Srebrenica: Serbia's Agressive Denial

[Ivo Skoric]

Dear WIB supporters, letters of support can be sent to wib belgrade 
at:  stasazen at eunet.yu.
 
 Subject: Srebrenica 2004
 by Jasmina Tesanovic
 10th July

http://www.b92.net/galerija/pics/2004/07/55872873440f06cf16184e4327077
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It was my daughter s birthday, twentieth, a rather important date for 
a person who grew up a  in Milosevic s Serbia, born on the date of 
his wife Mira Markovic, who incessantly celebrated the fortunate 
event that made all of us rather miserable not only politically but 
in my case personally too. I had a feeling that even that rather rare 
moment in my private life has been snatched away from us a private 
persons and made a matter of public charade if not crime: so why 
bother to celebrate it, considering that my daughter was born in 
1984, Orwell science fiction dark year which turned somewhat true in 
Serbian history, we developed in my family this habit to share this 
private date as a public issue.

This year as every beginning of July was a ritual standing of Women 
in Black in the Square of Republic for the victims of Srebrenica, 9 
years after the massacre, in occasion of the burial of new 338 
identified bodies, now more that thousand out of 8000 which have 
disappeared.
 
We regularly reported our standing, got he official permission, yet 
once we were there we realized that the square was already occupied 
by two very loud and commercial events, so we had to retire under the 
famous Ljilja's clock (our activist) where in the past few months we 
have been collecting the signatures for, first the abolition of the 
law supporting the Hague war criminals, then for our recently elected 
presidential candidate Boris Tadic. Before we even managed to spread 
our banners, a woman from the usual onlookers stepped forward and 
started screaming incessantly; traitors, whores, CIA agents, AID 
patients, the usual repertoire...The police standing by our side was 
passive; the woman ran into our crowd of fifty, and started hitting 
random, she hit Ljilja, Cica, Stasa and Slavica; she did it fast and 
strong. The police finally stopped her while our Women in Black were 
trying to respond but not particularly surprised, it happened before. 
It happened only two months ago when three of our activists were 
beaten repeatedly and nobody was arrested afterwards and of course 
several other times during the Milosevic s regime.
 
We organized ourselves rapidly in the usual circle with our pacifist 
and antimilitarist and antinationalist banners asking
 for the responsibility of the former and present regime for the 
massacre in Srebrenica. That triggered some others to join the 
combative woman. Other few women and some men. I recognized one from 
the last time our activists were beaten and the other from the famous 
gay lesbian pride march back in 2001 when the 15 activists were 
incessantly persecuted and beaten and spitted by 900 hooligans as 
well as members of the Obraz (nationalist) organization.
 
We stood for one hour listening to their threats and offences, 
extremely radical this time: they threatened to skin us next
time, to bring weapons, to take us to the court of traitors...to rape 
us ...They sang "Ko to kaze ko tolaze Srbija je mala" (nationalist 
song) and they shouted the names of their heroes, Seselj, Mladic 
Karadzic Milosevic...The police wrote down their id-s as well as 
those of attacked women in black women and then stood in silence. 
After the standing we closed our banners and took a seat in the 
nearby Gradska kafana (restaurant): we did not want to leave one by 
one, and we had  foreign guests who were visibly upset. We hoped the 
harassers would leave first, instead they gathered around us waiting
...After some time we stood up and asked to police to protect us by 
making the aggressors leave...Instead the police asked us to leave 
because they claimed they could not protect us even though we were in 
a bigger number then the hooligans, even though we have all the legal 
and moral right to be where we were and do what we did. Even though 
the next day the democratic candidate was to be proclaimed the 
official president of Serbia, even though... We were summoned into 
cabs and denied to right to walk down the streets, some of us were 
furious, some scared but most of us, I guess used to it. Srebrenica 
is a bad word for modern Serbia, even worse then feminism, and the 
Women in Black put the two together...
 
The next day, early in the morning we went to Srebrenica for the 
ritual standing in the memorial valley where the victims are buried. 
Our women friends greeted us and gave us the  first row so that our 
banner Women in Black from Belgrade can be visible for the mass 
auditorium, press...and it never fails to be noticed, because it is 
important, for them, for us...paradoxically these last years for us 
it became safer and more significant to stand in Srebrenica 11the of 
July than to assist the first democratic president we supported with 
all our might to be elected while he was anointed the very same day 
in Belgrade: why did we have to chose and given the choice, how come 
only few of us were in Srebrenica...and why the obvious fact such as 
8000 missing people from Srebrenica some of which found buried in 
Serbia proper never ever becomes a reality in Belgrade.
 
I had a wish for the maturity birthday of my daughter next year: that 
the 338 wrapped bodies passed from hand to hand in
Bratunac by relatives of the survived, if any, were passed here in 
the republic Square by our so called decent citizens and policemen 
who every year now just watch us silently while the war criminals and 
their loud supporters make the rules according to which we all are 
their hostages, willing or milling. I know my wish will never come 
true, but I also know that if we stop wishing we may get what we 
really want, as an English proverb says. And god forbid what that may 
be when it comes to Serbia whose favourite proverb is: one can fool 
around with everything but   never with police or army...
 
PS Why the nature  becomes so beautiful  wherever the crime is 
committed, said my friend. She was right; I never pay attention to 
the nature unless I am obliged to. The Srebrenica valley is demanding 
it: the intensive green colours, the soothing sounds of the wind and 
birds, the blazing sun which heats without hurting...the design of 
the clouds...the neat border lines of the place of the crime. On one 
side the abandoned railway tracks, the barracks the weeds...the 
barbed wire...in the same condition as 9 years ago; there the  male 
victims were held once separated from the families...Later on they 
were executed somewhere else they say...it is a Auschwitz atmosphere 
that side of the valley triangle, it strikes for its organized 
efficiency, so many people executed in so few days, the technology 
bothers me, and images of general Mladic throwing chocolates to the 
children behind the barbed wire...
 
The other side is a hill, not very steep, today covered with humble 
even graves of the identified recovered victims...the third side is a 
steep hill with a tree or two, where usually we come and stand during 
the ritual prayers. And in the middle, the memorial erected last 
year, a construction resembling a tent a cupola under which the 
bodies are assembled in rows, where the priest and speakers address 
god or commons. It is not an even side triangle, it does not resemble 
justice or beauty, it is even slightly sinister when the shadows 
start creeping in the late afternoon, it has no running water and has 
a lot of dust, but somehow every year I have a catharsis there, even 
though I am not a Muslim, I am not a man  who prays and I am not even 
a foreigner anymore there. The place has the captive beauty of a 
place of a crime: there where men have wronged, the nature
rebels.