Ratko Mladic's trial in the Hague has divided views among Balkan communities in Australia, but they agree it will neither resolve the tensions - nor ease the dreadful memories - left by the conflict in Eastern Europe.
Bosnian muslim Haris Halilovich was born in Srebrenica and says he lost lost hundreds of his extended family members in the massacre there seventeen years ago.
"It's something that's very personal and will remain personal. Regardless of where I live or how old I get," Mr Halilovich said.
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As a teenager, Serb Zoran Mirkovic and his family were forced to flee their homeland for Australia after the war.
"The town was destroyed ...like most other towns and the house where I was born was burnt down and we were pretty much left with nothing," Mr Mirkovic said.
"Memories...they are not good. They are not nice and they are sitting in the back of my mind and hopefully they will not come out."
Both men were victims of the brutal conflict and both share a hope for lasting peace in the Balkans.
But there's a divide in their views about the Hague trial of Ratko Mladic.
"I think Mladic deserves all the blame. He was issuing the orders. He was the highest commander of the Serb army so the blame should be on him and the guilt is there but just focusing on him we miss all the other lower level military perpetrators," Mr Halilovich said.
Mr Mirkovic does not agree.
"I don't think he was a hero but I see him as a person who was defending his own people and doing what was right at the time. Whether he went the right way about it is a totally different story."
Atrocities, he says, were committed by all sides.
"In any war, anywhere in the word at any time, one person is a hero to one side and is a criminal or a terrorist to the other side," Mr Mirkovic says.
Haris Halilovich is clear on who the war criminals are.
"There are a lot of perpetrators walking free in Bosnia. There are a lot of peretrators who are part of the system. Putting all the blame on Mladic is not going to resolve the real issues."
Croatian Herald editor George Sabyak agrees.
"If he ever eventually gets tried and convicted it isn't ever going to bring that closure that people need.
Irrespective of the outcome, he believes the world must heed the lessons from the war.
"The whole world knew the fate of these people but NATO and its allies just failed to act, even after Srebrenica it took them nearly a month until the bombing of the market in Merkale to actually do something."
The men who survived the hostilities speak of an uneasy peace that exists in the Balkans, 17 years on.
"Only a few days ago an arsenal of weapons was found in a private house. So really in a way the war has not ended. It's stopped but you can't call it peace," Mr Halilovich says.
Mr Mirkovic agrees.
"There is a lot of it that has been forgotten but you have got to understand there's a lot of people that have lost everything. I feel sorry for all three sides that do have these memories because no child, or person of any age, should go through it."
This is a hope shared by many, as they reflect on Europe's bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.
