Jasmina Tešanović: Return to Srebenica

text by Jasmina Tešanović

photos by Bruce Sterling (Link to entire set, 40 images)

– – – – – – – – – –

Why did I expect it to be easier this year? Going to
Srebrenica
was never easy. It is called a "high risk business"
by the local
Serbian police, even in Belgrade.

On the night before the Srebrenica anniversary,
we Women in
black had a commemorative standing in the Square of
the Republic, as
has been our ritual for the past 12 years. Standing
soberly in black
with lit candles, holding the banner SREBRENICA Not
to be Forgotten,
we stood in the city's largest public square, without
press coverage
because the Serbian press much prefers to forget.

One hundred and three standing women were guarded
by one hundred
policemen, almost a one-to-one action. We were
separated as a
political virus from our non-existent audience,
though crowds in
past years have insulted us and beaten us.

Srebrenica is now a closed issue, according to
local officials.
After the sentence in the Hague tribunal last May
which declares the
Serbia government not guilty of genocide — merely
guilty of not
preventing it — the Serbian authorities as well as
the local silent
majority can live in denial with official global
approval.

This makes us the crazy women, the fools who
still ride in
buses to pay due honors to the 400 fragmentary dead,
who today joined
8000 others killed and missing, all buried in the
Srebrenica mass
graveyard after being cunningly scattered all over the
region by
their killers. One woman is burying the bones of her
son for the
third time, since his body was never found whole.
Among those being
re-buried today are four victims killed on video by
the Scorpion
paramilitaries.

Link to full text.

Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

– Sagmeister in Belgrade

– Jasmina Tešanović: What About the Russians?

– Milan Martic sentenced in Hague

– Mothers of Mass Graves
– Hope for Serbia
– Stelarc in Ritopek
– Sarajevo Mon Amour

– MBOs
– Killing Journalists

– Jasmina Tešanović: Where Did Our History Go?
– Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide

– Carnival of Ruritania
– "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
– Faking Bombings
– Dispatch from Amsterdam
– Where are your Americans now?

– Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
– Slaughter in the Monastery

– Mermaid's Trail

– A Burial in Srebenica
– Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
– To Hague, to Hague