Genocide: Preparations and Denial: Introduction to the Realization of Genocide and Closing the Circle of Genocide

Abstract

This paper deals with the two phases of genocide: preparation phase and denial phase, because they are, from the historic point of view, and in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the most obvious ones. As far as the planning is concerned, the basic documents of the great-state plan (Greater Serbia) from the Garašanin’s “Nachertanie” to SANU Memorandum, hadn’t significantly changed, except for the certain plan segment adjustment to different periods and circumstances. In the context of time and circumstances, conditions and pre-war preparations were created for wars that regularly resulted in heavy crimes, most closely connected with the definition of genocide. Serbia’s war goals - in all the wars (from the Balkan Wars to the latest 1991-1995 War) - were a creation of the Greater Serbia as the dominant force in the Balkans, i.e. Southeastern Europe. Those goals were not accomplished, as well as the committed crimes hadn’t been sanctioned, at least not in the amount that would disable preparations for new wars and a new circle of genocides. Preparations for the war and genocide that lasted from 1991 to 1995 were thorough and wide, which proved the very phase of realization, in other words, the genocide itself. The phase of denial accompanied by the justification of genocide was continued in the period after the war. Again, all the forces and means of the genocide perpetrators were focused to that end. This phase, in relation to methods of realization, forces and means, significantly corresponds to the phase of preparations, whose goal is the same - to create, in the phase of preparation, and then to preserve “the state of the Serbian people”. Main characteristics of this phase are aggressiveness in realization, relativization of crimes, insistence on oblivion, emphasizing the feeling of threat of the Serbs who live outside of the RS, bringing everything to the level of compromise, blackmail etc. Since denial and justification are essentially the finishing phase of the circle of genocide, they provide conditions for a new circle. Therefore, a timely recognition of the preparation phase gives a possibility of preventing of genocide and the denial phase offers a possibility that committed genocide would be adequately sanctioned and not allowed to enter a new circle.