SARAJEVO SUBURB OF HADZICI

Pictures of Impotence and Suffering

AIM Sarajevo, March 11, 1996

Before the war, people from Sarajevo used to travel to the sea coast via Hadzici. It took about fifteen minutes to get there by a modern highway surrounded by a forest, lined with stone weekend houses, cafes and restaurants along the road. Nowadays, in 1996, more precisely last week, we travelled for two and a half hours to Hadzici - first across the airport runway, then by a forest road over frozen Igman mountain, then to Zovik, via Lokve and finally into Hadzici.

Under Igman, peasants stand along the road waving to the long convoy headed by Minister of the interior of the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Avdo Hebib, leaders of the Sarajevo City Assembly, teams of fire-brigade and ambulances, policemen and journalists, of course. It is still impossible to travel via Ilidza. It will change hands in the next few days. The road over Igman is the harder, but still a safer way.

Just before entering Hadzici, the convoy of the federal authorities from Sarajevo was reached by a group of people from Hadzici who were returning to their homes after almost four years spent away from them, wandering about, shifting from one place to another in neighbouring Pazaric and Tarcin. Hadzici appear in the distance. A picture of ruins and a town which has seen torches and flames.

There is no official takeover of power. It is all still on the level of symbolism: the tablet with federal insignia and the flag with lilies. There is not much talk or speeches. Minister Hebib simply says that the representatives of the Federation have come "to create conditions for a normal life of the citizens regardless of their ethnic origin".

"We are bringing peace to all the citizens who wish to live here" Mr. Hebib added.

Before officially entering the building of the police station in Hadzici, the people from the Federation had to make just another step. Recently this step has become practically an inevitable formality: before the authorities and the people, teams in charge of anti-demolition protection are the first to enter. They come back and report that everybody must step back. An explosive device is installed at the door of the office. Everybody moves back from the building, the explosion is carefully provoked, and the last obstacle is thus removed. However, warnings remain. Nobody may enter the premises without permission and before they are searched. It is necessary to take every precaution. Allegedly, lawns and parks also conceal explosive devices.

In the streets, people of Hadzici who have returned with tears in their eyes. They are back on their own ground. At the thresholds of their homes they have dreamt about, grieved about and mourned after. Dika Dupovac lived in exile in the neighbouring Tarcin. She was banished from her home in the village of Dupovci at the beginning of the war. By her next-door neighbours, she says. They came one morning, threatened her and left. They gave her and her family just half an hour to leave the village.

"I have lost my husband in the war. I have only one son left. No house, no home. I have nothing, just my soul, to offer to the Lord", Dika says. She is sixty, and remembers the last four years only by tears and homesickness. Her only wish was to come to her doorstep once again. "I still cannot do it. They say it may be mined. First, some people have to come and check it", Dika says and glances at the hill where her house gleams white. It is obvious that there are no windows, no doors on it, and not even tiles on the roof. Nevertheless, it is Dika's. And her son's who says he will begin repairing it as soon as possible.

On the very first day, according to certain assessments, about ten thousand people returned to Hadzici. Many had left this town during the night before the authorities arrived.

"I have not slept all night", says Hasnija Milosevic. Her apartment is in the building next to the municipality building. Members of the Serb army had set the municipality building on fire several hours before they left town. "Crackling of the fire could be heard all night. I knew what was burning, but I did not dare come out, not even to the window. Since a few days ago, I had remained alone in the building which housed 30 families. Noone paid any attention to me", Hasnija tells us. She talks about the time when her husband (an ethnic Serb) was dying in agony, and nobody wanted to examine him, take him to the hospital, bring him a drug. "It was all because of my name. They avoided me as if I were leprous" says Hasnija.

Danica Matic also welcomed federal authorities in Hadzici. She lost a daughter in the war:

"I know who killed my daughter - my first door neighbour! He was close to the authorities here in Hadzici. Unfortunately, I knew and saw too much; how weapons were distributed, how the Boshniaks and the Croats were taken away during the night and killed, I knew about two mass tombs, too. My house was just across the street from the municipality building. They took my daughter to frighten me and send me away. But when they killed her, nothing mattered to me any more. I stayed here and welcomed freedom", says Danica. She persistently claims that people were buried along with dead cattle in a mass grave in Musici not far from Hadzici. Then they were covered up by bulldozers, traces were removed overnight, she adds in the end.

Danica also speaks about those who had left Hadzici just before the federal authorities arrived.

"There were three kinds of them. The first really left out of fear. The second left because they had not been from here. They took everything they could find in other people's houses and left. And the third ran away because their hands were soaked in blood not up to their elbows, my son, but up to their shoulders!"

Jasmin Drina started on his way to Hadzici on foot from Tarcin. His wife is with him. They are returning home by the same road they had left on their way to uncertanty four years ago. He is going with a special feeling. When we ask him where he will first go, Jasmin surprises us with his answer: "I am going to find and see some of my Serb neighbours who have remained." Jasmin's brother was one of the 186 disappeared Boshniaks and Croats who had been locked up in the notorious Hadzici garage (in the centre of the town) in the beginning of 1992, and who the authorities in Sarajevo believe were killed. Jasmin hopes that someone must know what happened to his brother, whether he had been killed and where he was buried: "Someone must know his grave".

According to the first data, only some hundred odd Serbs remained in Hadzici (there were 6,351 of them before the war). Mostly elderly and disabled remained. Vladimir Zec, one of them, says that he had remained in Hadzici without any fear. "I have always helped everyone I could, both the Boshniaks and the Croats, why should I be afraid now", says Vladimir. His bed-ridden wife is in the house. After all, they say in the end, they have nowhere to go.

We happen to be present when Vladimir meets Ramo Bajramovic. Once they used to live under the same roof. They embrace and greet each other. Then Vladimir runs home wishing to tell his wife the good news: "Ramo is alive! He is alive!" Namely, during the war, news reached them that Ramo had been killed on one of the Bosnian battlegrounds...

All around Hadzici, pictures of impotence, of the last move of desperadoes who burnt, tore down, mined, took everything they could with them while leaving the town. They took everything they needed, but also everything they will never need. They have not forgotten the factories even, the expensive equipment from the Technical Repair Institute which is assessed to be 342 million German marks' worth, that from "Bjelasnica" enterprise worth 25 million marks, and the local "Coca Cola" which is about 12.5 million marks' worth.

At the time the federal authorities arrived, Ljiljana Manojlovic who lives near the Factory "Transport" was just waiting for the tractor she had ordered. To move furniture and other belongings to Ilidza. Her husband is already over there with her son, the elder one. Her younger son and she had remained to transport the things;

"I am going to my sister's to Zrenjanin. She invited me a long time ago. I wish to God I had gone then, I would not have waited to see this", she says. When we ask her whether she has to go, whether she heard the appeal of the federal authorities, Ljiljana doubtfully shakes her head:

"There was too much blood. It can hardly end so peacefully. I am going. I don't care about the others!"

SENKA KURTOVIC