According to a recent survey, the wars in Yugoslavia haunt Serbian youth. Two out of three young people believe that Kosovo should return to Serbia.
The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s still haunt young Serbs, despite a lack of knowledge of history.
According to a document published by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, one in four young Serbs believe that NATO and the European Union are responsible for these wars, while another in four blame Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic, the leaders of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia respectively at the time. However, 50% of young Serbs know nothing about these wars according to Marko Milosavljevic of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights:
“There is a great ignorance of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, while on the other hand, there is a great nationalist bias in reading the events of the 90s.”
While opinions are divided on the role of the commander of the army of Republika Srpska, Ratko Mladić, to the question “Did a genocide take place in Srebrenica?”, 38% of young people questioned responded with Yes, 28% said no, while a third said they “don’t know enough about the subject.”
Two thirds of the young people questioned also think that the International Criminal Court in The Hague is only a politically motivated tribunal.
According to Miljana Pejic, from the KOMS organization which oversees youth in Serbia, “young people feel the need to talk about it in history classes, and when this is not possible, and most often it is the case, then they form an opinion through a conversation with their parents or through the discourse that circulates in the media.
Regarding Serbia-Kosovo relations, around 10 percent of young respondents (10.44%) said that Serbia should get Kosovo back, while less than seven percent (6.70) of respondents believe that Serbia should recognize the independence of Kosovo.
Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) is a Serbian NGO focused on cooperation with young people on issues relating to acceptance of the past.
Additional sources • Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR)