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Although war crime courts have compiled ample evidence about the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs organised by Serbian forces in the municipality of Prijedor at the beginning of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the criminal events are still remembered in thoroughly different ways by the victims' and perpetrators' communities. This paper reconstructs the trajectory of war memorialisation through commemorations organised by both victims' groups and local Serb officials. While the victims generally agree with the narrative of the ICTY, the Serb officials deny the systematic persecution of non-Serbs. Though both historical narratives have altered slightly over time, this resulted from the interaction between the two memory cultures, rather than the court judgements.
Keywords: ethnic cleansing, war, Bosnia and Herzegovina, collective memory, comme-morations, mnemonic community, ICTY
Spomin po etnicnem ciscenju: narativa zrtev in storilcev v Prijedoru
Ceprav imajo sodisca za vojne zlocine zbrano obsezno dokazno gradivo o etnicnem ciscenju Nesrbov, ki so ga v obcini Prijedor na zacetku vojne v Bosni in Hercegovini (1992-1995) izvajale srbske sile, se skupnosti zrtev in storilcev v mestu zlocinskih dogodkov se vedno spominjajo popolnoma razlicno. Clanek rekonstruira pot memorializacije vojnih dogodkov na podlagi analize komemoracij, ki so jih priredili tako skupnosti zrtev kot srbski krajevni obcinski uradniki. Medtem ko se zrtve na splosno strinjajo z narativom v sodbah, srbski uradniki vecidel zanikajo sistematicno preganjanje Nesrbov. Ceprav sta se zgodovinska narativa obeh strani s casom malce spremenila, je to prej posledica interakcije med obema kulturama spominjanja kot razsodb sodisc.
Kljucne besede: etnicno ciscenje, vojna, Bosna in Hercegovina, kolektivni spomin, kome- moracije, mnemonicna skupnost, ICTY
1. Introduction
Prijedor, a provincial town in north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), became known worldwide for the camps where Serb forces held local non-Serbs captive in the early stages of the 1992-95 war in BiH. In fact, it was the divulging of the camps' existence and inhumane conditions in which the inmates were kept, revealed by a group of international journalists, which caused public outrage in Western societies, eventually leading to the establishment of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)2 (Scharf 1997). Though the Tribunal in The Hague and the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of BiH convicted 28 individuals so far, creating a detailed account of the events in Prijedor, conflicting...