At the moment I’m on a “peace march” through the woods connecting the town of Tuzla to Srebrenica. This is the trail of death/freedom which takes place as a part of 13th commemoration of the terrible genocide of the Bosniaks within the UN “safe zone”. The goals of the march are to demonstrate solidarity with victims and to point out that the biggest genocide in Europe since World War II hasn’t been forgotten. The genocide was committed by the Serbian forces with the help of the betrayal by the international community. The march lasts three days beginning in a place called Nezuk and ends with our final destination – the Potocari Memorial Center in Srebrenica.
Srebrenica is, above all, something we in Serbia don’t want to think about and something we can’t think about.
However, the reality – the current condition of the town of Srebrenica, is the best witness for the current ideology of reconciliation protects and in whose name the ideology was made. Today Srebrenica symbolizes the triumph of the Serbian nationalist program in the nineties. Those in power today are the same people who took part in the military operations which culminated with the Srebrenica genocide. Srebrenica is an ethnically divided town, where victims and perpetrators today live together, and where the Serbs still don’t admit that anything happened. Furthermore, even today they actively deny that 10.000 people were killed.
However, we in Serbia should know that by denying the Srebrenica genocide, we actually are acting like the local Serbs of Srebrenica. Or rather we should know that we are the ones living in Srebrenica, and that we’re going to stay there until we raise this issue and face it.
