In Srebrenica, in the bowels of Eastern Bosnia, the offensive of the Serbs against a defenseless city began on July 6, 1995 when the lights of a dawn still uncertain were gnawing the darkness of the night. The first killed dead were dragged out of bed where they slept. They did not have to fully realize the danger for the blades of the bayonets to tear their throat without them having time for a sigh as awake.
Instead, the other thousands of victims – until July 25 – had the opportunity to understand that their life was no longer worth anything.
8,372 The names of the executed people even if the list is still “temporary”. The people of the city claims that – for the hardship and following the wounds – 4 thousand more died. Violent violence from hatred.
They did not scruple from the rape Devla Ajsic who was in the fourth month of pregnancy. They passed out a 94 -year -old grandmother – Saha Salih Izmirlic – who, on the entrance door of his house, had tried to bar the passage of the soldiers, resolved to enter. And they dragged via Hava Muhic, still dirty with the moods of childbirth but the little girl just born, with the umbilical cord just detached, left her where she was without worrying if she was destined to die in the middle of the rags. According to the experience of pediatricians, the agony lasted two days. Mom wanted to call her Fatima.
They killed it in quantities, of women, but it is against men who raged with fierce resolve. The Bosniaci for Ethnia – “Bosgnacchi” – and of Muslim religion had to be totally eliminated. There were no strategic intent or war motivations. They killed them to respond to infamous ideological calls.
They wanted to erase their tracks, “cleaning”, destroy the root of their existences itself. It doesn’t matter if teenagers or young people, fathers of family or elderly, unable to move without leaning against a stick. Together with the future, they also had to reset the memory.
On waves, they dived – even barefoot – among the brambles of the woods where the dolines of the outskirts of the city begin to take altitude towards the Trebevic or the Zvijerda. They challenged the blows of the machine guns that chased them and risked under the fire of the bombs who tried to prevent them from escaping.
The others were piled up in groups in schools, in the enclosure of the thermal institute or in the processing sheds of zinc and lead mines.
Those who did not find death in the first hours of furious violence (and who were unable to escape) were massacred to the disassembled. With repetitive procedures, they took about thirty at a time, suggesting that they had to question them to acquire a series of information. In fact, the bulldozers had already opened the pit that had been destined for them. They forced them to deliver everything they had and, before shooting or sinking the dagger, they pretended to put naked. At least twice, to prevent the mounds from revealing the existence of a cemetery, the corpses in bulk to bury them somewhere else re -humbled.
For this reason, it was difficult to recover the dead and, above all, to name the victims who, with difficulty, were identified (not for all, however, it was possible) with complicated comparisons after DNA withdrawals.
It was a procession of deaths on the way that, with rare intervals, went on two weeks. Even in the hours of the night. Prisoners terrified with eyes to look for a non -existent comfort in the dark. The soldiers, excited by the bottles of Rakija to be drawn and flags of that madness that made them refractory to indulgence and unavailable to compassion. The least roughly confused ignominy with patriotism.
Others vented ancient badly cultivated racist resentments. Zeljko Raznatovic put in practice the teachings sent by heart between a robbery and the prison, a crime to claim his criminal leadership and an evasion (from the Forest of Brussels, for example or by the San Vittore of Milan). He had chosen to be called “Arkan”. Some argue that the name was borrowed from the Latin term “arcanus” that stands for “mysterious”. It is unlikely that a wild with the murderers of the murderer was able to inspire himself to classical antiquity. Easier – as most claimed – that recovered the image of a tiger of the Belgrade zoo that attracted the admiration of the spectators because, more impressive than the average, he moved in a cage as if he were the patroness of Malaysia.
Not surprisingly, his men showed up as “Arkan’s tigers”. In Srebrenica, they did not kill “because the bullets cost” and preferred to rely on the blades of the knives “who ensured greater satisfaction”.
However, the greatest responsibilities of the massacre must be divided equally between the military chief of staff Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic to whom the office of President of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was attributed. Two anonymous characters up to the dawn of the nineties.
One – orphan, affiliated to the “Communist League” and then a pupil of the official school – was the protagonist of a colorless career in the army to the degree of Colonel. Then, with the confusion of institutional references, the Gallons of General attributed them alone.
The other was the son of a shoemaker who, for having played monarchical “cetnic”, suffered the penalties of the government and hammer. He studied psychiatry, wrote poems and ended up under investigation for some funding he had obtained by falsifying the documents. Initially, it seemed attracted to Green policies. Then he agreed to represent the most resolute nationalism.
The death of “Tito” Josif Broz, on May 4, 1980, also meant the beginning of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Until then, with a fist of steel and profitablely aware diplomatic attitudes, he had managed to keep together nationality also incompatible with each other but, without his charisma, they took body claims badly repressed. The successors of the Presidency freezed some problems without solving them so much that, after a few years, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989) ethnic conflicts – becoming evident – were explosive. The Slovenians were the first to declare themselves independent. Then the Serbs. And, after yet, the Croatians.
Bosnia (with Herzegovina) was a double enclave. First physics for being a kind of “hole” surrounded by impervious mountains. In the past, the dinaric Alps, on the one hand, and the Narente basin, on the other, had represented a shield capable of protecting from the incursions of the enemies. But, in more recent times, the barriers, causing its isolation, had turned, rather, into a problem. Even more “dangerous” the ethnic enclave that found themselves animated by a crucible of breeds which – more than “different” – were discovered antagonists. Until a few months earlier, the neighbors – it doesn’t matter if descended from Turks or Orthodox religion – they opened the door to those who lived on the other side of the landing. They went on vacation together. They let the children play with each other.
Suddenly, everyone felt invested by the obligation to claim their identity and the friends of the past took the forms of the opponents to be demolished. The Serbs delose deliver to become part of the “great Serbia” and to bring Bosnia to Belgrade. Even the Croatians claimed a social supremacy even if they looked rather at Albania with the aim of merged or federation. Muslim Bosnians who had no godparents and had no resources were the expense. They ended up becoming the earthenware vase among the iron ones. To be crushed and pieces.
The United Nations realized the danger and sent departments of blue helmets to exercise the power of dissuasion by putting themselves between opposing fronts. In Srebrenica, the UN soldiers took off and appeared determined to the point of reassuring the inhabitants. There were 600 and they came from Holland. But when the Serbian bands put the city on fire and focused, they did not have the courage to intrude.
