ABSTRACT
The small Bosnian town of Srebrenica has become a metaphor for the atrocities committed during the wars in the Balkans that took place from 1991-1999. However, ten years after the events in Srebrenica for which the Hague Tribunal has ruled (genocide) in Serbia, the public discourse is still far away from unequivocally condemning war crimes committed by the Milošević regime as ones committed in the name of Serbia. The argument of this text is that ultimately the citizens of Serbia are politically responsible for these events. In June 2005, immediately after being presented at the Hague Tribunal, a short documentary was shown, first on the B92 TV station, a Serbian channel, and then, in part, on most of the other TV stations; it depicted the Serbian military forces shooting six young Moslems. Although the documentary did shake up the public in Serbia, and the government efficiently apprehended the perpetrators, subsequent surveys concluded that the public was still in a systemic denial and were not able to consider the possibility that they were responsible for any of the events of the Milošević regime (SMMRI 2005).1 According to the surveys, 74 percent of Serbian citizens believe that the Serbs committed the least number of war crimes (with the exception of Slovenians) and 81 percent believe that Serbs were the greatest victims of these wars! Although the majority of the population does think that it is important to face the truth about these events, almost half (47 percent) think that this truth is important because it will prove that the Serbs were not responsible for the war crimes ascribed to them.
