The key to my neighbor's house : seeking justice in Bosnia and Rwanda

Interviewing war criminals and their victims, Neuffer explains, through the voices of people she follows over the course of a decade, how genocide erodes a nation's social and political environment. Her characters' stories and their competing notions of justice-from searching for the bodies of loved ones, to demanding war crime trials, to seeking bloody revenge-convinces readers that crimes against humanity cannot be resolved by simple talk of forgiveness,or through the more common recourse to forgetfulness. "From her unique vantage point as a reporter directly covering the reality of genocide and its aftermath in Bosnia and Rwanda, journalist Elizabeth Neuffer tells the compelling story of two parallel journeys toward justice in each country - that of the international war crime tribunals, and that of the people left behind.". "Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes blood-chilling, sometimes inspiring, and including accounts from victims and perpetrators, forensic experts, and tribunal judges, three stories form the backbone of this book. We follow Hasan Nuhanovic, a young Bosnian Muslim student determined to discover the fate of his family lost at Srebrenica, as he matures over the years from a gangling youth to a man with the authority to testify before Congress in Washington, D.C. In counterpoint, we follow Witness JJ, a shy Tutsi woman of immense courage, who overcomes her modesty and the dictates of her culture to testify about her rape - an act that resulted in wartime rape being classified as a war crime. And we get a revealing inside look at the workings of the newly created international tribunals through the eyes of Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, an African-American judge appointed to the court."--BOOK JACKET. "As genocidal warfare engulfed the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the international community acted too late to prevent unconscionable violations of human rights in both countries. As these states now attempt to reconstruct their national identities, the surviving victims of genocide struggle to come to terms with a world unhinged