Protesting Quietly with White Ribbons
This post is also available in: Bosnian
This story began in Prijedor. Twenty years ago. On May 31, 1992 a local radio station broadcasted an order for all non-Serb Prijedor citizens to wear white bands around their arms. They were ordered to mark their houses by putting white sheets on their windows. Within the next three months Prijedor was changed forever.
Twenty years later the Mayor of Prijedor prohibited victims to hold a previously planned, announced commemoration. I decided to express my protest by putting a white ribbon around my arm and standing quietly at the main square in my hometown. Those six minutes were the longest and saddest ever. I felt humiliated while being watched by passers by. I felt as if I was naked. I started crying.
I did not know what other people would think about it. I did not care. I wanted to stand there for my father and brother, who survived Omarska and Trnopolje. I received all kinds of comments in the following days. I received curses and threats, telling me not to come to my town ever again. On the otherhand, there was support and words of encouragement. Some of them considered me someone elses, while others thought I was theirs.
On May 30, one day prior to International White Ribbons Day, I decided to go where nobody else was at that moment. I headed south with two of my friends from Sarajevo. I took the road that will be taken by hundreds of thousands of tourists, going to the coast where they will spend their holidays. The road is drawn on the tourist map of this country. And, this is just one of the hundreds of roads surrounding us.
This is the place where I saw my father for the last time. …This is the place where we spoke to each other last… I have never had a merry birthday since.
They entered our cell. Many of us were in it. As soon as they opened the door, they called my name out… Three men approached me. I did not know any of them…I fell down
… I stayed with him alone in that room….he then began questioning me I told him what I knew… he ordered me to take my clothes off… I begged, cried…but, simply, it did not help at all.
Mother and sister … They stayed here, hoping that nobody would harm them and that they would not end up the way they did, because they were civilians…They became thirsty and went back to the village…
They took us to some locations, where we performed forced labour, all the time
he then began mistreating us
He ordered us to beat each other
…we would eat once a day, after having heard the whistle… they used to beat every one of us… some prisoners were taken in unknown direction…
By standing at the crime location with a camera in your hand, people start looking at you and wondering what you are doing. A neighbour is throwing garbage out. Soldiers take our ID cards and write our names down. A solitary monument and a playful dog are the only things you can see at the place where the village used to be, where children used to play. A childs name on the monument. The place is surrounded by silence.
Animosity and unfriendly welcome at some places. As if we were doing something bad. They wrote our license plate numbers down and photographed our car. We asked a neighbour where the detention camp used to be. He says he has never heard of it. His son showed us the exact location. One thought repeatedly appeared in my head as we moved from one place to another. People. Civilians. All of them speak about the same feelings. Fear, uncertainty, pain, fear, fear, fear.
Some values have to be above ethnic and political labeling. Is it possible that we are not capable of admitting, even though 20 years have passed? Because, we know what happened.
We are thinking about our future in Europe, while driving, walking, living next to the places drenched with blood of innocent people, which we keep denying. What example do we give to others?
This is why the battle of Prijedor victims is the battle of all of us, well-meaning people. We are in this together.
On the occasion of marking of May 31, Emir Hodzic and two of his friends, Aldin Arnautovic and Ermin Zatega, visited a few former detention camp and paid respect to all victims, irrespective of their ethnicity, while wearing a white ribbon around their arms. The article contains statements given by a few former detainees with whom they spoke.
