My Bosnia, you are my mother
My Srebrenica, I call you my sister
My dear Senka,
I am writing to you… you who are so far away…
I missed you…the day before yesterday, in the Republic Square, “our” Square, in a place where Women in Black bring to light in a public space things which formal state politics denies. We are living memory…we are saying “So that the genocide at Srebrenica never be forgotten” In the Republic Square, we presented the video performance of Milica Tomic, “Women of Srebrenica Speak.”
To hear the voices of all these victims of Srebrenica in the same place where you once stood with our friends from Women in Black, thinking to stop the war…but the war in Bosnia was far from over…and then came Srebrenica…this “Safe Zone” of the United Nations fell into the hands of the bloodthirsty Bosnian Serbs…It was a hot July, and 30,000 people were surrounded by barbed wire…and then the Serbian military came to town and divided men from women…they took the men as well as the children…in three days they killed 8,000 of them…and now mothers of Srebrenica are there to remember them…
They are speaking to us, these great women, speaking to us who come from a land that has been brutalized, a land full of guilt and shame…
*«Where are the children, where are the children?»
*«There is no justice…I just want to find my son so I can have peace of mind…the only thing that I would really regret is if I don't find him before I die. It's hard…I am alone out there, I don't have anyone left…it''s hard. The injustice is suffocating.»
* “Greetings to all of you who come here to fight and give us support.”
*”Let us live the way we used to.”
*”As for their apology, I would never, ever accept it…I can’t accept it because I don’t have my only son anymore.”
*“Those who are gone, are gone forever.”
And my dear Senka…
I missed you…so much…yesterday in Srebrenica…Again at the place where crimes were committed in my name, in our name…
Srebrenica…every time…it is an experience that will be remembered…the physical experience above all…which can never be forgotten…it's here again…in me...and me with her (Srebrenica).
Meeting with the Women of Srebrenica…meeting with women whose bodies have been emptied of children killed by Serbs in my, in our name…
That’s them, those are “our” women…the same ones that followed the trial of the “Scorpions” with us, the same ones who we visit in Tuzla, and the ones that we meet in Srebrenica every year…You know this best…You know…Home is where you are loved…They always welcome you with a smile in their eyes, the same eyes that will never see their loved ones again…Serbs killed them! And they always open their arms to us, the same arms that will never hold their children again…Serbs killed them! And they come to you with a pure heart and a pure soul…they hug you and kiss you and even say thank you… to us, people from a brutalized, shameful, guilty land…And then you just want to die…to be gone…to vanish…to cease to exist…
And then…after all, after you have been burned by the July sun…wearing black…when you feel so guilty that you think this is it…Srebrenica is inside you…and that, my dear Senka, is confronting the past…our feminist approach…No abstract process…and it’s not happening to someone else, someone far away…it’s happening to us in a land of humanity, we who live in a land deprived of its humanity.
And then I remembered you…You, my image of you, every time we would travel back together from Bosnia…that horrible…hard…weight and silence I would see in your eyes…In front of me I see a large eyeball, a mouth of stone, which gives the impression that the verdict is already there…in front of me is a stone jury…
“We are guilty…”
I love you,
Milos
