Truth Commission Activists Plan Yugoslav ‘Book of the Dead’

"By refusing to create a joint commission [RECOM], the governments of the post-Yugoslav countries have made another political mistake. We think that the nominal list of victims cannot be abandoned. It is about taking charge of and assuming the responsibility for seeing this task through to the end," Terselic told BIRN.

Past promises by some governments to commit to establishing RECOM have so far come to nothing.

Representatives of Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia were supposed to sign a declaration on the establishment of RECOM at the Western Balkans Summit in London in July 2018. But the signing ceremony was unexpectedly cancelled because the Coalition for RECOM did not receive official statements from the four governments confirming that they would participate.

The failure came despite urging from the European Commission, which said in its February 2019 strategy document on EU enlargement in the Western Balkans that governments must "unequivocally commit, in both word and deed, to overcoming the legacy of the past" if their countries are to make progress towards membership of the bloc.

Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have also not committed themselves to supporting the establishment of the truth commission.

"I think the political support for the initiative to name all the victims, which is the goal of the initiative for RECOM, changed according to the political situation. But we expect to compile the regional list of all war victims in former Yugoslavia," said Natasa Kandic, the founder of Belgrade's Humanitarian Law Centre.

Further complicating the situation is the fact that Serbia does not accept some of the rulings of the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY as grounds...