> Croats got away with ethnic cleansing. You just have to be buddies with right countries.
I seriously doubt you know enough about break up of Yugoslavia to make such statements.
And furthermore, for war crimes such as genocide it is hard to tell who is to be punished, the officers, the regime, the soldiers, the population? They all took part in some way. So who exactly should we blame?
Who should we blame for Srebrenica? Netherlands? UN?
Or should we instead work towards rehabilitation and educate people and help people rather then just give out punishment?
If the punishments always work, there would be no need for jails.
Maybe I don't know enough, in this case you will surely correct me by providing input.
Ethnic Serbs and Serbia are already blamed for Srebrenica, they were bombed and part of their country occupied.
But, Croats and Croatia are not blamed for ethnic cleansing in Srpska Krajina, they got what they wanted (mono-ethnic Croatia) and had no consequences by being friends with EU.
This tells us, "be sure that you're friends with powers before doing your genocide"
"Or just be strong and unyielding like Turkey was"
UN could have stopped Srebrenica massacre but didn't and still didn't get bombed or punished.
Having friends with connections always helps, same way USA is "spreading democracy" all over the world without consequence. Winners write history.
Also Belgrade was bombed due to issues on Kosovo not over Srebrenica which was done by Bosnian Serbs.
Srpska krajina was part of Croatia and full of all kinds of militia, a lot of people would have left out of fear of reprisal if nothing else when Croatian troops came in or just to live on Serbian controlled territory (which makes sense, you rarely want to stay on occupied territory unless you need to).
That is not to say there were no crimes committed, But killing people en mass and putting them into a big hole is much different then shelling a city. If you want to talk about Croats doing genocides go back to 1940ies.
Why Gotovina and Markac were not put in jail for ethnic cleansing is another story. Some could argue that it didn't happen some have other accounts.
To be honest most of the blame lies with Tudjman and Milosevic which together planned a lot of stuff that happened in Balkans both of which died without even a small punishment but managed to get people rallied up. I think punishments that extend to following generations just make the hate live longer and possibility of another war more real.
The point is we should not call out who is to blame 25 years later, but figure out how to continue to live together, and no, not all family of victims want retaliation and punishment, some people actually understand that bringing this up and finger pointing will just further the divide and make room for another war, all they want is bodies of their family members back and for this to never happen again. This can be made sure with dialog and education not just punishment.
I might be wrong, but I think punishment should always be last resort. Same when bringing up kids for example.
I seriously doubt you know enough about break up of Yugoslavia to make such statements.
And furthermore, for war crimes such as genocide it is hard to tell who is to be punished, the officers, the regime, the soldiers, the population? They all took part in some way. So who exactly should we blame?
Who should we blame for Srebrenica? Netherlands? UN?
Or should we instead work towards rehabilitation and educate people and help people rather then just give out punishment?
If the punishments always work, there would be no need for jails.