New Website Highlights Serbia’s Role in 1990s Wars

The Belgrade branch of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO launched a new website entitled Rat u Srbiji (War in Serbia) on Monday to highlight the country's involvement in the wars that broke out as Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s.

The site contains information about hidden mass graves, detention camps, the persecution of ethnic minorities, the forced mobilisation of civilians, crimes committed by paramilitary units in the Balkan conflicts and human rights breaches during a revolt in the south of Serbia.

It also has a map of important places related to the war, marking sites of prison camps and anti-mobilisation protests.

Youth Initiative for Human Rights Serbia programme director Ivan Djuric said that there is almost no information on the site that has not already been made public in court rulings, by the media, or in NGOs' reports.

"But everyone pretends that nothing happened - state institutions, political parties, the mainstream media and the elites. The 'vow of silence' has lasted a long time, and this site is a counterweight to that," Djuric told BIRN.

"The goal is to give victims satisfaction, to initiate criminal proceedings against those responsible, to find a place in the public memory for these tragic events, to understand the context, to talk about the victims, and for the criminals to be held responsible," he added.

Djuric said that the NGO tried to "make the message as clear and simple as possible".

"The site analyses the events in Serbia during the wars of the 1990s. It deconstructs the lie that Serbia did not take part in the wars. The deconstruction of that lie is a necessity in 2020, because today our society is largely made up of those who were not born in the 1990s or were too young to...