FIFTEEN YEARS SINCE THE CRIMES IN VUKOVAR
With sadness and shame, we remember the tragedy of Vukovar, which occurred just 15 years ago. We remember it as the first in a series of large and unpardonable crimes committed in our name. We remember the crime, knowing that it was initiated in Belgrade.
On November 3, 1991, the criminal so-called Yugoslav National Army (JNA) - together with Arkan’s Tigers, Seselj’s volunteers, and other Serb fascists - began the Vukovar offensive. Ordinary citizens of Belgrade saw those who turned Vukovar into another Stalingrad off with flowers. Unfortunately, today some of their children yell in stadiums throughout Serbia, ‘knife, wire, Srebrenica.’
The men in the JNA most responsible for the suffering in Vukovar, Zivota Panic and Blagoje Adyic, safely enjoy general’s pensions. Radmilo Bogdanović and Zoran Sokolović, the heads of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs who recruited volunteers for Vukovar, have also not been punished. In public thinking, there is a prevalent desire to relegate the crimes in Vukovar to historical oblivion.
We, Women in Black, who since the beginning of the violence have pointed out the criminal character of the Milošević regime, the Orthodox Church leadership, and the ideology of Greater Serbia of The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, have actively opposed that dominant tendency.
We remember how silent the Serbian public was about crimes and Serbian criminals. This silence allows new crimes and new wars.
We repeat that for us, as well as for all democratically oriented Serbian citizens, every relativization of crime, justification of crime, and celebration of crime is unacceptable. We say to the families of the victims of the aggression in Vukovar,
FORGIVE US!
We will do all that is in our power so that the truth about the crimes committed in Vukovar, and other crimes during the wars from 1991 to1999, is brought to public awareness in Serbia and that everyone responsible for crimes against peace and crimes against humanity are brought to justice and punished under the law.
In a sign of respect to those who were killed as well as an expression of our acceptance of responsibility for the crimes committed in our name, a delegation of Women in Black from Belgrade and 20 other cities throughout Serbia will, visit the site of the crime in Vukovar on November 18, 2006. We will lay a wreath on which ‘Forgive us - Women in Black, Serbia’ is written. We beg for forgiveness and rededicate our efforts to prevent the crimes in Vukovar from being abandoned to historical relativization and oblivion.
Belgrade, November 17, 2006
Women in Black - Belgrade
