As someone who survived the war tortures and the loss of loved ones, we are aware that the victims on all sides of the conflict, including the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have similar or the same traumas. The suffering of the Serbs from Sarajevo and Srebrenica region in the past wars must not be forgotten, and we need to talk about and learn in an adequate way through the development of a culture of remembrance and facing memory.
Sarajevo
Slobodan Samardzic famous musician and artist from Sarajevo was taken from his apartment on 14th of May in 1992 together with his fellow citizens Stana Šehovac and Radomir Braco Gojović. They were tortured and killed. Despite the fact that the police conducted an on-site investigation, they are still listed as missing. For more read HERE.
Podrinje
The family of Slobodan found themselves in the village of Drinjača after they had been exchanged as prisoners of war in June 1992. Slobodan deeply suffered because they left his dog, Lux at home. During the night of 27th July, he left his room and went to his house to bring the dog.
I was captured, and when they captured me I stayed in Bajrići, then in Cerska, and then in Srebrenica. When they captured me, I was pregnant and lost my baby when a man came and abused me. My husband’s schoolmate, his name is Adem Kostijerevac.
They made me undress and then pushed me from one to the other, only to sexually abuse me in the end. I was first raped by a group leader who was tall, blond. He had big eyes. After him, everyone laughed at me in various ways. All this happened in the family home.
The team consisted of five with Mrča (Halilović Hajrudin). I was facing the wall when they started hitting me with a pickaxe handle. After a few blows, she broke down. They take another and continue for the next ten minutes. They repeated this five more times in the following days. They beat me with all the "props", and the easiest thing for me was when they beat me with a truncheon. This happened in the prison camp military barrack "Ahmet Fetahagić" in Visoko.
Muhammad who was a policeman in Visoko before the war. He was characterized by inhuman treatment, physical abuse by taking us to the basement of the building, and we were on the fourth floor. There we were beaten with various objects, ax holders, batons, legs and arms, with other objects, as well as other methods of threatening with knives and other dangerous tools. Later he was transferred to prison camp military barrack "Ahmet Fetahagić" in Visoko
They beat us with batons, butts, feet and fists. Among other things, they beat and mistreated me by grabbing my ears and hitting my head with iron bars, putting a knife to my eyes threatening to take them out, dragging me by the ear with the threat of cutting it off, beating me with a blunt knife on my head and fig. From the mentioned stabbing to the head, I still have scars. Al this happened in the prison of Srebrenica police station.
While we were digging and loading the ground, two Muslim soldiers came across. One approached me and punched me in the face, then tried to cut off my head with the edge of a shovel. I put my hand up and from the force of the blow the handle of the shovel broke. A huge painful swelling appeared on his arm.. Al this happened in concentration camp "Silos" in Hadžići.
They break into our cell, led by Tire, called "Tiki". They hit with rifle butts, rifle barrels, legs, fists, wooden sticks, police batons ... The walls became bloody. Puddles of blood flowed on the pathos. It was scary, screams, fractures, blood... We were all broken, it was awful. Al this happened in concentration camp "Silos" in Hadžići.
I heard a vehicle stop in the yard and someone started shouting: "Get out Cera, I screw your Chetnik mother!" I went out in front of the house and saw five or six policemen, and their chief was Nihad Šehić from Grac village near Zovik. I knew him well. The moment I went out he shot at my dog and killed him, then he shot at my wife and luckily he didn’t hit her. They arrest me barefoot and drive me to a prison camp of Grade school 9th of May and later to Krupa Zovik prison camp.
I am begging the "Ćemsa" guard from Zenica to give me some water. He collects 12 tabasco hot sauces from his soldiers and pours salt, sugar and ground coffee into them. He forced me to drink it all. Then he just pours me a cap of water. I was completely broken. All this happened in "Silos" concentration camp in Tarcin.
Hunger, cold, unhygienic began to take its toll. My cousin Petko Krstić is dying (his last words were - bread, bread ...), Vaso Šarenac, the oldest in "Silos", a senile, blind old man, Kapetina Obren. I could share their fate, and when the rat went down the cell wall towards my head, the guard commander Japalak shot at him from the path above the cell. Pieces of concrete, rat blood fell on my head. That amused him, I guess it didn't matter who he hit. All this happened in "Silos" concentration camp in Hadžići.
Smart features
The path to equal justice requires reckoning with practices that are unfair and failing. Serb victims deserve equal justice.
Remembrance and facing memory give a sense of closure for victims, to enable them to move on from the past and continue their life.
Restoring dignity in this sense may require processes aimed at restoring those who suffered violations to their proper position.
Even on the 25th anniversary of the closure of the Silos camp, where a total of about 700 Serbs were detained from May 1992 to January 27, 1996, the families of the victims and detainees have not yet received justice and punishment for those responsible for torture.
My husband, teacher, was captured and tortured in the infamous "Pilicarnik" camp in Gornji Potocari near Srebrenica, for which there are numerous witnesses. According to information I received from several sources, he was killed in the yard of Azem Adzovic, where the command of the local Muslim unit was. There is evidence of everything, but even today it is hidden where his remains are.
On that day, Muslim soldiers killed my husband Dragan, father-in-law Dragoljub, and took my mother-in-law, and taken the rest of my family to prison in Srebrenica. Most of the Serbs killed that day were unarmed civilians...
There is no Serb village in the vicinity of Srebrenica that was not set on fire, where the population was not expelled and killed.
How can I explain to my children why no one was responsible for the fact that my mother, a 65-year-old woman, spent four years in BiH Army prison camps in Sarajevo? How to explain them kidnapping of my brother, a civilian, from his apartment in Sarajevo and his brutal torture in four BiH Army prison camps in Sarajevo and his release in January 1996, or for the disappearance of my father from his house in Sarajevo in 1992 and the constant refusal of Sarajevo institutions to give me an official answer regarding my father's fate, despite the decision The House of Human Rights of BiH from 2006, which ordered them to comply with my request?
We were awakened in the middle of night by shootings and strong detonations. It was not yet dawn when Muslim soldiers armed to the teeth stormed our village. Some locals were killed immediately. My eighteen-year-old son Grujica and many other members of my family were killed. Every 3rd inhabitant of Bjelovac was killed or wounded on that fateful day. It was real hell!
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