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The Omarska Memorial Project as an Example of How Transitional Justice Interventions Can

Produce Hidden Harms Sebina Sivac-Bryant*

A B S T R A C T 1

This article uses the example of a failed project, whose aim was to achieve consensus around constructing a memorial at the former Omarska camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to illustrate some of the dangers of transitional justice interventions involving victims of dislocation and violence, as well as the potential for hidden harms. It is based on nine years of ethnographic research into a small returnee community in Kozarac, in the municipality of Prijedor. Well-intentioned as the project undoubtedly was, it had unintended consequences for the social relations of the local community. Like other internationally led initiatives, it can be argued that it helped reinforce a vic- tim-perpetrator dynamic that prevented rather than assisted progress. Although we cannot draw too many conclusions from one project, the issues highlighted by this ini- tiative have been echoed on a smaller scale in much of the international involvement of transitional justice scholars and activists in the town since then. K E Y W O R D S : Omarska camp, memorialization, victims, returnees, Bosnia and Herzegovina

O M A R S K A C A M P After Bosnian Serb forces’ takeover of Prijedor on 30 April 1992 and as part of a systematic attempt by Serb nationalists to ethnically cleanse non-Serbs from areas of Bosnia that were earmarked to become Greater Serbia, camps were established at Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje. Omarska camp operated from 25 May to 21 August 1992, on the site of an iron ore mine. During this time, more than 3,000 Bosnian Muslims and Croats were confined, suffering cruelty and torture, 37 women were repeatedly raped and 500–900 people are estimated to have perished.2

* Independent Researcher. Email: ssivacbryant@googlemail.com 1 This article is based on my doctoral thesis, ‘An Ethnography of Contested Return: Re-Making Kozarac,’

University College London, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK. 2 ‘The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Charges 21 Serbs with Atrocities Committed Inside

and Outside the Omarska Death Camp,’ UN Doc. CC/PIO/004-E (13 February 1995).

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International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2015, 9, 170–180 doi: 10.1093/ijtj/iju023 Advance Access Publication Date: 3 December 2014 Notes from the Field

Roy Gutman of Newsday magazine reported the first rumours about the camp,3

before an ITN television crew and Guardian journalist Ed Vulliamy visited Omarska on 5 August.4 The resulting images of emaciated, terrified inmates shocked the world and led to calls for a war crimes commission, following which the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established. The first Hague indictee, Duško Tadić, was a local Serb from Kozarac, a predominantly Bosniak town near Omarska. In total, 19 individuals were charged with the crimes that occurred in Omarska camp. Testimonies of systematic rape in the camp, gath- ered by two female inmates, were instrumental in recognizing rape as a war crime for the first time. It is hard to exaggerate Omarska camp’s central role, and the stories of torture and murder that occurred there, in the traumatic memory of events surround- ing the ethnic cleansing of this area in 1992.

A P P R O A C H I N G M I T T A L S T E E L In November 2004, the multinational giant Mittal Steel acquired a majority stake in the iron mine company Ljubija Rudnik in Prijedor, which runs the Omarska mine. Local returnees believed this would create an opportunity to commemorate the site, given the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility. A survivor now living in Holland, Satko Mujagić, and several other individuals and local organizations, including Srcem do Mira (Through Heart to Peace) and Izvor (Source), wrote to the new owner of the mine asking to be allowed to create a memorial on the site in order

to help heal the wounds of the survivors is to acknowledge what happened. That is why we are appealing to you to dedicate part of this special place to the memory of what happened there only 12 years ago. . .Your company owns a place with a legacy. Although you are not responsible for what happened there, I hope that you will look compassionately upon our request so that the past will never be forgotten.5

Bosniak citizens who had returned after the war to reestablish the local commu- nity felt strongly that a memorial to Omarska camp would be a far more useful and locally relevant initiative than the distant war crimes process – ‘a fantastic opportun- ity to tackle the past,’6 as one put it. Both private and public online discussions took place about the possible final shape of the memorial. Much of this discussion was caveated by the wish not to be too ‘demanding’ or ‘insensitive’ towards the Serb community, which held a generally antagonistic view of the project.

T H E M E D I A T O R S : S O U L O F E U R O P E Mittal responded by appointing a small British charity, Soul of Europe (SoE), to take the project forward. It consisted of a former priest, Donald Reeves, and his colleague

3 Roy Gutman, ‘Hidden Horror,’ New York Newsday, 19 July 1992; Roy Gutman, ‘Death Camps,’ New York Newsday, 2 August 1992.

4 Ed Vulliamy, ‘Shame of Camp Omarska,’ Guardian, 7 August 1992. 5 Optimisti 2004 Foundation, Holland, October 2004, on file with author. 6 Personal interview, project participant, Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 9 June 2010.

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Peter Pelz. Their mandate was to work locally among all communities to achieve a solution that would create a process of mediation to ‘bring Serbs and Bosniaks and Croats together to agree on a proposal for a memorial.’7 SoE had been involved in the former Yugoslavia since 2000, mostly working with religious leaders in Belgrade, Serbia, and Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska – the Serb-run entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In talks with Mittal, they stressed their friendship with the Serbian Church in Banja Luka and its leaders, who had been brought over to England for debates and interfaith dialogue.8

In their initial proposal, SoE stated that the mediation project ‘leaves consider- ation of the place, the type of memorial and those who should be remembered as a matter for debate.’9 In essence, the project never guaranteed to accede to the sur- vivors’ request to commemorate the specific site of the former camp, although this was not fully understood by those from the community who supported the initiative. SoE acknowledged that the collective trauma of Kozarac10 and its inhabitants was something that needed to be dealt with carefully, and hoped that by bringing to- gether different ethnic groups to plan a memorial, they might create the basis for a wider process of reconciliation in Bosnia. Looking back, the set up of the project sug- gests that they were more interested in creating a showpiece reconciliation project than a memorial.

A F R A M E W O R K O F M E D I A T I O N : C R I T I C A L Y E A S T , N O T C R I T I C A L M A S S

SoE’s methods and strategies aimed to create a ‘critical yeast’ as opposed to a ‘critical mass’ – a catalyst for a solution, rather than the solution itself.11 They began working with a core group comprising significant members of the communities involved, with the idea that they would then influence their respective communities. There were to be three stages to this process:

1. Identify significant community members; 2. Organize round tables and workshops among the chosen members; and 3. Begin moving towards a memorial.

Whilst there were no ‘fixed sides’ or a fixed number of members allowed within these talks, the reality was that mediators chose certain individuals to negotiate whilst others were excluded. ‘Critical yeast’ meant targeting powerful or prominent commu- nity members rather than approaching survivors or local activists. On the Serb side, they involved three Serb women from the mine’s management team and a former mine manager who was in charge of the mine during the time of the camp, Ostoja Marjanović. He acknowledged on several occasions that the mine vehicles, for ex- ample, had been used for carrying bodies and digging mass graves.

7 Peter Pelz and Donald Reeves, The White House: From Fear to a Handshake (London: O Books, 2008), 7. 8 Soul of Europe, ’A Project of Mediation: Between Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats for a Memorial for Those

Killed in the Bosnian War in the District of Prijedor’ (unpublished document, 2005). 9 Ibid.

10 Ibid. 11 Pelz and Reeves, supra n 7 at 110.

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Over the course of the mediation, SoE frequently visited the most important man in Prijedor, Mayor Marko Pavić, ‘the godfather of the town,’12 to seek his support. Two other men who had been interrogators in the camp were also involved in the talks, which Bosniak participants considered an outrage. Among Bosniaks, there were three Omarska survivors: Nusreta Sivac, a former judge; Rezak Hukanović, a journal- ist and author of a book about Omarska, The Tenth Circle of Hell: A Memoir of Life in the Death Camps of Bosnia; and Muharem Murselović, a local politician. The main interlocutor from Kozarac was Emsuda Mujagić from Srcem do Mira. Local managers of the project were also appointed: a young returnee, Anel (Murselović’s nephew), and a Serb refugee from Croatia, Zoran, who SoE hoped would work together to help build common purpose among the participants.

I got to know two participants from the ‘Serb side,’ both of whom had a mixed ethnic background. Vedran’s father was one of the only local Serbs to publicly recog- nize the crimes committed against Bosniaks in Prijedor. Vedran and another young man, Sacha, supported a memorial, but as the discussions evolved they felt uncom- fortable with the process. SoE notes that both soon left the group ‘because [Vedran] became adamant that only victims should be allowed to decide on a memorial and that Serbs had no right to be involved.’13 Separately, Bosniak representatives ap- peared to have been given the impression that the mediators’ job was primarily to support them against what they regarded as the politics of discrimination present in most social and political dimensions of their lives. There seemed to be an uncritical acceptance that the project ought to address the grievances of victims. After all, they argued, it was a direct response to their request to Mittal. This sense of ownership of the project among a small group of Bosniak representatives later led to a struggle over who among the victims had the right to be involved.

Most survivors in the diaspora were not informed about the project and only be- came aware of it because of the online discussions and subsequent press articles. This lack of transparency further contributed to the victims’ sense of isolation and marginalization.

C L O S E D - D O O R N E G O T I A T I O N S Prior to the fieldwork, SoE mediators contacted several individuals and institutions in the UK to help them make contact with local activist groups. Their main contact among the diaspora in the UK eventually became Kemal Pervanić, a survivor of Omarska and author of a book chronicling his experience, entitled The Killing Days: My Journey through the Bosnian War. Indeed, Reeves and Pelz, in their book about the project, mention that Pervanić was an inspiration behind their involvement in the process.14 Pervanić, like other Bosnian representatives, initially believed that their ‘hearts [were] in the right place.’15

Within weeks of contacting prominent members of the communities, a group of around 20 people was formed to explore common ground for a compromise

12 Ibid., 47. 13 Ibid., 123. 14 Ibid., 19. 15 Informal interview, London, UK, 5 September 2005.

Omarska Memorial: How TJ Can Produce Hidden Harms � 173

concerning future memorial plans. In order to get Serbs on board, SoE approached senior people from the Serb authorities in Prijedor, notably Pavić. These intensive small gatherings and individual meetings in 2005 were meant to probe an idea of a memorial for all and gauge whether there was enough goodwill among the commun- ities to reach a solution. Rumours and leaks from among individuals involved in the project eventually reached wider community members and people were anxious about possible Serb obstruction. However, SoE assured Emsuda Mujagić that Pavić was willing to let the memorial be built, although he could not support it publicly.16

Reassured by the mayor’s apparent approval, Mujagić’s job was, albeit implicitly ra- ther than explicitly expressed, to garner support within her community.

In public, Pavić’s formal response was to argue for the creation of a state commis- sion to deal with issues of commemoration on all sides, asserting that he would only consider a memorial to the camp at Omarska when similar consideration was given to a monument for Serb victims of the war in Sarajevo. SoE continued meeting Pavić in the hope of finding a compromise whilst the project group met several times a month to discuss plans for the memorial. Survivors were given an opportunity to talk about their experiences in the camp in front of Serb youth, mine workers and occa- sionally foreign media. They saw this as a small step forward, reflecting that despite the Serb participants ‘sometimes try[ing] to tell us that it is not true that rape took place in the camp, or reiterating that Serbs too suffered,’17 they felt able to demon- strate that they knew the facts about camp violence, as they had experienced it directly.

These discussions appeared to be more about contesting the past than supporting the idea of survivors creating a memorial. As Vedran put it, ‘the crimes committed in Prijedor are known to every citizen of the town even if it is not openly spoken about.’18 He saw a need for a process to create a climate in which public debates con- cerning the recent past could be possible. To his surprise, the mediation process be- came solely an exercise in pregovaranja – negotiations between the sides – in which he did not see a role for himself, as he regarded himself as a Prijedorčanin (a citizen of Prijedor) rather than as a Serb.

He eventually left the project after visiting workers at the mine, many of whom claimed that ‘nothing happened at Omarska’ and that ‘if there was something, it surely was not a camp’ but a ‘transit centre for Bosniaks who needed protection from their ex- tremists.’19 According to Vedran, the SoE mediators responded by trying to equate these views with the allegedly extreme views of local returnees in the hamlet of Hambarine (the site of a 1992 massacre), which they were due to visit immediately afterwards and where, Vedran noted, ‘too exist many problematic, demented and aggressive individuals.’20 He could not comprehend how someone could compare ‘this madness [the Serb mine workers’ views] with a real human tragedy, equating those

16 Field notes, July 2008. 17 Telephone interview, Nusreta Sivac, 10 September 2005. 18 Skype conversation, 9 June 2010. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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with trauma and those with fascistic tendencies.’21 Vedran summarized his objection thus:

Of course we agree that the memorial is important. Only survivors and victims should be asked about it in the first place. No other solution is acceptable or moral. Consult them. Don’t ignore them. They have to say what the memorial looks like. It should reflect the enormity of the crimes that happened here, the extent of suffering at the hands of soldiers, the media and politicians only because they were not Serbs. We have to emphasize the human tragedy and avoid politics.22

The mediators responded by further locking down the process to avoid facing such criticism in public. SoE’s agenda became to prove that it was possible to break through the veil of silence23 by making victims and perpetrators talk to each other. However, whilst those within the SoE group played their allocated role based on ethnicity, Vedran’s criticism of the mediation was publicly taken up by Izvor, a leading nongo- vernmental organization (NGO) dealing with the missing and their families. Izvor felt that a larger body of survivors and families of the missing needed to be consulted and argued that only the victims ought to decide what kind of memorial they wished to build.

T H E S U R V I V O R C O M M U N I T Y SoE assumed that Bosniaks would be sympathetic to the project given their wartime experiences and their wish to create a memorial at Omarska. So, when approaching Izvor, SoE emphasized Mittal’s position as working with Serb partners but nonetheless being willing to find a compromise, for example, by creating a ‘visitor’s centre’ at the mine. With hindsight, the mediators recognize the upsetting nature of their proposal:

Disregarding their obvious discomfort we continued with a description of a vis- itor’s centre at the mine, which along with being a museum would tell its his- tory, including its use as a concentration camp. To cap everything we spoke about the white house being made beautiful, mines being ugly places and the need to honour the deaths of the innocent, turning the place into an oasis of peace. As though we had not inadvertently insulted them enough we suggested a union of religious symbols of death and resurrection, Christian and Bosniak at the memorial. As an example we described the church at Presnace outside Banja Luka where a Catholic priest and nun had been murdered by Serb soldiers and which had become a shrine.24

Izvor’s Edin Ramulić responded by saying, ‘This is scandalous! If you were not a religious organization, I would not even talk with you and would kick you out

21 Ibid. 22 Pelz and Reeves, supra n 7 at 123. 23 Ibid., 43. 24 Pelz and Reeves, supra n 7 at 96.

Omarska Memorial: How TJ Can Produce Hidden Harms � 175

of here.’25 This quote was later interpreted by Reeves as Ramulić threatening his life and used to justify his exclusion from the process. Ramulić told SoE that he had never encountered an oasis of peace in a place like Omarska:

I have been to many places of suffering all over the former Yugoslavia and never saw an oasis of peace. Bodies cry out for justice. They are not asking for oases of peace! I am here to make sure they get justice. Not vengeance, but justice! Victims need justice more than peace. We cannot be any part of your proposal. Talk to the families of victims. Listen to what they want, to what is important to them. This initiative has to be transparent and cannot be imposed. Nor can there be any religious components in the white house, and definitely not Orthodox ones. There can be no help for the Orthodox Church anyway. Read my lips: those who suffered want no religious symbols!26

Like Ramulić, others who disagreed with the SoE process reiterated the need to make the project as transparent as possible and to consult as many survivors and families of the missing as possible. However, the mediators and some Bosniaks in the group closed ranks, seeing any critical views as coming from ‘extremists’ or ‘spoil- ers.’27 SoE went further by praising loyal Bosniak participants as ‘prominent leaders of the community’ and convinced them that ‘only they can decide what kind of memorial will be built.’28 But SoE never defined what was meant by ‘they.’ This ambiguity appeared deliberate and was reflected in the quite different stories that each participant group was told, privately, over the course of the process.

Generally, Bosniak delegates interpreted the SoE process as ‘being on our side’ and helping them to achieve the memorial. Informality in the process and a lack of documentation did not worry them, as they were used to operating in this way as a marginalized group. On the other hand, those abroad were eager to hear about the project’s conduct and came to see its opacity as a deliberate attempt to disregard their views. This led to divisions, not only in terms of those who were for or against it but also on the question of who had the right to be involved in the project.

O N L I N E D E B A T E : A N E W P U B L I C S P H E R E Due to the closed-door approach to mediation, in the autumn of 2005 the debate about the project shifted largely to online discussion, predominantly on the Kozarac.ba forum. Debates such as ‘Who Is in Control of a Memorial [Process] at Omarska?’ and a subsequent thread ‘Some Questions Regarding a Memorial Centre at the Site of the Former Omarska Camp’ were posed to make those already involved realize the responsibility they were taking on, but also as a way of bringing together a much larger body of survivors and others concerned and willing to play a part in the process. There were numerous warnings to the Bosniaks in the SoE group not to

25 Ibid., 97. 26 Ibid., 97. 27 Soul of Europe, ‘Mediation Project: Report of the Third Visit to Prijedor by the Soul of Europe July

18–1st August 2005’ (unpublished document, 2005). 28 Field notes, July 2008.

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follow in the footsteps of the ‘Dayton principle,’ which, according to many partici- pants, was based on the idea of bolje išta nego ništa (better anything than nothing) among Bosniak delegates during the Ohio talks that ended the war. Also, it was stressed that the content and design of the memorial should be carefully considered and not rushed through.29

Six months into the process, it was revealed that there would be a press confer- ence in Banja Luka which would disclose the results of the mediation so far. Not even the Bosniak project members knew what was going to happen there or what might be announced. Prior to the conference, a British journalist wrote to SoE asking who was going to attend, what was going to be discussed and whether it would be open to the public. The reply was a single sentence stating that ‘legitimate individuals on all sides’30 would be there. Eventually it came to light that the main participants were 14 Serbs, six Bosniaks and four Croats. As pressure from the diaspora mounted, SoE informed people to contact local associations and individuals involved to find out about the project and how they could get involved, because after all ‘it is not our memorial.’31 However, when those such as Pervanić, who appeared to have inspired the SoE to take the project on, received no reply from either the local managers or the British mediators, he inferred the following:

I was the first survivor with whom ‘mediators’ got in touch with regard to this issue [memorial]. I was quiet for some time now observing all what was hap- pening but in fact I knew very little. As a result, it was hard to comment upon it [the process]. Even several attempts to get some information from ‘the right place’ did not come to fruition. Moreover, my attempts to get to some infor- mation brought about tensions. If that happened to me, to whom mediators said without my support they would have not gone to Bosnia, that I was their inspiration for this process, what then should others expect? It is tragic that we had to get to this [tension] in order for some relevant information to come out.32

In practical terms, it appeared that young Serbs had worked together with the sur- vivor Hukanović on visual designs for a memorial, which contradicted assurances given to the Bosniaks that there would be no design work. In their book, SoE medi- ators explain these discussions about design as a way to ‘kindle their own [survivors’] imagination.’33 Eventually, on 1 December 2005, it was announced that Mittal would finance the building of a limited memorial. Bosniak representatives seemed relieved and content with their achievement. However, there was neither documentation nor any serious discussion about ownership or access rights to the land on which the me- morial would stand, nor even a solid commitment to build the memorial, which Pavić made clear he did not support. In the diaspora, reactions were mixed. Most felt emotionally exhausted and troubled by the ambiguous outcome.

29 Kozarac.ba debate, October 2005. All citations are the author’s translation. 30 Email correspondence with journalist, 15 November 2005, on file with the author. 31 Email from Reeves to a family member of a missing person, 18 November 2005. 32 Kozarac.ba debate, 9 December 2005. 33 Pelz and Reeves, supra n 7 at 104.

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As the online debates intensified around the conclusions of the conference, for- eign newspapers reported on ‘a success story of a British clergyman in bringing for- mer foes to agree on a memorial’34 whilst stressing the courage of the young Serbs who played an important role in the process. In fact, the role of the Serbs as ‘active and willing participants’ came out as the main focus of this process: ‘What makes this project unique is that the Serbs are participating actively and willingly, thanks largely to the intervention of a British clergyman.’35 Meanwhile, online members of the forum called upon their Bosniak representatives to clarify what they had actually achieved. Eventually a report was emailed to the managers of the online forum, stat- ing that at the Banja Luka conference the Bosniak project members had spoken about their experiences in the camp and their annual visits to Omarska since 1999. SoE then presented a proposed memorial design based on one small but symbolically important building in the mine complex, the white house, and said that Mittal would finance its construction.

In fact, no solution had been found. By December 2005, SoE continued to pre- sent the participation of a few Serb youth in the project as a sign of successful recon- ciliation, but in reality Mittal had already accepted that the Serb authorities’ refusal to engage meant the process was effectively dead. In conversation with Satko Mujagić, the author of the first letter to Mittal, the company said that the December 2005 conference made them realize there was no support for a memorial from Pavić and there were differences of opinion among the Bosniak organizations about how to proceed. In an email in April 2011, Mittal clarified that the company had ‘no au- thority to build a memorial and ArcelorMittal does not get into political or religious issues’ in countries where they work.

When these details were revealed on Kozarac.ba, many survivors felt betrayed and misled. They began to focus on the need for transparency and wider consultation among survivors and families of the missing, and to agree on a set of principles that should underpin any memorial project.

O N L I N E P E T I T I O N : M O V I N G T O W A R D S S T R U C T U R E After several weeks of consultation with Izvor, individuals and organizations abroad, a new website with a petition was launched. It outlined five key principles and emphasized that survivors and families of the dead and missing should lead the de- sign and management of the memorial project, and that all stakeholders should ac- knowledge the psychological and historical significance of those buildings formerly used for incarceration, torture and killing. It also sought to place commemoration be- fore reconciliation, saying that acknowledgement of the crimes at Omarska was a ‘precondition for reconciliation,’36 and implored Mittal to make a public commit- ment to investigate the possibility of mass graves in the mine. Whilst there was no of- ficial organization behind the petition, several survivors, including Pervanić and Satko Mujagić, acted as liaison with other bodies. During its construction, all Bosniak

34 Nick Hawton, ‘British Priest Persuades Enemies to Build Horror Camp Memorial,’ The Times, 18 November 2005.

35 Ibid. 36 ‘Omarska Memorial Debate,’ 1 February 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/20060323190659/http://

headgroups.com/display/om/Welcome (accessed 6 November 2014).

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individuals in SoE’s mediation were contacted, as well as the local project managers. They were assured that no one wanted to take the project away from them, but that the diaspora wanted to be involved on the basis of clear principles and a transparent approach. Only Emsuda Mujagić replied. She spoke with Sivac and others and appar- ently agreed to uphold those principles, saying they were exactly what they already aspired to.

Within a month of its launch, the petition had over 1,000 former inmates and families as signatories, but soon afterwards Mittal decided to halt the project and SoE’s contract was prematurely ended. This announcement brought back tensions among local leaders and the diaspora, based on SoE’s analysis that ‘more extreme voices on all sides [had] begun to oppose the plans,’37 but also their patently false as- surance that the Serb authorities were ready to support a memorial. The BBC worked with Reeves to cover the project, reporting that it was remarkable as it involved all three sides, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, as ‘a rare example of cross-ethnic co-operation over such a controversial issue.’38 However, after Mittal froze the pro- ject, the BBC claimed that many Serbs had always been completely against the me- morial, whilst Bosniak activists ‘believe it should not be built until all the victims have been located and only then if the whole mine – which is currently working again – is used for the memorial.’39 The latter unattributed claim was puzzling, as no individual or organization (including the petition website) had stated such a position. Advocates of the memorial had asked only for the white house building, which was no longer used by the mine.

Satko Mujagić and others attempted on various occasions to contact those involved in the process in order to find common ground, but the process had by that point created divisions within the local returnee community and between them and the diaspora. The SoE mediation process generated emotional turmoil for the sur- vivors and the local community, but ultimately no result. Finally, Mittal effectively washed their hands of the problem by informing the survivors that they should ap- proach the local Serb authority first and win support before Mittal would take the process any further.

C O N C L U S I O N The Omarska project was intended to be a mediation initiative based on bringing former enemies together to seek a solution that would suit all parties regardless of their asymmetrical power relations. The failure of the project illustrates several aspects of the social dynamics between survivor or ‘victim’ communities and well- intentioned external players, whose intervention raises hopes and expectations that cannot always be fulfilled. It also demonstrates the limits and pitfalls of an approach based on recent thinking about the role of narratives as the main expression of mem- ory, and in particular the danger of appropriating survivors’ narratives without due consideration for their psychological needs. Even the assumption that there are two

37 Nick Hawton, ‘Bosnia War Memorial Plan Halted,’ BBC News, 20 February 2006. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid.

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clearly delineated ‘sides’ to mediate between proved incorrect and increased divisions both within and between the groups involved.

The inability of the mediators to engage with a wider body of survivors, their ig- norance of basic postwar environmental factors and the manner in which a selected representative group of survivors was treated all illustrate the way in which we need to reevaluate how victims’ needs are addressed in practice. Even the selected few who gave their ‘voice’ to the SoE process, like Srcem do Mira, Sivac and others, say they were treated well and listened to by the foreign mediators, but when asked what they actually did the response was they had ‘told the story’ of their experience in the camp to various groups and individuals.

Of course, the specific failures of this project should not be extrapolated to derive conclusions about other projects, or indeed the whole field of reconciliation or tran- sitional justice. But, having observed the procession of scholars, activists and NGO that engaged with the same group of local organizations and activists in Kozarac over a long period of time, the patterns described here have been evident all too fre- quently. Rather than begin from the maxim ‘first, do no harm,’ in my experience many of these initiatives seem blissfully unaware of the impact they have on local dy- namics, for better or worse. This project is a good example of such unintended con- sequences, as the main role of Bosniak representatives was to recite stories of suffering and trauma, further reinforcing a kind of performative victimhood that is neither healthy nor a real reflection of the maturity of the community. These and other hidden harms are often not worth the benefit that any one project can bring to the community, other than through a small stimulus to the local economy. Finally, the very notion of reconciliation in such a situation is sometimes problematic, sug- gesting staged, almost ritualistic, interventions to bring people together to fulfil pre- determined, usually adversarial roles that do not take into account the day-to-day reality of coexistence and contact – peaceful or not – that has been going on since re- turn began and will continue.

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