On the trail of Mladic and Karazdic

Sarajevo / Srebrenica.

Again, the silence of death rests over the graveyard at the memorial center in Potocari. An endless array of tombstones with names and dates of birth have been carved for every victim, of all ages, including women and children, killed in Podrinja, in July 1995.

The gravesite stands as eternal reminders of what happened in Srebrenica from July 11, 1995. In just a few weeks, more than 8000 people were massacred and nearly 40 residents displaced from their homes. General Ratko Mladic led the Serbian troops who carried out the navy.

So far, just over 2000 victims have been buried. More than 4500 victims are waiting to be identified through DNA. This does not mean that 6500 victims have been found, as many of the skeletons are not whole – among the finds there may be only one arm, or several of the finds may belong to the same victim.

This is because most of the mass graves in the Podrinja area in eastern Bosnia are secondary graves, ie the victims have been dug up from one or more mass graves, before they have been thrown into a new mass grave. Amor Masovic, who heads the federal part of the Bosnian Herzegovina Commission for the Missing, tells Ny Tid that the Commission knows of 21 mass graves in the Podrinja area, with up to several thousand bodies from the Srebrenica massacres, which remain to be opened.

The burial ground in Potocari outside Srebrenica gives a strong impression with 610 new victims laid to rest on July 11, at the 10th anniversary of the genocide perpetrated against the Bosnians (as the Bosnian mulimis call their population group) in Srebrenica.

There are many survivors who have not found their slain family members. They wait uncertainly, without having a grave to go to. Up to 100 people are affected by the tragedy. The victims' families are represented through the Srebrenica women. They demand that the truth be brought forth and that justice be fully accomplished by the criminals being arrested, convicted and punished.

Back to the city of death

The widow Hana Mehmetovic moved back to Srebrenica city alone in 2002. She lost her son Mirsa and many family members in the Srebrenica tragedy. Still, she has chosen to continue living in her hometown, near her closest.

Hana has moved to the upper part of Srebrenica, where other elderly Bosniaks have returned to their homes. On the other hand, few families with children return. The children do not have any relevant school offer, and there is no job available. The Serbs, who mainly live in Srebrenica, are mostly refugees from the Sarajevo area or immigrants from local villages in the area. The most extreme of the Serbs live in the lower part of the city. The Bosniaks still dare not live there for fear of being harassed.

Nevertheless, it is surprising and positive that the Bosnian Muslims who have chosen to return have met with little resistance and harassment from the Serbian population.

There is not much life in the few streets of Srebrenica, but a group of Serbs is sitting by a café in the heart of the city. They drink locally called plum liquor brandy, while silently watching what is happening across the street. Some Bosniaks are in the process of repairing their houses. The street that separates the two groups is like a ravine that separates two different worlds. Throughout Srebrenica's hell, the surviving Bosniaks have retreated from the ravine, while many of the local Serbs, who took part in the hostilities when Srebrenica fell, are now falling into the gulf of apathy and powerlessness.

Srebrenica is marked with the death stamp of shame in history for all time.

6 of 19 convicted

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has accused nineteen people of genocide in Srebrenica. Of these, only six have been convicted.

The two main leaders, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, are still at large.

During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there were few clear voices, among the international actors, who were willing to stand up with their view of humanity, against cynical international power play and interests.

One of the few who dared was the former Polish Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazoviecki. He was the only international representative in Bosnia during the war to resign when he saw that the international community was doing nothing to stop the genocide against the people of Srebrenica in 1995. Mazoviecki made the following statement to the Bosnian press on July 11, when he received Srebrenica Award: “One should not just talk about Mladic and Karadzic. They must be arrested! The international community is involved in war crimes through its passivity. ”

Ahead of the July 11 celebrations, there was great expectation in Bosnia that the most wanted war criminals in modern European times would be arrested and taken to the Hague Tribunal. But it did not happen. This summer, both the local and international media wrote almost daily about the impending arrests of Karadzic and Mladic.

Karadzic and Mladic have been wanted since 1995, with international arrest warrants for Interpol.

Little has been done by NATO for some time, but since this spring, things have started to happen. It may seem as if there is a covert offensive on the part of the international community to take the network that finances Karadzic and Mladic.

Mladic begged

At the end of June, NATO and EUFOR carried out a large-scale raid on the home of Radovan Karadzic in Pale, Republika Srbska, where his wife Ljiljana Karadzic still lives.

On July 7, Radovan Karadzic's son, Sasa, was arrested.

On July 28, Ljiljana made a public recommendation for the first time through the press to her husband, Radovan Karadzic: “Our family is under constant pressure from all sides. We are threatened with death. We live in constant anxiety and suffering, so I have to ask you with all my heart, even if it hurts me, Radovan, that you surrender. ”

Speculation in the Bosnian newspapers Oslobodenje and Dnevni Avaz is that the Americans told Sasa that NATO was going to arrest Radovan Karadzic. The alternative is that he surrenders himself. The lure is that the family will receive five million dollars if they contribute to Karadzic's arrest.

At the same time, Blic and other Serbian media wrote that Mladic is under house arrest in Belgrade, and that due to ill health he is now willing to negotiate his surrender if the family gets the bounty.

In Bosnia, many in both the Serbian and Bosnian populations are critical of the fact that the families of war criminals can receive five million dollars in reward for surrendering themselves.

Not only have Mladic and Karadzic enjoyed 10 years of freedom, but their families may also be rich in their past war crimes.

Serbian opinion

In July, Serbian President Boris Tadic asked Mladic to surrender: "The whole future of Serbia depends on it." he said.

But Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic pointed out the challenges: "The problem is no longer that you do not know where Mladic is, but that you must first create an atmosphere to get him arrested."

The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, then issued a declaration stating: "In the spirit of our Christian faith and with charity from God, I pray that the pressure on the Karadzic family ceases immediately."

Serbia's Minister for Minorities and Human Rights, Rasim Ljajic, finally concluded that the chances of Mladic surrendering were minimal. The reason was that there was still no agreement in Serbia that the war crimes in Srebrenica had actually taken place.

This was also revealed when the Serbian parliament could not agree on a resolution that would state that there had been war crimes in Srebrenica in 1995. On the other hand, the parliaments in both Montenegro and Vojvodina decided that a genocide had taken place in Srebrenica.

Republika Srbska was opposed to a similar resolution being adopted. Only in the Federal Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a resolution adopted by all the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian delegates. The only exception was the Serbian Liberal Party, led by Dodik based in Republika Srbska, which voted against the genocide resolution.

The resolution stated that genocide had been committed against Srebrenica's population by the Bosnian Serb and former Yugoslav army.

A similar resolution on the Srebrenica genocide was adopted by the US Congress, Canada, Croatia and the European Parliament ahead of the 11th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide on 2005 July XNUMX.

However, the Norwegian Storting has not done such a thing. In other words, Norway is one of the few countries involved in Europe that has not taken a clear position on whether a genocide was committed in Srebrenica.

In early July, BBC journalist Nick Holton revealed that Karadzic was hiding in the Ostrog monastery outside the city of Niksic in Montenegro, where his brother Luke Karadzic lives.

By then, according to the Bosnian newspaper Avaz, Karadzic had already left the place. "My brother will never surrender, for many reasons, mainly because the Hague Tribunal is not a legitimate court," Luk Karadzic told the BBC.

Arrest before the Dayton Anniversary?

Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal, tried to pressure both the local authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and the international community to carry out the arrest of Mladic and Karadzic before July 11 this year. But it did not happen.

She has now given a new desired deadline for the Dayton agreement's 10th anniversary on November 21, 2005. It will then be ten years since the war in Bosnia ended after an agreement with Milosevic.

The EU, for its part, has set a deadline as early as 5 October. The EU will then start negotiations with Belgrade on a treaty with the EU, as the first part of an integration of Serbia into Europe. It is a requirement of the EU that Serbia must arrest all wanted war criminals who are in Serbia. At the same time, the mandate of Paddy Ashdown, the representative of the World Bank and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, expires.

Paddy Ashdown wants to see the two war criminals caught before his departure. Ashdown's responsibility on behalf of the international community is to ensure that the Dayton Accords are implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also means that the most wanted war criminals will be tried as soon as possible.

At the memorial center in Potocari, the tombstones still stand like silent cries.

The dead are waiting for their brothers, fathers and sons who were killed with them, so they can all rest together. Close to the graves there is a pile of stacks with shovels as a separate monument in itself. The shovels symbolize the families, the injustice, the unresolved, but there is also a strength, a power, a will, to work towards a better future.

Taken together, the spades draw a beautiful graphically fused pattern in iron that becomes a great creation.

Av WV Warsinski.