Roma War Traumas Have Yet To Be Addressed

The only trial for crimes against Roma population in Former Yugoslavia has failed

Jelena Grujic Zindovic

There is a certain kind of music which can be heard after a degustation of Zijo Ribic’s fricassee. Yes, it’s too hot, but so overwhelming and delicate that after every bite, you hear a different tone. Zijo is an excellent cook, but his cuisine is not typical for Bosnia, his motherland. He adds some kind of Romani spices to it, and this is the key to the secret of his fricassee that curious guests of the hotel in which he works wish to know. This world needs more Roma cooks.

Unfortunately, it is not his talent that brought him to Serbia and created an opportunity to get to know him. Zijo has been coming to Belgrade during the last several years for the trial before the Serbian Higher Court for war crimes committed in the area of Zvornik in 1992. He was the crucial witness for the prosecutor’s office in the long trial for a war crime against the civilian population committed in area of Zvornik by the volunteer military unit called ‘Sima’s Chetniks’. Last year, in the first trial, seven members of that paramilitary group was sentence to 73 years of prison. Just after the judgment had been handed down, Zijo burst into tears before numerous journalists while giving a statement about how he feels now after all he has been through. Seeing him always confident and smiling outside of the court, we somehow put aside what he has been through in his life. This year, after second retrial resulted in an acquittal, Zijo was too shaken to be able for giving any statement. It was neither so many journalist before court anymore, asking how on earth an acquittal for those crimes could happen.

Zijo survived the massacre of July 12^th 1992, in the village called Skočić, near Zvornik, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even though he was just boy of eight and severely wounded, he managed to escape from a pit filled with 27 bodies. His entire family was killed, and their bodies left there in that mass grave.

Zijo testified before the court that he was pretending to be dead when perpetrators threw him on the pile of the bodies, after which he managed to crawl out from the pit and escape through the woods to the next village. It was nothing like the movies. He also testified about the rape of his thirteen-year-old sister, Zlatija Ribić, that he was forced to watch; the girl was killed later along with the other members of Zijo’s family.

The crimes committed in Skočić were horrifying, particularly brutal and inapprehensible, and unfortunately not the only ones against Roma population. Nevertheless, this trial before the Serbian court was the only case for war crimes against Roma population in former Yugoslavia tried so far, even though there are many, many Roma war victims. To date, there is still no any reliable estimate of the number of Roma victims. On another hand, it is well known – through the testimonies of the survivors like Zijo, and through the relatives of the victims – that were many Roma killed, mutilated, tortured, displaced, and robbed. As in any other times, they shared the destiny of their neighbours, but their own suffering has not been recognized.

In the ethnocentric states which were formed after the bloody breakdown of Yugoslavia, the Roma are, once again, just a minority without a public voice. One of the very few researchers (Boris Pupić) interested in crimes against the Roma in the 90s once stated that all the (mainstream) projects of transitional justice are far away from the Roma, and none of the many Roma leaders are even familiar with the importance of transitional justice mechanisms, whose aim is to help war victims after atrocities.

The case of Kosovo’s trials goes the same – even though vast majority of Roma victims comes from that country. Some war crimes investigations, poor and politically motivated, did tackle several crimes against Roma, but nothing has actually moved forward for years.

Even if there are many people who thinks it’s better to put war crimes aside, and to leave the war in the past, that would never be possible. Way too many people are displaced and cannot return to Kosovo from Serbia, where they are now living on the edge of the basic existence, with “just” a tiny additional burden than rest of the underprivileged “Serbian” Roma – unsolved war traumas. There is a report of the UN Development Program (UNDP) which analysed the prospects for reconciliation between a members of the ethnic communities in Kosovo, once again has shown the importance of dealing with past atrocities. War crime trials are crucially important for survivors of the war, and their lack is an important reason why refugees are reluctant to return. Or as Osnat Lubrani, permanent representative of the UNDP for Kosovo puts it, “establishing the truth about war crimes is intrinsically linked to the prospects for reconciliation”. Would you choose to return to a village where you can bump into a killer of your entire family at any time of day or night? Very few people choose to do so. They would rather live on the edge of Serbian society, together with other survivors of the regional wars. As Roma people, they are even “lower” than other war victims. As the researcher mentioned above said, all the instruments of transitional justice give them a wide berth.

It is essential to make Roma suffering a public fact, to give a proper recognition to their victimhood. The majority of Serbian society is most likely to think displaced Roma hit the jackpot by “moving” to Serbia. But, isn’t that the same opinion of the EU majority when comes it to the Roma asylum seekers? The readmission of that population has shown that the EU is not immune to human rights violations.

Some of these issues should be addressed by Roma leaders as well. Very few Roma civic organizations have chosen to deal with war crimes against Roma, and to work on registering Roma victims. Perhaps this is due to the very disturbing fact that most of the donor assets are invested in other, much more popular issues, those that would not make any government angry. The unfortunate fact is that problems arising from war never go away; they wait for at least the next generation.

Author is editor of RECOM portal