asked in 2005

1. What was your biggest success?

- planting a seed of non-violence through peace education programmes
- organising mediation trainings for police, judiciary and community mediators and establishing community mediation centers
- campaigning against a monument to Nazi collaborator Jure Francetic and making the government act upon the Constitution of Croatia and remove it
- starting documenting war crimes together with our regional partner organisation Humanitarian Law Center from Belgrade and another organisation from Sarajevo


2. Do people in Croatia generally approve of your work? Who are your opponents and why?

Some strongly approve and some fiercely disapprove. Between them are people who either committed or have approved of war crimes.


3. What is the focus of your present work?

- gathering documentation and research on war events and war crimes
- establishing a searchable data base on war crimes
- monitoring judicial processes related to war crimes
- creating a network for the support of victims and witnesses
- deepening public dialogue and initiating public policies which stimulate dealing with the past


4. Why not work towards reconciliation and stop looking backwards? Why not leave behind war crimes and the whole violent part? Let's forget about it...

I believe that without dealing with the past we cannot break the cycle of violence. Each victim has a name. Families of killed need to know that we acknowledge their suffering and regret the murder of their relatives. Stories of war crimes need to be prosecuted. We can hope for a process of recovery or healing to start if survivors receive material and psychological support and if names of victims are written in a memorial to all victims in sign of our common reflections of killings and mourning.


5. Why don't you focus on the needs of your living neighbours?

Because the consequence of war crimes is individual and collective traumatisation which is being transferred from one generation to the other. Wounds do not heal without systematic effort on addressing past crimes.
Something got frozen, something got damaged in human hearts and souls. Dealing with the past processes could help to remove obstacles to our full growth and development.


6. What effect has the RLA had on your work?

It made it much more visible.