Volume 56, Number 4 · March 12, 2009
Connoisseurs of Cruelty
By Charles Simic
Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosnia
by Wojciech Tochman, translated from the Polishby Antonia Lloyd-Jone
Atlas, 141 pp., $20.00
Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity's Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity
by Carla Del Ponte with Chuck Sudetic
Other Press, 434 pp., $25.95
Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know
by Tim Judah
Oxford University Press,184 pp., $16.95 (paper)
What unites many countries in the world, both the ones that don't give a fig about human rights and the ones that profess they do, is their unwillingness to punish their war criminals. When it comes to accountability, instances of confronting their own guilt are exceedingly rare among nations, especially when the victims are members of some other race, religion, or country. Even international leaders concerned with situations such as the one in Yugoslavia, despite their protests to the contrary, are often reluctant to see the guilty punished since political interests usually take precedence over justice.
Review, 4387 words
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