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  • EASTERN BOSNIA - APRIL 2001: This are my grandmother’s hands. She survived two wars. 2nd World War and the Bosnian war for independence. Most of her family was exterminated in 2nd world war. Pretty much the offspring of the people that killed her family in 2nd world war committed atrocities in Bosnia in early 90’s. Eastern Bosnia is on the border with neighboring Serbia with river Drina as a natural border. Through the history Bosnia was always a border country between East and West, during the Ottoman period it was the border post towards Austrian empire, before that it was border between Eastern and Western Empire. This position made Bosnia quite a unique conglomerat of ckutures,traditions,religions. Other than that it didn't bring us too much good. When the war was over, a foreign journalist came to interview my professor of poetry, Marko Vesovic. Entering his appartment, the journalist noticed my professor's dog who was lying in a corner. 'What remarkable blue eyes he has,' the journalist said. 'Well, you see,' explained my professor, 'the dog used to eat the same food we ate during the war. Now he is blind. Dogs are ageing seven times faster than we do, so with us it is different. We still have to wait for the effects on us. I never witnessed a mortar shell exploding in front of the people in the market place or a sniper shooting someone in front of my high school. I was always a couple of seconds or minutes late, or I would pass by the market place just before the shell exploded and killed more than sixty people waiting to buy groceries, or I would be running in a dark street with broken glass falling on me. But I've seen people cleaning the streets after shelling, I've seen what was left of a young man after a thirty-kilo shell exploded near him, and I've also seen the face of woman who survived this unhurt. Lately, when I was in Jerusalem for the first time, I wanted to visit the Al-Aksa mosque. At the entrance I was stopped by an Israeli soldier, a native Russian, and an Arab guard of the mosque. 'You are not allowed to enter,' said the soldier. 'You are not Muslim.' 'But I am!' I insisted. They wouldn't believe me. In Italy, I told an acquaintance of mine that I was a Muslim. He was irritated. 'But then,' he said, 'you cannot be a European.' 'But I am!' I replied. The Turks have left us with an unsolved national question. Religion and culture have always been strongly intermingled in our country. When the Ottoman Empire conquered Bosnia in 1453, the strategy it used to establish its rule was Roman: Divide et impera. Religion was the vehicle. Favouring the Muslims helped the Turks run the country, but it divided the Bosnians. In the 19th century, during the era of Romanticism, when Central Europeans began to build up their ideas of nationhood based on concepts of cultural uniqueness, Bosnians developed their own cultural identities out of religious affiliations. But these cultural identities failed to develop into the idea of a Bosnian nation: Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodox were seduced by the ideas of a Great Serbia or a Great Croatia. Today Bosnia is a resort of moderate, autonomous European Islam. Actually most of the population are Christians: Orthodox and Catholics. The Arab countries were not too impressed by the Bosnian version of Islam and their help wasn't sufficient to help us defend ourselves against the former Yugoslav Army, one of the strongest armies in Europe. The body count in the recent war was almost all Bosnian Muslim, but for the first time in the last two hundred years we have a state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a language that is recognized….We've never been closer to a nation. I'm afraid that the fact that Bosnians are white helped us a lot. Probably that's why it took only four years for NATO to intervene in Bosnia. Before the fall of Srebrenica, the UN safe haven zone, foreign involvement was on the level of bringing humanitarian aid, mostly only where the Serbian Army allowed, and counting the shells and bombs falling on Bosnian cities. Then after the fall of Srebrenica and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims that followed it, NATO bombed the Serbian positions and brought peace. The first shelling of their positions around Sarajevo came at night. I remember our windows, covered with humanitarian nylon sheeting with UN signs instead of glass, opening because of the detonations, this time on the Serbian side. My mother cooked a pie to celebrate it. Our lives during the war were reduced to the basics. Having a bath with five-litre canisters and then using the water for the toilet. Making meat pie without meat. We became experts at peeing in the dark. The  path to happiness was very short, and the learning curve was steep. Once we all adopted these vital skills, and even got used to our little limbo and for a moment stopped talking about peace, our politicians signed the peace agreement. We have a new anthem now. We also have a new flag. It shows a dark blue ground on which is placed a golden triangle, a row of golden stars on one side. The triangle is meant to represent Bosnia and the row of stars I guess imply the European Union. Today we have to stand in a queue to get a visa for every European country. The writer Ivo Andric, one of two Bosnian Nobel Prize winners, described Bosnia in one of his novels as a 'valley of darkness'. The valley is surely dark; it is dark with Bosnian blood, it is darkened by American ignorance and European impotence, it is dark because of the clouds above. Yet it is our valley (Photo by Ziyah Gafic/Exclusive by Getty Images)

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NEVLADINE ORGANIZACIJE UPUTILE INICIJATIVU ZA PRODUŽENJE ROKA ZA OSTVARIVANJE STATUSA ŽRTVE RATNE TORTURE U REPUBLICI SRPSKOJ

Trinaest organizacija civilnog društva, koje se bave zaštitom ljudskih prava, obratilo se Ministarstvu rada i boračko-invalidske zaštite Republike Srpske sa inicijativom za produženje roka za podnošenje zahtjeva za ostvarivanje statusa žrtve ratne torture u okviru Zakona o zaštiti žrtava ratne torture, koji ističe u oktobru 2023.

Ova inicijativa predstavlja odgovor na potrebe žrtava ratne torture u Republici Srpskoj u kontekstu ostvarivanja statusa i sa njim povezanih prava za teške zločine koje su ove osobe preživjele, a koje se trebaju i mogu regulisati u Zakonu“, ističe potpisnica Inicijative Nada Golubović, predsjednica Upravnog odbora Fondacije Udružene žene.

Iako postoji značajan protok vremena u odnosu na ratna dešavanja u BiH on, nažalost, nije zaliječio stare rane, uključujući dugotrajne psihološke, fizičke, ekonomske i društvene posljedice torture po žrtve i njihove porodice. Mnoge žrtve i dalje pate od trauma povezanih sa zločinima koje su preživjele, koje su ostavile značajne posljedice,koju je teško prevazići.

 „Podnijeti zahtjev za priznavanje statusa podrazumijeva da osoba javno progovori o svojoj traumi, a vrijeme kad je neko spreman na to je individualno.  Zato je žrtvama potrebno ostaviti veći prostor da odluče kad su istinski spremne javno govoriti o svom traumatičnom iskustvu“, dodala je Golubović.

Potpisnici inicijative su ukazali i na Član 14. UN-ove Konvencije protiv mučenja, koju je država BiH kao potpisnica obavezna poštovati, u kojem se naglašava da pravo na naknadu treba biti efektivno, te da je potrebno uklanjati prepreke za uživanje prava na reparacije kao što je neadekvatno zakonodavstvo…proceduralne uslove koji otežavaju ostvarivanje prava, ograničeni rokovi i slično.  Nadalje se ističe da je žrtvama potrebno osigurati ne samo de iure, već i de facto pristup „pravovremenim i djelotvornim mehanizmima za ostvarivanje prava.“

“Relevantni međunarodni standardi obavezuju države članice da osiguraju da sve žrtve torture imaju mogućnost pristupa njihovim pravima neovisno od toga kada je povreda nastala i da ne smiju biti ograničeni rokovima, obzirom na kontinuiranu prirodu efekata mučenja i činjenicu da svako ima pravo da odluči kada je spreman da progovori o svojoj traumi”, kazala je Adrijana Hanušić Bećirović, viša pravna savjetnica organizacije TRIAL International koja je potpisnica ove Inicijative.

Ako nije moguće ukinuti vremensko ograničenje, potpisnici Inicijative predlažu produženje roka na dodatnih pet godina, odnosno do oktobra 2028. godine, što bi dalo priliku žrtvama da podnesu zahtjev za ostvarivanje statusa, a institucijama sistema da ulože dodatne napore da prava propisana Zakonom budu implementirana u punom obimu i u korist žrtava.

“Suđenja za ratne zločine počinjene tokom oružanog sukoba u BiH još traju što znači da mnoge žrtve ratne torture nisu još ostvarile pravo na krivičnu pravdu. Iako prava na reparacije nisu direktno uslovljena krivičnom presudom, postavlja se pitanje zašto zatvoriti  proces priznavanja prava i statusa žrtvama, ili ograničiti ga na neki vremenski period ako sam ratni zločin ne zastarijeva? I kakvu sliku o sebi kao društvu ostavljamo budućim generacijama ako žrtvama propišemo da je njihovo pravo na status zbog preživljene ratne torture bilo vremenski ograničeno i više nas posljedice sa kojima oni žive ne zanimaju?”, kazala je  Radmila Žigić, direktorica Fondacije „Lara“.

U potpisu inicijative su: Fondacija „Udružene žene“ Banja Luka, TRIAL International, Udruženje građana „Zdravo da ste“, Fondacija „Lara“, Centar ženskih prava Zenica, Udruženje građana „Vive žene“, Udruženje žena “Most“ Višegrad, Udruženje Prijedorčanki „Izvor“, Genesis projekt, Fondacija „Cure“ Sarajevo, Mreža za izgradnju mira, Udruženje žena „Duga“ i Helsinški parlament građana Banja Luka.