Abstract
On March 30, 2010, the Court of Appeal of the Hague rejected an appeal brought by the association ‘Mothers of Srebrenica’ against the United Nations (UN) and the Netherlands. The ‘Mothers of Srebrenica’ demanded that the UN and the state of the Netherlands be held accountable for not preventing the genocide committed in Srebrenica in July 1995. Disappointed by the outcome of the legal proceedings, ‘Mothers of Srebrenica’ and the German ‘Center for Political Beauty’, together with a number of Bosnian and German activists and artists, launched the project ‘Pillar of Shame’. The aim of this project was to collect 16,744 shoes as a symbolic representation of the lives lost in the Srebrenica genocide. Drawing on interviews with the campaign’s founders, this chapter analyses the ‘Pillar of Shame’ project, which aimed to construct a permanent monument from the collected shoes as a reminder of UN shame and responsibility for not preventing the genocide. This chapter argues that ‘informal’ civil society campaigns are an ever-evolving part of transitional justice processes and the significance of the ‘Pillar of Shame’ project lies in mobilizing cross-border activism, in terms of bringing together Bosnian citizens and German artists under the joint pledge ‘not to forget’. However, while the campaign crossed national borders, it failed to traverse ethnic borders in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) since it did not engage citizens of Serb origin either in BH or in Serbia. The chapter contends that although the project is significant because it mobilizes activism across national borders, it fails to overcome the significant challenges that exist in creating coalitions across ethnic divisions.
Dr Olivera Simić is a lecturer with the Griffith University Law School, o.simic@griffith.edu.au. I would like to thank Dr Fayen d’Evie, Dr Zala Volcic, Dr Nesam Mcmillan, Dr Trish Luker, Dr and Melanie O’Brien for their careful reading and useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am indebted to Philipp Ruch, Belma Zulcic and Aldijana Mustafic for their participation in the research. I also wish to thank Professor Kathleen Daly for invaluable conversations on the symbolism of shoes and civil society justice mechanisms.
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Notes
- 1.
Interview with Hatidza Mehmedovic, President of the Mothers of Srebrenica Association, http://stubsrama.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13%3Aintervju-sa-hatidom-mehmedovi-predsjednicom-udruenja-srebrenike-majke&catid=3&Itemid=11&lang=en. Accessed 11 November 2011.
- 2.
The number of women who were raped or killed during the genocide has not yet been established.
- 3.
UN Safe Areas were established in 1993 in the territory of BH by the UN Security Council. The territories under the protection of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) included Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Zepa, Gorazde, Tuzla and Bihac. UN Resolution 819 (S/RES/819, 16 April 1993) and 836 had established Srebrenica as a ‘safe area’ to be protected by all necessary means including the use of force.
- 4.
An estimated 40,000 people gathered in Srebrenica on July 2011 to mark the 16th anniversary of the genocide. See, ‘Thousands Gather to Remember Srebrenica Massacre’, VOANews, 12 July 2011, http://sofiaecho.com/2011/07/12/1121775_thousands-gather-to-remember-srebrenica-massacre; ‘Tens of Thousands of People Gather to Commemorate Srebrenica Massacre’, European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity, 12 July 2010, http://www.europeanforum.net/news/919/tens_of_thousands_of_people_gather_to_commemorate_srebrenica_massacre.
- 5.
For example, Serbian President Boris Tadic, Former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, Members of the United States Presidential Delegation of Barack Obama, Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, the European Union High Representative in BH Valentin Inzko, Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, and the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Danilo Turk.
- 6.
See Hasan Nuhanovic, Under The UN Flag; The International Community and the Srebrenica Genocide (DES Sarajevo, 2007), Emir Suljagic, Postcards from the Grave (Saqi Books, 2005)
- 7.
On April 13, 2012, the Mothers of Srebrenica lost their case against the UN before the Supreme Court in Holland. The final ruling was the last legal option in the Netherlands for the Mothers. An appeal would need to be filed at the European Court of Human Rights within 6 months. See Anthony Deutsch, ‘UN Can’t be Tried for Srebrenica Massacre in Netherlands’, Reuters, 13 April 2012.
- 8.
The exact number of people killed in Srebrenica is not known and there are different estimates. The number cited in this paper is taken from the Center for Political Beauty leaflets and materials about campaign.
- 9.
The author was told that the names most often mentioned as intended to be written on the monument are: General Philippe Morillon of France, Commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) based in Srebrenica, Yasushi Akashi, the chief UN envoy in the former Yugoslavia, Boutros Ghali, former UN Secretary-General, and Thomas Karremans, the commander of Dutchbat troops in Srebrenica at the time of Srebrenica genocide.
- 10.
In December 2008, an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at the then US president, George W. Bush, during a press conference held in Iraq.
- 11.
The idea of organising a public display of shoes as a memorial to victims of genocide is not new. For example, the Auschwitz Museum in Poland houses a permanent display of about 25,000 pair of shoes titled ‘The Wall of Shoes Under Glass’. At the Majdanek Memorial Site, also in Poland, thousands of shoes of Jews killed in the camp were on display in three warehouse buildings until damaged by fire in 2010. Several thousands of shoes from Majdanek were loaned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and are now on display in the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition. Similarly, in Budapest, a memorial titled ‘The Shoes on the Danube Promenade’ was created to honour Jews who were shot at the edge of the river such that their bodies fell into the water, leaving empty shoes behind on the bank.
- 12.
During the war in BH, concentration camps were set up mostly for Bosnian Muslims by Serb and Croatian authorities. Dretelj-Capljina prison camp for Serbs civilians and Muslims was run by the Croatian Defense Forces (HOS) and later by the Croatian Defense Council (HVO). See Prosecutor v Jadranko Prlic et al., Indictment, 2 March 2004.
- 13.
Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, was arrested on August 5 not July 11.
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Simić, O. (2013). ‘Pillar of Shame’: Civil Society, UN Accountability and Genocide in Srebrenica. In: Simić, O., Volčič, Z. (eds) Transitional Justice and Civil Society in the Balkans. Springer Series in Transitional Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5422-9_11
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