NO MORE SREBRENICA …
I could easily say „I
heard that song before”. The scenario of manslaughter and genocide
repeats, constantly, ruthlessly.
I read newspapers, I look
at lines, at clusters of words, I read with understanding, yet what is
written, though, hardly meets my head. Then I read between the lines,
analyse. Fault, again! What emerges is beyond my capacity. Am I too dull? What is wrong with me? I'm asking myself.
Syria, Israel, Gaza and
Ukraine – three the most hot topics, it overwhelms breaking news.
I got it, still, the world did not learn its lesson, never-ending war
crimes seem to be unstoppable, hatred and rage became predominant.
When Yugoslavia eased to
exist, the war broke out, Europe was awoken, suddenly everyone bliked
an eye or two and exclaimed „There's a war out there!” - and there
was – a horrid, unprecedented conflict, the most bloody, the most
serious and the most fatal after the Second World War. Slovenia,
Croatia, BiH – and then Kosovo – made the world see and cope with
a terrifying crimes against humanity.
Europe failed this exam,
the exam of strength, unity, decisiveness. I still do not know why …
Yugoslavia was my
favorite European spot, the mosaic of culture, so colorful and unspoken beautiful, I fell in love with it at first sight. Catholics,
Muslims and Orthodox, they could live there together. Yet the early
political transformations in 1960s 1970s and 1980s in Czechoslovakia,
Poland and Hungary started awakening of FSR of Yugoslavia. The
independence meant something, I know it, I was brought up in Social Republic of Poland, with compulsory Russian, I was rises in the
system or rather within it … . 1990s in Poland meant everything,
independence, first democratic government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and
Lech Walesa, Polish people went crazy, they emigrated whenever they
could, mostly to Germany, just because they could. The transformation
was not easy … nothing is easy, but in Yugoslavia it was more then
that.
I was watching some movie
and suddenly the film dissapeared and the breaking news emerged, there was a different news than I got use to watch ...I
looked at the screen and I didn't understand what TV presenter was
talking about …. I mean I understood but it did not want to be
accepted in my mind, what I saw was a disaster, it was something I
would never forget, bodies torn apart on the streets of Croatia,
Bosnia, Serbia, hopeless images of people, refugees, neighbors who once lived together, now they were slaughtering one another, in
the name of what I asked … I do not remember who was it,
anyway I never heard a reply - „Religion” someone said, -„truly”
- I thought ...never spoke it loud.
In 1991 a „new Polish
braking news” made an announcement „Approximately 7.000 Muslim
men will be evacuated in the safe area of Srebrenica, the presence of
Dutch UN Peacekeeping Forces guaranteed peace and safety, Ratko
Mladic will also be present, reassuring that nothing against the
subject will happen from Serbian military forces” - sadly it was
not safety at all, the Muslim men were driven to death, shot in the
head, dag in massive graves, often moved from place to place to hide
the traces of mass extermination, to make the process of
identification utterly impossible.
I cried, I was devastated, as a young person whose
love to the country of Yugoslavia was so immense, the war was end of
the world.
Srebrenica is not going
to be forgotten … yet the least people remember, the least people
want to remember … majority would love to forget what happened. I
will always remember, I pay tribute to doctor Ewa Elwira Klonowski, Polish anthropologist who
without cloud of doubt will try to find all the victims, all massive
graves, and identify all VIPs, because all of the victims, indeed, are very important
people, they were deprived of dignity, humanity. Fortunately dr
Klonowski gives them their lost identity and humane respect.
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