“Too Young to Remember Determined Not to Forget”

• Author: Orli Fridman
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718766233
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
International Criminal Justice Review
2018, Vol. 28(4) 423-437
“Too Young to Remember
ª 2018 Georgia State University
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Determined Not to Forget”:
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DOI: 10.1177/1057567718766233
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Memory Activists Engaging
With Returning ICTY
Convicts
Orli Fridman1
Abstract
This article examines memory activism among the young generation of activists in Serbia, born
during or toward the end of the wars of the 1990s. By analyzing the actions of members of the Youth
Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), a Belgrade-based nongovernmental organization, as memory
activism, this article aims to deepen the analysis of and discussions about current mnemonic
processes in Serbia and to point at a dynamic space of action and engaged citizenship. I discuss the
actions and positions of those young activists as related to the contested memories of the wars of
the breakup of Yugoslavia and to the legacies of the 1990s. More specifically, I analyze their
responses to, and interactions with, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) convicts who returned to Serbia and reclaimed their engagement in public life. The text is
based on data collected in several stages of field research since 2010 that included observations of
and in-depth interviews with YIHR activists in Serbia. It addresses the following main questions:
What constitutes memory activism in Serbia? What new tactics do the young generation of memory
activists employ and how innovative are their practices when engaging with the public on issues
related to challenging silence and denial in their society? How do they articulate their claims and
demands as related to the issue of returning ICTY convicts, and especially of those who are now
public figures in Serbia? I conclude that at the heart of memory activism as examined in the case of
Serbia stands a regional and even transnational network of mnemonic practices, revolving around
similar mnemonic battles, taking place in some of the other successor states of the former Yugo-
slavia as well. As such, further analysis of memory activism in the postwar post-Yugoslav sphere will
require additional empirical and analytical research of this region as a region of memory.
Keywords
Memory Activism, Generational Shift, Youth Activism, Serbia, Dealing with the Past
1 Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK), Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia and School for International
Training (SIT)
Corresponding Author:
Orli Fridman, Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK), Singidunum University, Karadjordjeva 65, Belgrade 11000, Serbia.
Email: orli.fridman@fmk.edu.rs

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International Criminal Justice Review 28(4)
Introduction
Conflicts over the narratives, memories, commemorations, and representations of the recent past
are ongoing in Serbia. More than two decades after the beginning of the wars of the breakup of
Yugoslavia, mnemonic battles in the post-Yugoslav successor states are subject to local debates, as
well as analysis and academic research, investigating the processes of remembering and forgetting
and processes of silence, denial, and responsibility1 among victims, perpetrators, and now among
their descendants; their sons and daughters, born during and after the wars of the 1990s, often
referred to in public discourse as the millennials or the Facebook generation. It was Kuljic´ (2009)
who framed these battles of memory in the post-Yugoslav space as civil wars as he argued that “the
armed civil war has been replaced by a civil war of memories” (p. 197).
In this text, I trace some of these civil wars of memory as occurring in Serbia. I discuss the actions
of young activists, members of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), a Belgrade-based
nongovernmental organization (NGO), who are involved in activism related to the contested mem-
ories of the wars of the 1990s. I focus my analysis on these members of the young generation of
activists, who chose to engage with the legacies of these recent wars that they have inherited. More
specifically, I analyze their responses to and interactions with the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicts who returned to Serbia after completing serving their
sentence (or following an early release) and reclaimed their engagement in public life.
As such, this text aims to deepen our understanding of memory activism as a strand of peace
activism and to contribute to the growing literature on such processes in other conflict and postconflict
societies, facing their violent pasts. Below, I develop a nuanced documentation of YIHR’s forms of
contestation and activism which I analyze as memory activism (Gutman, 2017). By doing so, I aim to
broaden recent and ongoing discussions on “dealing with the past” processes as occurring in the field
of transitional justice (Simic´ & Volcˇicˇ, 2013; Subotic´, 2009) and to encompass interdisciplinary
approaches to memory politics (Dragovic´-Soso, 2010) and postconflict transformation.
Although memory activists in Serbia are often dismissed by state officials and by their peers, or
simply unheard of, the data presented here does indicate the potential embedded in their actions to
broaden the otherwise closed and limited discourse about the recent past, and even more so, to
challenge the legacies of the 1990s. In her analysis, Spasic´ (2003, p. 446) has identified the position
of civil society in Serbia as located at the level of social discourse. In that sense, I am here interested
in the perspective of young memory activists who now articulate their mnemonic positions to be
stemming from their statement that they are Too Young to Remember, But Are Determined Not to
Forget (Premladi da se sec´amo, odlucˇni da nikada ne zaboravimo). I argue that this determination
and generational articulation, as manifested in their acts of memory activism, even when taking
place within the NGO framework, can be read as political and, as such, constitute forms of engaged
citizenship. It therefore may compliment, rather than contradict, what Isin (2008) argued to be
“activist”citizenship2 (Fagan & Sircar, 2017).
I first came across this slogan in 2015, as I was collecting data for my research on memory
activism and alternative commemorative events as mnemonic practices in Serbia. I was able to
document the shift that has occurred from antiwar activism to memory activism. The formation of
alternative commemorative events, as I have previously shown, was established by members of the
Women in Black, the first generation of memory activists in Serbia (Fridman, 2011, 2015). I
approach the YIHR activists as the second generation of memory activists in Serbia, as I explore
this generational shift and its meanings.
The analysis below is based on data collected in several stages of field research conducted since
2010, which included observations of alternative commemorative events in Belgrade, and in-depth
interviews with YIHR members in Serbia. While some were employed as the regular staff of the
NGO, others were engaged in the broader YIHR network of activists.3 I ask, what is the motivation

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of these young people, born in mid- or late 1990s, to engage with themes related to Serbia’s recent
past and the violent breakup of Yugoslavia? What new tactics do they employ and how innovative
are their practices are when engaging with the public and challenging silence and denial in their
society? More specifically, I document their articulation of questions, claims, and demands as
related to the issue of returning ICTY convicts, and especially those who have reestablished them-
selves as public figures in Serbia.
In what follows, I first discuss the legacies of the wars of the 1990s in Serbia, and define memory
activism, as the term I use to analyze this branch of activism the YIHR activists engage in. I then
depict the generational shift among memory activists in Serbia, as I show the thread between the first
generation of memory activists who began their civic engagement in antiwar activism in the early
1990s, with their slogan Not in My Name—to the younger generation of activists and the (re)framing
of their social and political claims as well as political slogans. Lastly, I discuss the 2016–2017
engagement of the YIHR activists with ICTY convicts as they protest public glorification of crimes
by analyzing their actions and message as forms of engaged citizenship.
In the Aftermath of the International Trials: Memory Activism and the
Legacies of the Wars of the 1990s
The question of the legacies of the wars of the 1990s, as were handed to the generation growing up
in Serbia after the conflicts, is at the heart of this text. Often in my conversations with young people, I
encountered a sense of reluctance to engage with any information or conversations related to Serbia’s
participation in the wars, or even more so, to the period of “the 1990s”in general. The most prevailing
representations and memories of the 1990s among young people in Serbia today are limited to the 1999
NATO bombing and then, more broadly, to the image of the 1990s as “abnormal years” (Fridman &
Hercigonja, 2017). For this generation, information comes handy and is available online and yet, many
young people have little knowledge about their society’s recent past. As the 2011 survey Attitudes
Toward War Crimes Issues, ICTY and the National Judiciary indicates, there is especially very little
knowledge among young respondents about the ICTY. To the question “to...