Qualitative analysis uncovers three silencing mechanisms marginalizing victimhood in post-conflict borderlands, highlighting the need for demographic dimensions in transitional justice.
This essay analyses memory politics in Lika, a Croatian borderland marked by two historical ruptures: the Ustaša genocide of 1941 and the war crimes and Serb exodus of the 1990s. Drawing on fieldwork, demographic data and official documents, this essay examines the competition amongst these pasts at the Gospić, Jadovno and Slana sites, identifies three mechanisms of silencing (deterrence, structural forgetting and substitution), and shows that absence and neglect can marginalise victimhood as effectively as denial. Here, I argue that transitional justice must account for demographic and cultural dimensions or risk hollowing out into ritual without recognition.
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Heike Karge (2026) studied this question.