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The Omarska Memorial Project As an Example of How Transitional Justice Interventions Can Produce Hidden Harms Sebina Sivac-Bryant*

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The Omarska Memorial Project As an Example of How Transitional Justice Interventions Can Produce Hidden Harms Sebina Sivac-Bryant* 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 The Omarska Memorial Project as an Example of How Transitional Justice Interventions Can Produce Hidden Harms Sebina Sivac-Bryant* ABSTRACT1 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. KEYWORDS: Omarska camp, memorialization, victims, returnees, Bosnia and Herzegovina OMARSKA CAMP 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: [email protected] 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). VC The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email [email protected] 170 Omarska Memorial: How TJ Can Produce Hidden Harms 171 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, Dusˇko Tadic´, 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. APPROACHING MITTAL STEEL 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 Mujagic´, 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. THE MEDIATORS: SOUL OF EUROPE 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. 172 S. Sivac-Bryant 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 FRAMEWORK OF MEDIATION: CRITICAL YEAST, NOT CRITICAL MASS 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 Marjanovic´. 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. Omarska Memorial: How TJ Can Produce Hidden Harms 173 Over the course of the mediation, SoE frequently visited the most important man in Prijedor, Mayor Marko Pavic´, ‘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 Hukanovic´, 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 Murselovic´, a local politician. The main interlocutor from Kozarac was Emsuda Mujagic´ from Srcem do Mira. Local managers of the project were also appointed: a young returnee, Anel (Murselovic´’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.
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