This is a continued effort to highlight the discrimination faced by returnees to the Podrinje region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Podrinje or the Drina Valley was scene to some of the most vicious pogroms and mass killings during the Bosnian War. On January 23d local Serb authorities in eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad removed the word “genocide” from the main Bosniak cemetery in town. The action was originally scheduled for 24 December 2013 along with the demolition of a rebuilt house a few hundred yards down the road from the cemetery on Pionirska Street.
The house was a scene of one of the most horrific crimes of the war, it has been since rebuilt and stands as a memorial to those killed in the Pionirska Street Live–Pyre. The action to remove the word “genocide” and demolish the house was then stopped by the survivors who confronted the local authorities, however on 23d of January this year the word was removed, and the fate of the memorial on Pionirska Street is still uncertain. Several media outlets both in Bosnia and around the world ran the story, including International Business Times.
Writer Predrag Blagovcanin was one of those pointed out that what is going on in eastern Bosnia and Visegrad is simply a continuation by other means of the politics carried out by Radovan Karadzic during the 1992-95.
This article first appeared on Bosnian portal Tacno.net 23/01/2014
We already know that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country of absurdities, in which we on a daily basis are forced to witness an orgy in fascism stipulated by law, but today we also learned that we live in country in which a 100 members of the special police can rearrange inscriptions on memorials dedicated to murdered civilians
By Predrag Blagovcanin
Early this morning at around 7 o´clock municipal workers and members of the Inspection Unit of the municipality of Visegrad toghter with around 100 members of the ministry of the interior RS in an action probably named “Erasing for a better tomorrow” chiseled away the word “genocide” from a memorial dedicated to murdered Bosniak civilians from the Visegrad area during the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina. The initiative for the removal of the word genocide from the memoarial dedicated to the murdered civilians from the Visegrad area came SDS-deputy Miroslav Kojic who in the People’s Assembly of Republika Srpska requested that Bosnian entity do everything in order to prevent the spreading of “lies and untruths” about the character of the war in the town of Visegrad.
Just what “lies and untruths” is Kojic talking about?
Miroslav Kojic, the SDS deputy, from the same party as convicted war criminals Momcilo Krajisnik and Biljana Plavsic and soon to be joined by Radovan Karadzic, obviously is not familiar with the historic facts about the events that took place in Visegrad during the war. The SDS-deputy is either not familiar with or does wish to acknowledge the fact that according to RDC (Research and Documentation Centre) 1760 civilians from the Visegrad area were killed, of those over a 100 were children. He´s also not interested in the fact that according to the International War crimes Tribunal (ICTY) Visegrad was a scene of some of the worst “ethnic cleansing” during the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina and he does not seem to remember that on 14th of June 1992 70 people were barricaded into a house on Pionirska Street and burnt alive.
However for Miroslav Kojic the SDS-deputy and Slavisa Miskovic the current mayor of Visegrad, a town in which prior to the war 63 % of the population was Bosniak in accordance with their own views on historical events in this municipality those facts are not important. That´s why it was decided by the local branch of the SDS that the word genocide would be erased from all memorials and the house of Sumbula Zeba (On Pionirska Street) in which 70 civilians were burnt alive on June 14th 1992 is to be demolished in order to make way for an intersection. So Miroslav Kojic´s and his party colleague Miskovic´s own vision of a new Visegrad which they intend to build so that it´s even more beautiful and older and more ethnically pure the Andric´s is disturbed by memorials to Bosniak civilians, especially bothersome is the disgusting word genocide which thanks to a set of circumstances is constantly haunting them.
They are however not bothered by the statue to the unknown Serb soldier on Visegrad´s main square or a memorial to Russian volunteers and mercenaries’. Of course these two SDS visionaries in their efforts to rewrite history the way it suits them don´t see anything controversial about the traditional event glorifying the Ravna Gora Chetnik movement, and they are especially proud by the relocation of the monument of Draza Mihajlovic from Brcko to a called place Undrulje which is going to be renamed Little Drazevina (Mala Draževina) in honor of the convicted war criminal.
In the vision of this SDS tandem, generations and generations will be laying flowers next to the newly built two-meter statue of Ratko Mladic. While under the patronage of the municipality in and in honor of Radovan Karadzic a festival called “The leading voice of the Chetnik song” will be organized. Unfortunately today´s removal of the word genocide from the memorial dedicated to Bosniak civilians on Straziste cemetery, under the absolute patronage of the authorities in RS is just one more proof that the politics of ethnic cleansing by this which this entity was created. And because of which so many people lost their lives, has still not been stopped. Indeed it is being carried out with the same intensity as before, only the methods have changed, and those are no less dangerous.
As our wise people would say; the principal is the same all the rest are different shades.
BiH News Platform 