THE GOLGOTHA OF SREBRENICA

THE WORLD - ACCOMPLICE IN A CRIME

AIM, Tuzla, July 15, 1995 "Displacement of people" - is the hypocritical name one of the UN institutions (to be more precise the UNHCR) uses for the tragedy and golgotha of Srebrenica. Back in 1993, general Morillon, UNPROFOR Commander at the time, spoke similarly when he took 15 thousand citizens of Eastern Bosnia towards Tuzla, calling his act "humane moving". But, the latest exodus of Srebrenica, i.e. the fall of this "safety" zone, is christianed by local authorities and ordinary citizens of the free part of B&H, by its real name - betrayal by the UN and its accomplice in a crime.

"We consider that those who were expected to defend Srebrenica after signing of the contract on protected zones are responsible for its tragedy", these are the words of Izet Hadzic, President of the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton where about 23,500 banned persons from Srebrenica were received. Most of them are already displaced to eight municipalities of the Canton, and about 6,000 women, children and elderly are in a tent settlement at the Tuzla airport Dubrave. The tragedy of these people, possibilities for their accomodation, proportions of the crime committed by Karadzic's Serbs in Eastern Bosnia, but also the surrender and indifference of international forces which, two years ago, of their own free will assumed responsibility for protection of Bosnian enclaves, were discussed in the past few days in Tuzla on the level of the canton, on the level of municipalities, with competent ministers of the Government of the Republic and Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina, but with international diplomats who have arrived to this town as well.

How the incalculable pain, sorrow and the feeling of being forsaken by the entire international community rip up all civilized contemplation and spark off instictive revenge for all the suffering endured by one's compatriots is perhaps best illustrated by the words of a deputy in Tuzla municipal assembly, Fehim Besic, who frantically howled in front of his colleagues:

"Please, God, let me have ten atomic bombs to throw them at Belgrade and all Serb cities! Let them, God, experience everything that is happening to us! Who in this world is preventing killing and genocide? Who would forbid us to catch and tie up members of the UNPROFOR? Let me, God, tie up foreign soldiers, mock the whole world and rob other people's things, because that is the only thing this world acknowledges and recognizes. So, if everybody has yielded to evil, let them know that we too shall tie up and arrest, let them know that to bullets and bombs we shall respond with bullets and bombs. Nobody believes words any more! Let boms fall, God, on the Eiffel Tower and the Big Ben, too. When all they recognize is force, let force occur at their homes, too!"

And yet, leading people of the Canton and the Municipality pacified passions of the speakers with explicit rejections of such emotional calls to revenge. The mentioned President of Tuzla-Podrinje Canton, Izet Hadzic, stressed that such reaction was exactly what Karadzic's fascist concept intends to provoke and hear from legal Bosnian authorities: "One of the essential objectives of Serb fascism is provoking our revenge for their misdeeds. In that way they would arrange a burial of the present status of us as the victims and them as publicly declared war criminals. Such equalization is something they have been wishing for all the time, believing that in that way they would avoid trial for war crimes. We will not agree to it and revenge with a crime is out of the question."

It is a fact that the term "Serb fascism" is not used to mark what Karadzic's sympathizers are doing nowadays in Bosnia & Herzegovina with the blessing and backing from Belgrade regime only in emotional outbursts or among hard-core supporters of national parties in power. The fourth year of the cruel war has offered obvious evidence of how the conception, the political program of the Pale regime, but also the instruments by means of which it attempts to implement it, coincides with the fascist ideology in its basic characteristics. In the part in which extremism of some of the members of the ruling party, the Party of Democratic Action, tries to respond to Karadzic's fascist ideology by similar methods, the Serbs who as loyal citizens of Bosnia & Herzegovina live in the free part of their state B&H, are blamed and unjustly accused. That is how it happened, for example, that certain Custovic, a deputy of the SDA in the Tuzla Municipal Assembly in front of the other deputies, said that he saw no Orthodox people protesting against what had happened in Srebrenica and that he as a Boshniak-Muslim demanded that the Serbs who lived in the free part of B&H prove that they condemned the fall of Srebrenica and Karadzic's regime which was responsible for the tragedy of his people. Even his party colleagues reacted to such Custovic's declaration claiming that Bosnians who lived and fought for integral B&H, whether of Muslim, Orthodox or Catholic religion, could not be divided into citizens with more or less right to the B&H state, and that the basic difference between the citizens of this state and supporters of Karadzic's regime was not in their nationality, but in advocating Bosnia & Herzegoivina as a joint state as opposed to the nationalistic concept of division of the state which made those who were not loyal to the leader suffer.

The fact that national extremism meets with disapproval even among the members of the ruling party is greatly the result not only of the declarative program of the SDA concerning integral and multiethnic B&H, but also of the efforts of opposition civic parties whose strongest foothold is Tuzla itself. Contrary to the Pale regime where it is not permitted to have a different view, and belonging to a different nation is severely sanctioned, in the territory of B&H controlled by legal authorities, even open condemnation of extremism of the rling party is permitted. Simo Simic, for instance, a member of the Union of B&H Social Democrats and Serb Civic Committee from Tuzla, reacted to Custovic's declaration about "the Orthodox who should apologize for Srebrenica with the following words:

"Words which do not become Tuzla and its political concept are beginning to be heard here. I do not allow anyone to say that he is a greater Bosnian than I am! I do not allow anyone to claim because of his name that he defends or loves Bosnia better than I do. This is my homeland, I was born here and I am fighting for this country. The struggle for B&H is proved by deeds and not by name! Those who think that their names give them the quality and proof that they can act as they choose, just declaratively claim that that they are in favour of multicultural and integral Bosnia & Herzegovina. Why is the administration in Sarajevo silent? Why doesn't anyone of those who are responsible answer what has happened and why Strebrenica happened just now? Where are the true decisions about defence of the country? Where are the answers of military authorities and ruling parties about the conception of defence and future of B&H? Unfortunately, I am not sure that all those who are politically active inside the free part of B&H wish and are in favour of Bosnia & Herzegovina as an integral country of equal people. Declaratively that is what they say, but they act otherwise. If we had a clear conception and answers to all the questions I am talking about, rest assured, we would turn the whole peace process in our favour."

Despite the evident treason of the international community which has helped Mladic's para-army to conquer Srebrenica and cleanse it ethnically - that Sarajevo military and political authorities, as well as those responsible for the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton who are themselves from the ruling SDA, will have to give answers about their responsibility for the tragedy in Srebrenica is certified by a member of the SDA from Tuzla party organization, Asim Tenic, who publicly wonders:

"Where are the army and the politicians? What have they done and how? Cerska, Kamenica, Konjevic Polje, Srebrenica... and our army and state authorities are sitting idle and are concerned with certain affairs of their own. Of all the enclaves, Srebrenica was the closest to free territory. Was it defended at all, could it have been defended, was it in our interest to preserve it? I am asking you - where are the children of our politicians, each and every one of them - from top to the bottom? Is a single child of theirs fighting and dying for Bosnia?

The only one who found himself among the Tuzla deputies, colonel Refik Lendo, commander of the 25th Brigade of the 2nd Corps of the Army of B&H, tried to clear the army of charges by saying that "in the past years of the war, the situation was worse than today", that "Srebrenica is just another motive for the final victory and defeat of the Chetniks", that "not one of the combatants surrendered" and that everything speaks in favour of the fact "that this was the last convulsion before Mladic capitulated"!? Trying to find additional understanding for the fall of Srebrenica and to convince the citizens of Tuzla that the only problem was that Karadzic hated the Muslims ("It is not our fault at all, we are just guilty of being Boshniak-Muslims"), colonel Lendo uttered an indicative sentence a soldier rarely dares utter. Namely, claiming that "We did lose Srebrenica, but we shall make up for it in other places", and by not even trying to say that Srebrenica should be reclaimed or a political solution sought for it, Lendo just warmed up increasing speculations that the fall of Srebrenica, as well as the latest attacks on Zepa and Gorazde were in fact effectuation of an agreement between Pale and Sarajevo reached back in 1993 about exchange of these enclaves for Ilijas and Vogosca in the suburbs of Sarajevo.

On the occasion of the tragedy of Srebrenica, all parliametary parties of the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton together with representatives of the Catholic and Islam religious communities issued a statement saying, among other, the following:

"The act of UN representatives who surrendered the points they controlled is considered to be not only betrayal of principles the world community is founded on, but also an shameless deception of the allegedly protected civilian population of this Bosnian enclave... By their attitude towards the Chetnik massacre in Srebrenica, world power-wielders directly participate in the crime against unprotected people... We demand that the competent institutions of the UN agencies most urgently carry out the duty they had assumed, and if they do not, we will most seriously reconsider our further relations with representatives of the international community in this space".

In its statement occasioned by the developments about Srebrenica, the Serb Civic Committee (CVG) of the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton has also demanded that "all responsible UN individuals and institutions apply all permissible means, and there are enough of them, to respond by force to force, and stop the aggression and pogrom Serb-Montenegrin army is committing against innocent and unarmed population". The SVG believes that Srebrenica will be saved in this way, as well as the whole of B&H and its citizens, but world peace as well. At the same time, with its statement, the SVG addressed all the Serbs, antifascists in the territory of Serbia, Montenegro and occupied territories of B&H to oppose the merciless assaults against innocent civilians: "It is quite clear that the current military actions against civilians in enclaves of Eastern Bosnia are a part of a plan for ethnic cleansing of this space, which aggravates the position and jeopardizes the reputation of the Serbs and the Serb nation in the world and in this country. Does policy of any party have the right to do so much evil to others and its own nation? We in the SVG of Tuzla are resolute to win the right together with other nations of the B&H for any human being, regardless of religiob, nation, race or sex, to enjoy all human rights, but especially to live peacefully and with dignity in his/her home and make a living by working. Resist the disastrous policy which completely disregards these rights with unprecedented impertinence, especially since such policy is implemented in your name", reads the statement of the SGV of Tuzla.

A similar message was sent by the Citizens' Forum of Tuzla saying: "All of you who belong to the Serb nation must know that at this moment in your name, children, women, old men, helpless and unarmed civilians of Srebrenica are killed in the cruellest way there is. At this moment, in the name of Serbdom, Chetniks are massacring hundreds of helpless civilians, whole families are shut in their houses and burnt to death, shot..."

While appeals to the world conscience, to democratic alternative in Serbia and Montenegro are travelling from Tuzla, while international power-wielders are arguing about what someone wishes or does not wish to do in Bosnia, while the authorities of Bosnia & Herzegovina pass over in silence all questions put to them repeating only that people banned from Srebrenica belong to the UN and that they are their concern, about 15 thousand people are still hiding in the hills around Srebrenica trying to find their way to the free part of Tuzla. Not a single world institution managed to reach the several thousand men taken to detention camps made around blood-stained Srebrenica by Mladic's supporters. The number of those who have paid the fall of the enclave with their lives is still not known for sure, but a figure of more than one thousand of killed and several thousand disappeared persons is mentioned.

A host of foreign journalists is circling Tuzla and they are believed in this space to be a bad omen of a terrible tragedy. Reports about suffering of exiled citizens of Srebrenica have already been sent through world media, but the foreigners are still not going back to their countries. They say - they will wait to describe Zepa before they leave!

RUSMIR SPAHIC