As a human rights student, I understand the importance of preserving and protecting history. So when I heard that there was a large collection of digital documents that needed to be curated and added to the University of Connecticut Digital Archive, I was excited to be part of this important work. My work as a human rights student has focused specifically on mass atrocity crimes—genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—and their prevention. For this reason, working on the digital archive for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) seemed like a perfect fit.

At the end of my first year working for the archives, I was honored to be part of the team that worked on The ICTY Sexual Violence Legacy Cases Collection. I specifically worked on the collection related to the trial of Anto Furundžija, a commander of a unit of the Croatian Defence Council who was accused and tried for the crimes of torture and outrages upon personal dignity, including rape, before the tribunal. This work was especially striking to me as someone who has studied the ICTY in textbooks and classes as a landmark tribunal in the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

This trial was one of the first international cases to clearly establish rape as a form of torture under international law, setting an important precedent that continues to shape how sexual violence is defined and prosecuted in international criminal tribunals. For these reasons, being able to work with the real documents from this case—records produced by prosecutors at The Hague—was an incredible privilege. It strengthened my commitment to genocide prevention as well as my understanding of this important landmark case.

There were several exhibits that stood out to me as especially valuable and affecting, most of which were testimonies from victims or eyewitnesses that implicated Furundžija and his men in the aforementioned crimes. One such exhibit was titled “Statement given by the witness on 21-12-93 to the Investigating Judge of the High Court in Zenica in the case against Dario Kordić.” In this exhibit, a woman gives an account of witnessing Croatian soldiers enter and exit her apartment block, kidnapping and killing her neighbors.

What strikes me about this document is that it is so similar to many other testimonies I have read. Testimonies like this serve two purposes within the realm of atrocity prevention. In one way, they represent patterns that we see across many genocides and mass atrocity crimes. With records like these, we are better able to identify genocide either before it happens or when it is still in its early stages, which allows us to save as many lives as possible.

The second—and possibly more important—reason these documents are so significant is that they serve as reminders of those lost in situations of mass atrocity. The number of victims becomes more meaningful as we see the real stories behind the toll. The witness tells the story of her Muslim neighbor, Arifa Tanović, who was brutally tortured and murdered by Croatian soldiers who invaded their building. The witness then goes on to describe her own harrowing experience when she was imprisoned by Furundžija and his men.

“Television and radio kept telling us that any Croats who hid Muslims would be eliminated. They said to me: "It's war, it's every man for himself.”

 - Anonymous witness on 21 December, 1993 in the case against Darijo Kordić -

This witness’s story is just one of thousands of experiences endured by men and women during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Documents like this transform the conflict into stories of people, humanizing events that can otherwise feel too broad and vast to understand on a human level.

Though reading through these documents during the curation of the exhibit is a difficult task, it is also an important one. This work makes me feel closer to the victims of the atrocities committed during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as to the broader histories of genocide that I have studied in my academic work.

This exhibit, as well as the ICTY archive as a whole, is full of testimonies like this one that are so important to preserve. It has been an honor to help preserve these testimonies and to remember the stories of people like this witness and her neighbor Arifa.