Völkermord vor Gericht. Kriegsverbrecherprozesse, Emotionen und der Umgang damit in Serbien
Genocide at Court. War Crime Trials, Emotions, and Coming to Terms in Serbia

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. This article is based on group discussions organized in several towns in Serbia in 2009 and 2010 in which participants discussed their opinions and perceptions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The aim was to assess the emotions evoked by the topic of the ICTY and what motivated these emotions. The research revealed that despite a reigning consensus that potential war criminals should be brought to court, a sense of ignorance with regard to the ICTY’s procedures enforced a general notion of powerlessness and nurtured a lack of trust in the tribunal’s work. Such feelings are prone to be politically instrumentalized. Central themes in the group discussions were a wish to regain esteem and “normality”, a tendency to assign responsibility exclusively to those holding political power, and a lack of mourning for the victims of Serb war aggression. Still, the author concludes that critiques and protests against the ICTY signal the existence of a consciousness of the criminal past even among the Tribunal’s opponents. This sense of awareness among those “in denial” should in fact be seen as a considerable achievement of the Tribunal’s work.

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