Jasmina Tesanovic


Ten Years After
Srebrenica 2005

In June 1995, I was finishing off my book on refugees from 
former Yugoslavia, "The Suitcase," (University Press of 
California), interviewing  women and men of different 
nationalities, wherever they came from and wherever they 
had been displaced.

One of them was a young man from Srebrenica: displaced in 
Vienna. He was a Muslim, very polite and kind to me, a 
Serb writing for the Americans; he invited me to his flat, 
offered me dinner and told me how he fled the troubled 
country through the Red Cross in Belgrade. He considered 
himself a Yugoslav and loathed the wars, according to him 
made by politicians, not people.

At the end, he said something I will never forget, a sentence 
that at the time sounded creepy and muddy: If something 
happens to my family back there in Srebrenica which is a 
Muslim enclave protected by UN troops, I swear to God that 
I will kill with my own hands the first Serb I come across 
here, my co-worker in Vienna, and I don't care  that he is 
not guilty, I don't care if I go to prison forever...

Only few weeks later, the massacre happened in Srebrenica;  
more than eight thousand people were executed in only a 
few days by the army of Bosnian Serbs led by General Mladic: 
the UN troops looked the other way...  The bodies were 
buried all over the region, some even in Serbia proper, 
with an unprecedented efficiency in Balkan wars.  

Even today, ten years after, some people, in Serbia and 
all over the world are looking the other way. In Serbia the 
claim of the silent majority is that crimes were committed 
on all sides..  In the big globalized militarist world, the 
justification for such an attitude is : let them fight it 
out in the Balkans, the splendid isolation of those who 
can afford it.

I don't know if that man's family was killed in the massacre, 
I don't know if he killed his neighbor, I never managed to 
get in touch with him later... After Srebrenica massacre 
of July 11, the Croats bombed Krajina beginning of August, 
and two hundred fifty thousand Serbs fled Croatia.

Only few months later, in Dayton, the peace treaty was signed 
between the three warring sides, (Serbs Muslims and Croats). 
I remember waiting all night  awake in order to see if they 
reached an agreement.  I remember my 11 year old daughter 
coming every few hours out of her bed to ask me DID THEY. 
When finally I said yes: she went to sleep and I started 
crying.   Those were not tears of relief but of despair. 
The treaty was signed by Milosevic and Karadzic.  They shook 
hands with Bill Clinton, they acted as 'peace makers' and I 
immediately knew that eight thousand bodies from Srebrenica 
mass graves would come back someday, as sure as as Hamlet's 
father, because there will be no reconciliation and peace 
without truth and justice.

Every single year, all these years, we as Women in Black, 
Belgrade, we as individuals who had friends in Bosnia,  we 
who claimed Not in Our Name, we paid our respects to the 
unearthed, the partially unearthed, the identified and 
unidentified victims of the massacre. We went to Srebrenica, 
we wrote about it to the world, we stood in Belgrade Square, 
where they spat on us, physically attacked us, insulted us 
as traitors, during Milosevic as well as after his fall.

The denial continues, even ten years after: the Serbian 
parliament cannot adopt a resolution on Srebrenica massacre 
because of a disagreement on wording.  The Dutch military who 
were directly responsible in the enclave are giving military 
medals to the Dutch soldiers who survived the crime doing 
nothing. The main responsible parties, Mladic and Karadzic, 
are still in hiding. 

Recently, in Serbian media, a short video clip of the 
execution of some  Muslim victims was broadcast.  It made no 
immediate impact on the world politics, except for the 
unfortunate mothers and other relatives of the missing victims.

What happened to the world in these ten years? The whole world 
has become the Balkans. The efficiency has risen in the
killings: suicidal bombings, terrorism, invasions and 
occupations, state crime and paramilitary world terrorism 
are speaking the same fundamentalist language against the 
single citizen and civil society all over the world.

Ten years after, more than ever  the non governmental pacifist 
feminist or similar grass roots groups are the only ones 
who see the necessity to unveil the crimes, condemn the 
crimes, and face the international responsibility for the 
massacre of Srebrenica done by Serbian paramilitary. The 
chain of responsibility leads from those who actually 
pulled the triggers back to those who gave the orders 
there in Bosnia, back to those in Serbia who supported them, 
back to those in the greater world who made a peacemaking 
partner out of a criminal regime.

Reconciliation, truth and justice besides exhibitions, 
standings and writings that NGO groups all over the world 
will be practicing this July 11, NGO groups all over the world 
will do exhibitions, standings and writings.   For me, 
reconciliation, truth and justice would mean hugging that 
man from Srebrenica I interviewed ten years ago, when we 
both still naively believed that there was  hope for all of 
us in the world outside the Balkans.  

I would tell him: Forgive me , I will never Forget...

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