For the past few weeks, I have been diligently preparing, almost like a nerd, to write these few dozen lines of thoughts that I had been offered the opportunity to share. In classic historian fashion, this involved studying available sources about those several days in August 1995 and the ensuing consequences. Soon enough, I realized that I […]
Seventy-five years have passed since the world said “never again.” There would never again be a systematic attempt to destroy any ethnic, national, racial, or religious group. Today is July 11th, twenty-eight years after the genocide in Srebrenica, where 8,372 Bosniaks were killed in and around Srebrenica in just a few days. After the signing of the[…]
In June, I called both the minister and the chief of staff, and in early July, I pleaded with them. I told them that there is currently a war going on in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the territory of the Croatian state border. Therefore, everything must be done to help maintain that territory. It’s not the same[…]
On this day 30 years ago, one of the cruelest war crimes in the territory of the former Yugoslavia was committed in Ahmici near Vitez. In the early morning hours of April 16, 1993, local Croatian Defence Council units launched an attack on the village. The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague[…]
At a press conference in Zagreb on October 22, 1992, the The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), under the leadership of Tadeusz Mazowiecki announced that a mass grave had been discovered in the area of Ovčara near Vukovar. The tomb had been untouched prior to the arrival of members of UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Forces),[…]
I don’t know how to begin. I have to write about October 22, 1992 and I don’t know how to begin. I have to write about October 22, 1992, and I don’t know how to begin, because on that day the paramilitary group Avengers, led by Milan Lukić, abducted sixteen people. They abducted one man the night[…]
Notes of one of the a founders A group of Serbian historians recently began collecting documents and testimonies about the anti-war movement in Serbia in the 1990s, in which the Association of Independent Intellectuals Belgrade Circle, founded on January 25, 1992, played an important role. As one of the founders of this association and one of its[…]
Every October 1, a certain ritual takes place in Montenegro. They show footage of the Montenegrin aggression against Dubrovnik, hold round table discussions, NGOs give out press releases, and after several days we forget that anything happened and go back to the usual daily grind. This year, even that ritual mentioning of one of the most tragic,[…]
The generations of students currently enrolled in elementary and high schools in Serbia have never heard of places such as: Prijedor, Trnopolje, Omarska and Keraterm. They learned about the convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić through the Progressive party’s wall newspapers, that is, murals and graffiti that are overflowing in almost every city in Serbia, mobilizing patriotic forces[…]
It’s thirty degrees in the shade, we add it up, and that’s exactly how many days separate us from the start of the school year. Until then, we spend the days mostly wasting time on the street. This time our collective silence as we stare at our flip-flops melting into the pavement is broken by the youngest[…]
Photo: Dejan Radić An Albanian woman from Belgrade, a Serbian man from Bor, a Serbian couple from Gračanica, a town near Priština, are sitting together in Durrës. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s neither a joke nor a beginning – we are somewhere halfway to reconciliation, but we are not really moving from[…]
