Da li u Srbiji treba inkriminisati osporavanje ratnih zločina?
Should contesting war crimes be criminalized in Serbia?

Author(s): Vesna Rakić Vodinelić
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Criminal Law, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Sociology, Criminology, Politics of History/Memory
Published by: CEDET Centar za demokratsku tranziciju
Keywords: Holocaust denial; war crimes; genocide; incrimination of disputing war crimes
Summary/Abstract: The mainstream of historical and legal thought in Europe confirms the need for societies with authoritarian pasts to face their past in order to achieve socially desirable and justified goals. Namely, dealing with the bad past is necessary for a democratic future. The past that society has not faced remains unconquered, and the unconquered past governs the present. Forgetting, without any social agreement about it, means the social justification of the evil past. Instead, in Serbia and in other post-Yugoslav societies, forgetting is not only being promoted, but efforts are being made to re-legitimize the evil of the authoritarian and wartime past, most cruelly embodied in the war crimes committed, even though on a global and European level, the opposite is being done and all tendencies show a movement towards various legal measures to prohibit contestation of war crimes. In order to come to a conclusion as to whether the incrimination of contesting war crimes is necessary in Serbia, a comparative review of legislation and international documents was made and generally accepted arguments for and against incrimination were presented. It is concluded that the decision on incrimination cannot be made only on the basis of doctrinal argumentation, but also on the basis of an assessment of practical needs that are manifested in the specific context of political and social life in Serbia. Decisive arguments should be sought in the predominant attitude of public opinion about the crimes committed in the name of Serbia and by Serbs in the wars of 1991-1999, in the state policy of persecution and punishment of the criminal offense of spreading racial, national and religious hatred and intolerance, as well as in Serbia's international obligations arising from its approach (?) to the European Union.

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