More than fifteen years after the end of conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, discourses about present and future are based upon revised and reconstructed narratives about the past. This paper analyses the impact transitional justice mechanisms have on the historical narratives and creation of collective memory about the war. So far, in Serbia and Croatia main transitional justice tool has been the prosecution of war crimes.
Taking Hegel’s work on the direct relation of historical narrative and law as a theoretical framework, we explore the transformation and development of law narratives in media and society, by using critical discourse analysis. According to Brooks and Gewritz’s methodological approach, law is analysed not as set of rules and policies, but as a source of “stories, explanations, performances, linguistic exchanges – as narratives and rhetoric”.
We approached the problematique by analysing trial transcripts and media reports from both Croatia and Serbia about domestic war crimes trials for Ovcara-Vukovar hospital case and for Medak pocket case. Assuming that in the contemporary societies media have huge influence on shaping knowledge about history and shared historical narrative, we analyse local media reports on domestic war crimes trials.
The problem of judicial responsibility is tackled on two levels: international and domestic. International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) provided full compliance of both Serbia and Croatia, but the cooperation was made possible only by judicial conditionality performed by the international community, mainly the EU. Domestic trials for war crimes offered a very challenging framework in which the main aims of transitional justice were set apart and political strategies of denial were put in action. We argue that transitional justice, instead of triggering truth seeking and truth telling processes that would lead to reconciliation, multiplied mutually exclusive historical narratives that determined national collective identities.
