Ordinary Killers

By Chris Bessounian, director of The Kolaborator
(from the 2008 Newport Beach Film Festival)

How we long to believe that criminals, perpetrators of hate and evil, are just that: evil. We search for signs of mental illness, perversity, psychosis; something, anything, to separate them from us. We want to put great distance between them and us in order to exclude them from humanity altogether. But the reality is that the evil that arises out of ordinary, civilized people is common more than it's the exception.

The Kolaborator is told from the perspective of a seemingly decent person. Goran is a 24-year-old professional soccer player with a wife and baby, who, due to the circumstances of war, quits soccer and becomes a soldier. During the conflict in the Balkans, there were thousands like Goran who also became soldiers because it was the best job, if not the only job, available. Men of various professions - teachers, carpenters, taxi drivers, bakers - were suddenly thrown into the role of genocidal killers.

What is it that can drive people who have lived harmoniously together for decades to suddenly destroy one another? The media is certainly a factor. First, the Serbian media and then the Croatian and Bosnian media, managed to stir their people to nationalist fervors. With media being controlled by the government, propaganda was spread convincing the different sides that the "others" were threatening them. With the emotions of ordinary people being controlled by gruesome imagery and tales of threat, they were led into doing and accepting anything. They then justified their actions, however small or extreme, by their need to defend their land and people.

The complicity among average citizens during the conflict in the Balkans is often referred to as "The TV Set Syndrome." It was very common for ordinary citizens to profit from the hardship of victims. For example, the deserted homes of people taken from their homes or of those who abandoned them in reaction to the ethnic cleansing were frequently raided. Neighbors would take anything they could get their hands on: furniture, valuables, TV sets, et cetera. Because of this, they relinquished their right to challenge others who were doing much worse. Although on a smaller scale, they, too, had become perpetrators of war crimes.

We believe it is essential for people to discuss these reactions, be aware of them, and to question how people similar to all of us were able to collaborate in such grave crimes. We see signs of this throughout our society. One example is what happened after September 11th, when Muslims everywhere became our "others." Muslim adults as well as schoolchildren were villanized, even killed. Scapegoating and the dehumanization of others seem to be an unfortunate human behavior. The only way to weaken it is to discuss it, to consider it, to question the extreme results of this behavior during such conflicts as the Balkans and Nazi Germany, and to ask ourselves honestly how we would behave under such pressures. Because if so many ordinary people everywhere are able to commit war crimes, doesn't that mean that we could, also?

On trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević was charged with crimes against humanity, violating the laws or customs of war, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and genocide for his role during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The Kolaborator is based on actual testimony of soldiers who were also on trial, and is an insight into the hearts and minds of not only the victims but also of the perpetrators of the genocide.

By putting a human face on the soldiers of this war, The Kolaborator attempts to identify how seemingly civilized, noble people can commit such atrocities and what elements lead them to do so. Behind the war machine, behind every weapon, there is a human story.

Photo courtesy of the filmmaker.