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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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NAZIVANJE RATNIH ZLOČINA PRAVIM IMENOM NEMA ALTERNATIVU

Ova publikacija nije o prošlosti o kojoj ne postoji konsenzus – ona je o sadašnjosti koja se gradi na interpretacijama prošlosti zasnovanim na bolu, mržnji, otklonu prema drugima i – poricanju ili veličanju ratnih zločina“, kazala je pravna ekspertica, Lejla Gačanica, na promociji publikacije “Nazivanje ratnih zločina pravim imenom“. Publikacija, nastala u saradnji sa Caroline Finkeldey, iza koje stoje organizacija TRIAL International i forum ZFD, ima za cilj pokretanje konstruktivnog diskursa o neophodnosti donošenja zakona o zabrani poricanja genocida, holokausta, zločina protiv čovječnosti i ratnih zločina. O ovoj temi u okviru panel diskusije, osim autorice, govorili su i direktor Balkanske Istraživačke Mreže, Denis Džidić, aktivistica udruženja “SARA Srebrenica”, Valentina Gagić-Lazić te docent na Pravnom fakultetu u Sarajevu, Midhat Izmirlija.

Mi se još uvijek ne bavimo istinskim ozdravljenjem društva, već prema potrebi zveckamo oružjem, ignorišući presude Međunarodnog suda za bivšu Jugoslaviju i empatiju za sve žrtve“, istakla je Gačanica te dodala da je pored zakonske zabrane, potreban kontinuiran rad u svim drugim oblastima koji će možda polučiti i buđenjem dovoljne društvene svijesti.

Pitanje pravnog reguliranja i zabrane negiranja, opravdavanja ili odobravanja genocida, ratnih zločina i zločina protiv čovječnosti polazi prvenstveno od civilizacijske potrebe suočavanja sa utvrđenim činjenicama“, naveo je docent na katedri za državno i međunarodno javno pravo Pravnog fakulteta Univerziteta u Sarajevu, Midhat Izmirlija, te dodao da je potrebno uspostaviti kulturu sjećanja nasuprot kulturi zaborava i dosegnuti “odgovorno pamćenje“.

Aktivistica udruženja “SARA Srebrenica”, Valentina Gagić-Lazić, naglasila je da je poražavajuća činjenica da živimo u društvu gdje se o djelima ljudi koji su u ratu rizikovali svoje živote spašavajući druge ne smije govoriti. “Kao društvo nismo pokazali da imamo kapacitet odmaći se od etničkog kolektiviteta i potrebe da tvrdimo da je za sve nevolje kriv onaj sa druge strane dvorišta, mosta, grada, ulice ili granice“, kazala je Valentina Gagić-Lazić.

Direktor Balkanske Istraživačke Mreže, Denis Džidić, naglasio je da je poražavajuće da smo četvrt stoljeća od genocida u Srebrenici u situaciji da ne govorimo o koracima uvrštavanja sudski utvrđenih činjenica u udžbenike i javni prostor. “Umjesto toga, u opasnosti smo od ‘institucionaliziranja’ negiranja genocida sa tzv. međunarodnom komisijom koju je organizirala NSRS i koja će iznijeti svoje zaključke uskoro“, naveo je Džidić.

U Bosni i Hercegovini česta je pojava da se u javnom diskursu poriču, minimiziraju ili odobravaju presuđeni ratni zločini, a osuđeni ratni zločinci javno se glorificiraju bez ikakvih sankcija. Retorike, mahom nacionalne koje ovo propagiraju, rasprostranjene su više nego ikad te dominiraju javnim prostorom, a vodeće političke elite često podržavaju ovakve prakse ili ih ne osuđuju.

Publikaciju “Nazivanje ratnih zločina pravim imenom” možete pronaći na sljedećem linku i na engleskom jeziku. Također, tabelarni prikaz zakonskih rješenja negiranja u drugim državama možete pronaći na sljedećem linku, i na engleskom jeziku