Natasa Kandic from the Humanitarian Law Fund and Vesna Terselic from the Documenta Centre for Dealing with the Past spoke for N1 saying they will continue to persistently work on building trust and the need to respect all the victims of the recent conflicts. Kandic stressed that people will have as much trust as they invest in it.

Tereslic warned of the lack of political will for the support of what they do and the fact that Croatia still does not have a ‘victims register’ but also of the fact that Croatian judiciary, for example, is very slow at processing war-crimes.

More than 2,000 organisations and prominent individuals initiated the creation of the Regional Commission for Establishment of Facts on War Crimes (REKOM), more than 10 years ago, but, in spite the European Commission’s support, it still faces numerous obstacles.

“It seems that everyone is waiting for the families to stop asking questions, for all organisations and individuals dealing with war crimes and facts to disappear and for the past to remain,” Kandic said amid the Western Balkans Summit in London. Tereslic stressed that this is a very important humanitarian issue.

“We demand that names and circumstances be determined and that we are finally told how the civilians and soldiers were killed. Once we win this fight with facts, then comes the time which occurs in all democratic societies in which facts are not discussed. Our societies only see their own victims and are unable to view things from the perspective of someone else,” Kandic said and warned:

“What we have now are only different memorizations by different ethnic groups.”