The verdict of guilty handed down by a Serbian court for the Serbian paramilitaries involved in the massacre of Srebrenica “is an act of justice, and is the least that could be expected given the gravity of the actions committed”, commented Father Vladislav Varga, who heads Caritas in Serbia-Montenegro. Father Varga was briefing SIR about the sentence handed down in recent days by the tribunal for Serbian war crimes on four members of the “Scorpions” special unit, found guilty of having killed six Muslims in cold blood at the time of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Though “an excessive nationalism leads Serbians to think only of ‘our people’, forgetting the victims”, “people in Serbia are nonetheless aware of the atrocity of the crimes committed, and it’s important that each person should assume his own responsibilities”. This sentence, according to the Serbian priest, represents “an important moment for the historical memory, because the Serbian people are gradually being led to acknowledge their own mistakes, from which there can be no escape”.
