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. John Shattuck will participate in an online discussion on March 19th and 20th which you can join by registering here.

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The Legacy of Raphael Lemkin
Interview: Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University, details the legacy of Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer from Poland who coined the term genocide. He also discusses whether mass violence is different today than earlier in human existence as well as the significance of the codification since the Holocaust of international prohibitions against genocide.

This interview is the first of three that Voices on Genocide Prevention is producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. Professor Bartov will participate in an online discussion on March 12th and 13th which you can join by registering here.

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Maybe Add Some Garlic
As the first anniversary of the death of Slobodan Milosevic approaches, a protester in Serbia wanted to be double sure that the deceased war criminal stays dead:
Miroslav Milosevic, a photographer not related to the late president, jumped a fence in his hometown of Pozarevac to thrust a hawthorn pole into the tomb where [Slobodan Milosevic] was buried a year ago, the MTSMondo.com website said. The action by the former member of Otpor, the student movement that for years protested against Milosevic, was a medieval ritual used in eastern Serbia to kill off vampires or expel evil spirits.

See You In Court (1993 edition)
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down its decision Monday in “Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro).” That’s the long name for the case that the government of Bosnia brought in 1993 against what was then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) – Serbia and Montenegro. Since then, Serbia and Montenegro have also split. In the case, Bosnia contended that the FRY was violating its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention, by being responsible for genocide in Bosnia. The ICJ – not to be confused with the International Criminal Court (ICC) – is an organ of the United Nations that adjudicates disputes between states. Unlike the ICC, it does not determine individual criminal guilt.

The ICJ held Serbia very narrowly responsible for failing to prevent the massacres at Srebrenica and for failing to fulfill its obligations to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in apprehending Bosnian Serb General Radko Mladic, who is accused of genocide at Srebrenica. Here are key findings:
The court concluded that there was no genocide in Bosnia, except for the massacres in July 1995 around Srebrenica. Therefore, there could be no question of FRY responsibility for genocide, except with regard to its responsibility for Srebrenica. Because the ICJ was exercising jurisdiction under the Genocide Convention, it did not determine whether crimes against humanity or war crimes had been committed or FRY responsibilities for such crimes.

The FRY was not directly responsible for the genocide at Srebrenica, because the Bosnian Serb military units that carried out the Srebrenica massacres were not legally “organs” of the FRY, nor were the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders acting under the direction or control of the FRY.

The FRY was not responsible for “complicity in genocide,” a separate offense under the Genocide Convention, because it was not established that the FRY provided aid or assistance to the perpetrators at Srebrenica with knowledge that those perpetrators had the specific intent to commit genocide.

The court did, however, conclude that the FRY violated its duty to try to prevent genocide:
In view of their undeniable influence and of the information, voicing serious concern, in their possession, the Yugoslav federal authorities should, in the view of the Court, have made the best efforts within their power to try and prevent the tragic events then taking shape [at Srebrenica in July 1995], whose scale, though it could not have been foreseen with certainty, might at least have been surmised.
(Photo courtesy Ron Haviv.)

Knock, Knock
NATO troops raided the homes of Sasa and Sonja Karadzic in Bosnia early Tuesday morning. This is a bit of unfinished business from the 1990s. Their father, Radovan Karadzic, was president of the so-called Republika Srpska and is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Along with Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander, he is the most notorious figure still at large. NATO troops have been in Bosnia since late 1995, and for much that time it has been believed that Karadzic was in Bosnia. An enduring question has been why NATO has not undertaken a more dedicated effort to apprehend him. (Photo © UN.)

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