Arrow and Hasan

When I was reading the passage about Arrow’s “test” with Hasan, I was shocked by Hasan’s persistent orders to shoot at a civilian. I was surprised that even the defenders of the city, the “good-guys” could be as vicious as their enemies. The besieged were essentially perpetuating the crimes and, to a sense, justifying the actions of the men on the hills through their urge for revenge. The violence and destruction of the Siege of Sarajevo made me wonder about the post-war consequences for those in power. The book effectively conveys the nastiness and brutality of those in power during the siege, but what happened to these men. In 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a body of the UN, was established to prosecute serious crimes committed during the wars in Yugoslavia. ICTY is an ad hoc court located in The Hague in the Netherlands. The court has jurisdiction over crimes including breaches of the Geneva Conventions, violations of international war laws, genocide, and crimes against humanity. The ICTY believes that it has brought justice to thousands of victims and given them a voice. The ICTY has brought a large number of Sarajevans to bear witness at Tribunal judgments. So far, 161 individuals have been indicted, ranging from common soldiers to generals all the way to Prime Ministers, and plans have been set to finish all trials by 2011. Though, far more than the 161 indicted men committed atrocious crimes, the ICTY has helped bring justice to many victims of the wars of Yugoslavia; after all, in many countries of the former Yugoslavia, the governments are still reluctant to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes.

Sources: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3840505?seq=2