Jasmina Tešanović: Return to Srebenica
text by Jasmina Tešanovićphotos by Bruce Sterling (Link to entire set, 40 images)
- - - - - - - - - -
Link to full text.
Why did I expect it to be easier this year? Going to Srebrenica was never easy. It is called a "high risk business" by the local Serbian police, even in Belgrade.
On the night before the Srebrenica anniversary, we Women in black had a commemorative standing in the Square of the Republic, as has been our ritual for the past 12 years. Standing soberly in black with lit candles, holding the banner SREBRENICA Not to be Forgotten, we stood in the city's largest public square, without press coverage because the Serbian press much prefers to forget.
One hundred and three standing women were guarded by one hundred policemen, almost a one-to-one action. We were separated as a political virus from our non-existent audience, though crowds in past years have insulted us and beaten us.
Srebrenica is now a closed issue, according to local officials. After the sentence in the Hague tribunal last May which declares the Serbia government not guilty of genocide -- merely guilty of not preventing it -- the Serbian authorities as well as the local silent majority can live in denial with official global approval.
This makes us the crazy women, the fools who still ride in buses to pay due honors to the 400 fragmentary dead, who today joined 8000 others killed and missing, all buried in the Srebrenica mass graveyard after being cunningly scattered all over the region by their killers. One woman is burying the bones of her son for the third time, since his body was never found whole. Among those being re-buried today are four victims killed on video by the Scorpion paramilitaries.
Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.
Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:
- Sagmeister in Belgrade
- Jasmina Tešanović: What About the Russians?
- Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
- Mothers of Mass Graves
- Hope for Serbia
- Stelarc in Ritopek
- Sarajevo Mon Amour
- MBOs
- Killing Journalists
- Jasmina Tešanović: Where Did Our History Go?
- Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide
- Carnival of Ruritania
- "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
- Faking Bombings
- Dispatch from Amsterdam
- Where are your Americans now?
- Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
- Slaughter in the Monastery
- Mermaid's Trail
- A Burial in Srebenica
- Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
- To Hague, to Hague
- Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
- Floods and Bombs
-
Scorpions Trial, April 13
- The Muslim Women
- Belgrade: New Normality
- Serbia: An Underworld Journey
- Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
- The Long Goodbye
- Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
- Slobodan Milosevic Died
- Milosevic Funeral
Share this post
Xeni Jardin
Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net.
Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.