Crimes will Remain Part of Our History, Past and the Future Forever
Miljenko Dereta, Executive Director of Civic Initiatives gave an interview for “Kaziprst” (Index Finger) programme of B92 Radio. He spoke on the subject of the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica.
Dereta: I understand that we have many interests, of which a good portion is individual and very personal, involved in the whole issue. Lamentably, this includes the interests of those people that say that we shouldn’t recognize it as a genocide. I see that every word is measured twice… Was it a massacre, was it a crime?... B92: Indeed, nobody has mentioned the work genocide yet... Dereta: OK, then, I will say it, it was a genocide, for a simple reason that we have a court sentence that says so, whether somebody likes it or not. To put it simply, there is the interest of those whose responsibility remains to be determined. When we speak of various conflicts inside the Serbian society, between NGOs, institutions, etc., I have to say that today the NGOs don’t have a conflict with the state per se. Rather, they are into a conflict with the so-called anti-Hague lobby, with the people that try to maintain, in every way possible, the atmosphere of guilt which is imposed on the Serbian people as a whole, trying to hide their own direct responsibility or the responsibility of the organization they represent. I have to say that, recently, we did manage to eliminate those masks with our activities and to show where the problem is. The problem is in the Skupstina (the Serbian Parliament). It is not with the Government, which did make a public statement: considering the authors, it is as good as it gets. We managed to convince Mr. Tadic to rise and say something on the behalf of the state, but we failed to achieve – I wouldn’t say a consensus, but some level of humanity and decency – for the Skupstina, which holds a lot of radicalized plurality of political interests, to condemn the crime and to say that the Skupstina, as it is, is against crime. B92: Speaking of plurality, there was the incident on the Republic Square few days ago, when the Women in Black marked the 10th anniversary of Srebrenica and a hundred or so hooligans threw tear-gas and tried to break up the gathering... Could we put that in the context of plurality of opinion, or should we view it as in many other countries, when pride parades march and you have the neo-Nazis attacking them? What is you comment? Dereta: Of course, in my mind, that is a part of a diverse pluralist society. That is normal, I mean, the existence of extremes. What is not normal, for me, is that the state is so weak that it can’t separate them and protect them from each other. I doubt it that the Women in Black themselves were surprised by what happened the other day. They have been subjected to similar treatment for 15 years now. I repeat, for me, the unfortunate aspect of the incident is that the state acts with the lack of urgency, it protects the Women in Black just because it has to. I even think that one policeman said that: “We really wouldn’t, but we have to”, is what he said. Well, indeed, you have to do that. The state has to protect all minority positions on all sides, although we have to be aware of the clearly defined limits: you can’t promote war, violations of human rights, violence, etc. In that regard, the actions of the people that threw the tear-gas should have been sanctioned, instead of prosecuting those that promote peace, observance of human rights, truth and reconciliation. B92: In your opinion, were those people that threw the tear-gas the other day, regardless of their actual numbers at the Republic Square, representative of the majority opinion in Serbia or not? Dereta: I wouldn’t say that it is “tied” or “fifty-fifty” at the moment, but in my mind, that position finds itself in a stage of aggressive recession. I believe that the passage of time did its own, that the facts did their own and the citizens begin to understand that all the brainwashing we were subjected to for year is just not true. It took five years to get some things to the light of the day and to narrow down, so to say, the circle of people that will be held responsible. Through the individualization of guilt and the focus on those truly responsible, we succeeded in getting the citizens to re-conquer the space that doesn’t hold their direct responsibility. There is no collective guilt of a whole nation, but there is the guilt and responsibility of a certain political structure. That is the very reason why the Skupstina remains the central point of our society in this regard, for there sit the people that directly inspired that policy, implemented it and they are, in my mind, not just responsible but also guilty. B92: Srebrenica, being such a difficult subject to discuss for our society, provokes all sorts of situations, including the fact that many worthy initiatives are being abandoned. Let’s take as an illustration the Exit Festival in Novi Sad and the fact that they decided to abandon the idea for a moment of silence for the victims of Srebrenica, saying that 40 thousand people gathered there may have diverse views on that issue? In all fairness, the Radicals did issue some threats prior to Exit taking place… Nonetheless, what kind of message is it, when an organization such as Exit, which really was on the front in the past five or six years, in terms of the symbolic and true message it sends to the youth? Dereta: I think that it means that Exit has abandoned one of its declared missions, i.e. to connect Serbia with the rest of the world based on a system of values different from the values valid in Serbia as the Radicals want to see it. In my mind, this is a great defeat for the people that organize the festival. Of course, they will find a good excuse, that is not a problem, but it is a huge defeat that it is borderline indecent. I can only guess, of course, but I would think that some of the musicians that came and are very much politically active and engaged in the world, thought, “... OK, these are people that have a different view on what went on here... they do need this kind of support... let’s involve Serbia in that other civilization code”. And then the organizers give up. You know, Tomislav Nikolic (President of the Radical Party) announced the prohibition of EXIT if the moment of silence took place. On the other hand, Maja Gojkovic, Mayor of Novi Sad from the same party said that there will “definitely be another EXIT in Novi Sad next year”. Did she know about the change in official party position, I wouldn’t know, but in any case, I think that EXIT did help Nikolic and made the life worse for those people in the Radical Party that understand that they do need to cut themselves off their past, to give up on Seselj, Nikolic and other extremists, to become, so to day, a normal right-wing nationalist party, that wouldn’t be aggressive, chauvinist and war-mongering. B92: Last weekend, the Patriarch Pavle (the Head of the Serb Orthodox Church) appeared at an event organized by the Radical Party. I won’t ask you to comment on that, but I ask you, having in mind that over the past 15 years, you organized or participated in all anti-war and peace actions. Could you remember if anybody from the church came to such a gathering or gave support to a gathering? Dereta: The answer is short and sad – No, never. The Patriarch, in addition to not coming to our actions, never really came out in public with a true condemnation of the war, and we can hardly say that there weren’t opportunities of that. This last film we saw (on the execution of six Muslim men on mountain Treskavica) presents the Church in a rather visible and prominent role... Having in mind that I have seen the complete tape, I know that a lot of what was said and what that priest did, was edited out. For instance, we didn’t see that the priest blessed the machine-gun first, and then the people. He blessed the arms!! I didn’t know that it was a Christian thing to do, and for me, that is a great defeat for the Church. This is another support for the prolonged tension in Serbia and its society, the fact that the Church didn’t take the position it could and should have taken. The Church tries in every possible manner to help the extreme nationalists and those currently in the Hague to remain “heroes” and that they should be seen as those who “gave they contribution and are sacrificed for the well-being of the people” instead of being condemned by the people. B92: Your organization, Civic Initiatives, in cooperation with a number of organizations from the region, including Croatian and Bosnian NGOs, started an initiative (Igman Initiative) that should end this year, on the anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Agreement. What is it about? Dereta: Well, everybody talks about the ten years since the crime, and nobody talks about the ten years of peace. We have lived in ten years of peace now and although it may not be much of a peace in the firsts place, at least people are not dying. We wanted to mark both things. First, that not everything should end with July 11, the tension raised regarding our position on the crimes should not let go, following the principle – OK, we have done that. Tadic said what he wanted to say, we have reconciled ourselves and we move forward as if nothing happened. No, we have to adapt to the fact that these crimes will remain a part of our history, our past, therefore, also a part of our future. We have to be aware what happened. I repeat it all the time that we have to change our school-books, to put the crimes into the school-books so that the coming generations wouldn’t be exposed to fake dilemmas and attempts to diminish the crimes, existent in our contemporary society. The other thing we want to emphasize is the fact that we have to overcome the situation where all nations talk only about their own dead. B92: So, the action will be directed at condemnation of... Dereta: The action takes place simultaneously in Croatia, B&H and Serbia, and is very simple. There is this short text that the citizens will sign, and the papers will be compiled in a book or, if necessary, several books. We expect to collect a great number of signatures that we plan to send to the Heads of State of the three countries, and we will also take the book to Srebrenica, to show that the people who condemn the crimes are not a minority in these three states. Quite to the opposite, that they are a majority, albeit a majority that is undecided, intimidated, tired, but a majority that would show that the region has the potential for a normal neighbourly existence. B92: How is it organized? What a re the locations where people can sign the initiative?
B92: You have printed promotional poster and video advertisement... Dereta: While searching for the roots of all these crimes, we ran into a poem, “Historical Textbook” by Brana Petrovic. Voja Brajovic, our famous actor, reads it in such a fantastic way and it simply condenses something that we could call “Crime is the fate of the Balkans”. The poem itself was written long before the events of the past 15 years, so it is not directly related to them... B92: Speaking of Srebrenica, it seems that everybody has a guilty conscience, including the international community. Javier Solana wrote an opinion article for “Danas” daily, and he said exactly that, that the international community is responsible, too. We feel the guilt, there is all this guilt in the region... Nonetheless, we don’t seem to get to a closure? Dereta: That is because in Serbia, the closure hides behind something that we call, rather bizarrely, national interests. In fact, this is not better than an ordinary barter trade. All the people that refuse to use the right word, i.e. to say “the genocide at Srebrenica”, they defend that position that it would be costly for Serbia, having in mind the B&H lawsuit with the International Court of Justice, and so on... That eliminates all morality and ethics from our view on the crimes that have been committed. B92: But, only now we have an instance that the guilt was accepted by a high ranking international political figure... Dereta: You will excuse me, but that is not true. A very intense debate has been carried out all of this time in the Netherlands, but also in Germany, France and the UK. B92: Indeed, the Netherlands investigated the actions of its soldiers in Srebrenica... Dereta: They are haunted by those actions. However, they have that sense of guilt that we have never developed to that extent, the institutional sense of guilt and responsibility. That institutionalized aspect we lack. B92: How do we acquire that type of responsibility? Do we need a high dignitary of this country, the Prime Minister or maybe the Patriarch of the Church, to come out and explain it? How does a country get it? What are the processes involved? Dereta: First of all, you have to be absolutely convinced that what you say is the truth, and you have to care about the truth. I have to say here that what Dragan Cavic did in the Republic of Srpska was an outstanding gesture, a true statesmanship, a true institutional gesture. Lamentably, it failed to change the mind-set of the majority of RS citizens, the Serbs that live there, but it did become a point of reference. Now you can say “sorry, but your state did accept the number of victims, it did admit its share of responsibility, so I don’t get it why you go against your own state. I have all the arguments and you have all the arguments that the other side will use, but this will remain a referent point. I also hope that Tadic’s speech will become a referent point for Serbia and that the world will accept it as such. More significantly, it is important that B&H accepts it as such. B92: We have marked the tenth anniversary two weeks ago. Why is it that we can’t mark properly the seventh or the eight anniversary? Why do we wait to do something in the society only on the big round numbers? Why this sudden revelation? Was it initiated by the film about the “Scorpions”, or what? Dereta: It was several things, in my mind. One of them, and it came as a surprise to me, was the action of the Government regarding the suspects sought by the Hague Tribunal. So, the state has indirectly accepted its responsibility and started shipping the suspects to the Hague. It did create a slightly different climate in the society. Then there is the film, an irrefutable evidence that crimes did take place. I mean, now it is impossible to say – “No, they were killing their own people”. I am really sorry that the film was edited down to just a couple of minutes, for the scariest parts are the conversations before and after the actual killings. That is horrible, a pathology and madness that is individual, but can easily become collective. We have to leave that type of pathology and madness. For the past ten years we talk about crimes, killings, we count the casualties, excavate the remains... That is not a normal life. We have tried before, just as we tried with this latest parliamentary declaration started by the NGOs, to offer some sort of compromise formulation. That was a declaration to condemn all crimes, and the genocide in Srebrenica in particular. That was an attempt to transgress into the space taken over by the other side, the side that talks about one side of the crime and is not really interested in the other. It takes time and patience to get used to it, and we would want that the reconciliation happens overnight, so that we could wake up the next day, our livers restored to normal – let the bygones be bygones... |
Printable version
Back to top
