Over less than a week, more than 8000 Bosnian Muslim men between the ages of 16 and 65 were systematically murdered by Serb-controlled forces. To evade the killings, a column of approximately 10,000 Bosnian Muslims escaped into the woods near Srebrenica and survivors refer to these men 鈥 husbands, brothers, sons 鈥 as those who never returned 鈥渙ut of the woods鈥. In some of the most harrowing testimony given at the tribunal, witnesses described Serb soldiers disguising themselves in UN uniforms to lure them out. Later, to conceal the crimes, mass grave sites were moved by excavators to secondary and even tertiary locations.
Despite being the location for the adjudication of many of the world鈥檚 highest-level conflicts, The Hague is a sedate, even serene city. In summer, the weather was temperate. On weekends, I went to the beach and waded out into an ocean that barely mustered a swell. The tulips at that time of year bloom in colours that are vivid and intense. Each day, I cycled along the flat streets, past the distinctive orange-brick houses and the canals to work at the tribunal. I arrived at the aptly named Churchillplein, where the flags of many countries were strung on flagpoles in a colourful row like prayer flags.
Although until that point my specialisation and expertise had been in public law, something else quickly drew my attention. At every opportunity, I went to watch the tribunal in session and found myself torn between two conflicting feelings: on the one hand, the defendants appeared so incredibly ordinary, yet had been accused of unimaginable crimes; on the other hand, there was something utterly transfixing about the testimony of witnesses who gave evidence against people who, up to that point, they had lived alongside. Many women, for example, spoke of the last moments of seeing their teenage sons alive before they were transported from the UN base on buses. Despite the enormity of their losses, these witnesses, ordinary people in most cases, found the words to speak compellingly, hauntingly, about experiences that were nothing less than catastrophic.
Though debate continues about the tribunal鈥檚 legacy, particularly because of widespread genocide denial, one of its very valuable achievements was providing a forum for survivors to speak about their experiences. In allowing more than 4000 witnesses to give evidence, the narrative of the war was shifted in a crucial way: the story of the war was told by survivors instead of by the leaders who perpetrated and encouraged mass violence.
In retrospect, I think what I recognised in the testimony of witnesses was language operating at its most powerful. In these testimonies, these witnesses were not defeated by the horrific events they had witnessed, but were able to draw some sort of meaning out of the shocking violence and injustice they had observed.