Search for Balkan wartime missing "must be depoliticized"

The search for the remaining missing persons from the wars in the former Yugoslavia is still being hindered by politics, a BIRN conference on regional cooperation and post-conflict justice was told.

"The problem with the search for the missing is the same as the problem with the processing of war crimes - the entire process is politicised," Bosnian lawyer Vlado Adamovic on Thursday said on the second day of BIRN's regional conference in Sarajevo entitled 'After the ICTY: Regional Cooperation, Accountability, Truth and Justice in the Former Yugoslavia'.

War victims' associations must act together and put pressure on politicians to open up their countries' military archives to reveal information about where missing persons might be buried, Adamovic told the conference during Thursday's opening panel discussion on missing persons.

Semina Alekic of the Regional Coordination of Families of Missing Persons said there were still 12,000 missing persons from the wars in the region and that her group's mission was to put pressure on domestic and international organisations to accelerate the search and the process of exhumation and identification.

"Everybody says we have the right to truth, but it is difficult to achieve it. They often tell us: 'Leave the war alone, it ended a long time ago', but we point to the fact that consequences of the war are painful and long-lasting," Alekic said.

Veran Matic, the Serbian president's recently-appointed envoy on missing persons issues, drew applause from the audience, which included war victims from Srebrenica, when he said he was sorry that people of his nation committed crimes.

Matic argued that it is necessary to treat each missing individual in the same manner and to...