27 years since the genocide in Ahmići

Prof. Ph.D. Rasim Muratović

Acting director of the Institute

While working on the scientific research project Genocide in Ahmići in April 1993, and beyond that, I loved staying in the Lašva valley. Especially in early autumn. The river Lašva is small, clear, drinkable and full of unwashed gold. The steep, not so big hills that rose to her left and right during the day were all in the beautiful sunny and joyous yellows and reds of early autumn. The mornings in the Lašva valley were cool and full of morning fog, which can still only be found in the "province in the background", in Bosnia. The unreal morning silence and the feeling of being left behind was disturbed by the chirping of birds and the occasional short roar of big trucks driven by dreamy and tired drivers on the difficult Bosnian roads.

At night there was none of that. No fog, no moonlight, no sun, no sifting of the golden river in the autumn sun, no heavy trucks with dreamy drivers, no human voice. Nothing, except for the whiteness of the paper on which I recorded all 116 killed Ahmic civilians as the killing of 116 worlds. And all that in one day, April 16, 1993. It's almost unimaginable to kill the world 116 times in one day! Or kill 116 worlds in a military and police action called "48 hours of ashes"! A moral and normal person is left with endless amazement at this immoral and abnormal gesture made by normal but immoral people.

The genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of a series of genocides in the recent history of world civilization in the bloody mirror of ideological pogrom and state-organized evil, with which politics, science and philosophy are still unable or unwilling to deal radically in a humanly meaningful and life-promising way. way. The common phrase 'never again', that contextual-declarative mantra, inevitable during anti-fascist anniversaries and ceremonies, thus appears as an expression of moral hypocrisy, political inconsistency and irresponsibility of world powers.

Law as a profession is more difficult to prove genocide, while with science, especially sociology, it is a little easier. The HVO crime committed against Bosniaks in Ahmići on April 16, 1993, according to the UN General Assembly Resolution on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, dated December 9, 1948, Article II, is genocide. In Ahmići, out of a total of 350 inhabitants of the village, 116 civilians were killed - men, women, old people, children - which is about 35 percent of the total number of Ahmići residents. All those killed were members of one national, ethnic and religious group."
In Ahmići, serious physical or mental injuries were inflicted on members of the group - wounding, tearing off body parts, expulsion.
In Ahmići, Bosniaks were deliberately subjected to such living conditions that were supposed to lead to their complete or partial destruction. In the operation called '48 hours of ashes', Bosniaks were subjected to such living conditions that if they were not killed, they could not even live. Everything was destroyed, burned, razed to the ground. Such measures were imposed in Ahmići with the aim of preventing births within national, ethnic and religious groups. 116 Bosniaks were killed, 90 percent of whom were men and women of childbearing age.

The specificity of genocide does not stem from the extent of killing or the savagery and dishonor that characterizes the perpetrators, but from the very intention of destroying a certain group of people. The genocide in Ahmići is a paradigm of genocide that was planned, organized and carried out by the state regime of the Republic of Croatia!
Ahmići is the most terrible event committed by HVO units with the material, financial and personnel assistance of the political and military regime of the Republic of Croatia! What distinguishes genocide from war crimes is that the state is behind it. The Republic of Croatia was behind the crime in Ahmići! Ahmići and the entire Lašvanska dolina, as well as Stolac, Čapljina, Ljubuški, Mostar, Prozor, Gornji Vakuf, Bugojno, Kiseljak, Žepče and Vareš are in accordance with the Great Croatian ideology, policy and practice (whose head office was in Zagreb, in the office of the President Dr. Franje Tuđman) should have been an integral part of the Croatian republic of Herceg-Bosna in which there was no place for Bosniaks."
On the example of the crime in Ahmići, the Hague Tribunal established that the Republic of Croatia committed aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which gave the "conflict" the character of an international armed conflict, due to the direct involvement of the Croatian Army and the existence of general control of Croatia over the armed forces and civil authorities. Bosnian Croats.
The International Criminal Court issued final judgments in which it labeled the Republic of Croatia as an aggressor state, and the entire political, military and police leadership of the Croatian community of Herceg-Bosna was legally sentenced to 111 years in prison for a joint criminal enterprise," the statement reads.
The political leadership of the Republic of Croatia and the political leadership of the Croatian Democratic Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina deny almost all of this.

In this regard, Dario Kordić, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Hague Tribunal, is welcomed after serving his sentence and today is celebrated as a hero and saint. It is the same with Slobodan Praljko and others. No catharsis, no apology, no remorse. It has denial of genocide, relativizing the crime and blaming the victim. These are the last stages of the genocide, after which everything returns to the beginning where the first stage is the demonization of a certain national, ethnic and religious group. "Bosniaks are terrorists; Bosniaks are fundamentalists; Bosniaks are religious fanatics and as such they are a disruptive factor and as such they should be 'purged.'"
The normalization of the situation and relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot happen unless the perpetrators admit what they have committed and publicly express remorse for what they have done.
The victim cannot be forced to forgive, he must be willing to forgive voluntarily, and the offender must accept it only as an undeserved gift. There is no one who has the right to force the victim to forgive, not even religious or political leaders. No one has the right to give any instructions in this regard. That is the sole right of the victim. Forgiveness is neither an obligation of the victim nor a right of the perpetrator. It is, therefore, a personal attitude. Whatever the victim decides, no one has the right to judge or praise her for what she did. Forgiveness cannot happen unless the perpetrator himself admits everything he has committed and shows sincere regret. But even then, if that perpetrator sincerely shows remorse, he cannot have any rights, neither in the legal nor in the moral sense.
It is a shocking fact that almost nothing of what happened in the period 1992‒1995 happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina. does not study in schools and is not part of the curriculum.
If so, then the future is bleak indeed because history shows us that denial, denial and forgetting do not have the last word. In a culture of living where denial and denial are common, if people still want to deny, society leads to false morality and one moment it will come to light, and the reactions can be very violent and can be dangerous for the future of that nation.
The evil committed can never be relegated to the annals of history as a bygone past.
We all need to recognize the truth about the crime and for this truth to overcome today's dominant politics and culture of lies. After the Holocaust, the Jews found every stone of the destroyed synagogues, traced the gold bars made from the looted gold of the murdered Jews. They still conduct interviews with Holocaust survivors to this day. History is a teacher, but we are bad students, and bad students repeat the lesson until they learn it. That is why, compared to last year, this part of the text has been revised.

Ahmići - 27 years later.

Ahmići, morning, April 16, 2020. Ahmići, as well as the whole of Bosnia and the entire human race, are "chained" to something called the corona virus or coded as COVID 19. There are no people, the bird's song and the flight of the pigeons have stopped. Only the silence and the whiteness of 116 carved names of the Ahmic people wrapped in the whiteness of the behar and the April snow that falls suddenly on the behar on the fruit.

On April 16, 2020, I am returning from Ahmići from the Commemoration that was not held, I am returning from the morning prayer for which I did not pray, I am also returning from Fehra's tavern, which was locked, while in the Lašva valley, sleepy workers of a local powerful man poured concrete and dammed the Lašva river. They are building a hydroelectric plant. Workers say they need more electricity and faster internet. During that time, fish and crabs disappear in the Lašva river, and the burnt forests around are suffering from some unknown diseases....

Wars, genocides, floods, droughts, pandemics, an unprecedented influx of refugees are just a warning to those who want to understand. A lesson to those who want to learn. All of these are great temptations for each of us not to do to others what we would not want others to do to us. Wouldn't that make them better people?

Little tells us that we are ready to learn from small and large accidents.

More and more scientists, even atheists and agnostics, agree that there is still a great Flood, Atomic War and a great reckoning - Judgment Day.

I'm hurrying through Podlugovo, Breza and Vareš to Olov to plant one more seedling in my Čudi before curfew.

Share: