The collapse of the Eastern Bloc was celebrated in the West as the triumph of freedom over communism, nurturing the illusion that history had reached its conclusion. Fukuyama’s “end of history” became shorthand for the expectation of a liberal era in which democracy and prosperity would erase old ideological and political divisions.[1] Within this narrative, the wars in Yugoslavia were […]

Any memory of a war crime carries its own graveness, however, the graveness of the suffering of Grabovica adds an additional aspect of bitterness due to the context in which this crime happened. This village was not the scene of fights, victims were not killed by crossfire, but were rather killed in their own homes and in the yards of […]

Srebrenica, Prijedor, Ahmići, Višegrad… When it comes to war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, these are the locations that are usually mentioned in this context. This happens for a reason. Crimes committed elsewhere were swept under the rug. One of these locations is Čelinac, an idyllic town near Banja Luka.   Author: Milkica Milojević In the period from 1992 to […]

The Hospital for Skeletal Diseases in Stolac was repurposed in the summer of 1993. Back then, one of the darkest chapters of the war history of Bosnia and Herzegovina started. Usually, it is the most innocent ones who pay the highest price for the madness of persons that target others for being different and consider them enemies for this reason. […]

More than thirty years have passed since Slobodan Mrkajić had been detained at concentration camps in Konjic, Hadžići and Igman. Today, he lives in Rogatica. He is the president of the Association of Concentration Camp Detainees of Sarajevo-Romanija Region and Association of Union of Concentration Camp Detainees of Republika Srpska. Together with the Centre for Non-Violent Action, former concentration camp […]

Concentration camp survivors, women victims of conflict-related violence, children that survived war trauma – all conflict-related victims who were not members of armed forces and who live or lived in Republika Srpska during the war should be protected, without any discrimination based on their ethnicity or gender. These are provisions of the Law on the Protection of War Torture Victims […]

Monetary reparations by state institutions are not the end, but rather the beginning of the process of facing the past. They are an acknowledgment of wounds, but do not heal them. The families of victims request acknowledgment, truth and dignity. And that the crimes may never be repeated against anyone. Author: Sanela Karaica Demir Ličina from Bijelo Polje had waited […]

Thirty Years. It’s been thirty years since, in July 1995, sons vanished from courtyards, brothers from bedrooms, husbands from beds, neighbors from buses, students from classrooms.Since they were killed – systematically, indiscriminately – not for what they had done, but for who they were. Thirty years since genocide was committed in Srebrenica – a crime designed not only to kill, […]

Day of Youth, one of the more important holidays in the former Yugoslavia was forgotten and marked by a different narrative on May 25, 1995. The massacre at Tuzlanska Kapija is an event that changed the collective memory of this day. The Relay of Youth, a relay race held in the honour of Tito slowly became a distant memory, and […]

Just as in other cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina that came under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska in spring of 1992, in Doboj, there was the same war scenario with a similar prelude to crimes that ensued. May of 1992 in Doboj will be remembered due to the arrival of military, paramilitary and police units of the […]

On 28 April this year, a group of delegations from the Veterans’ Committee, the Ministry of Defence, the Army, the Ministry of Interior, and several political parties commemorated the killing of eight members of the security forces that occurred in 2001 between the villages of Selce and Vejce on Shar Planina. After the event, the delegations picked up the board […]