In Široki Brijeg it's okay, in Sarajevo a problem: An activist's grenade for the idea of a tank as a monument to honorable patriotic struggle!

By: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

The public has been debating for days the erection of a monument to the members of the "Bosna" Detachment, defenders known to everyone by the simple name – Vikić's Special Forces. This resistance has been going on for some time, seven or eight years now, since an association called the Network for Peacebuilding opposes the erection of a tank as a monument in Sarajevo!

The Network for Peacebuilding was launched on February 10, 2010, on the idea and wish of several peace activists and organizations who realized that sustainable peace can only be built together.

So, they existed in 2019 when, in peace and to general satisfaction in Herzegovina, the last phase of arranging this memorial was completed with the erection of a T-55 tank at the memorial site commemorating the stopping of JNA tanks in 1991 at the border between Široki Brijeg and Mostar (Dobrič-Polog).

This tank was erected with great satisfaction and general public approval. Why, then, is a tank in Sarajevo a problem, but one in Široki Brijeg, which, incidentally, you cannot bypass if you travel through this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is not?

The most honorable struggle during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina was carried out by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as established by international rulings of the Hague Tribunal, and it is precisely these forces, as well as the pro-Bosnian forces fighting for the preservation of a unified Bosnia and Herzegovina, that have faced the greatest pressure and accusations in recent years.

How is it possible that those who are the most numerous and who are responsible for the freedom we live in today are so quiet, and lukewarm reactions are also coming to the fact that some non-governmental organizations can decide where a monument will stand. The association, as it says, is not against the Sarajevo special forces receiving a monument, it even supports this idea, but it focuses on the form of the monument itself and its location. They have a problem because the tank will be near an educational institution.

Why is that a problem? Because that tank was not erected as a sign of attack, but of defense, and unfortunately, little is written in Bosnian history about the honorable struggle for Bosnia and Herzegovina, so it is certainly extremely important to find alternative ways of learning the truth. These are also visible in the rulings.
So, if we analyze them, we will understand all the honor and courage of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but alas, a tank in their honor is a 'mistake', while a tank in honor of the HVO, which was convicted of a joint criminal enterprise, is not?

All of this can also be read in the political circumstances prevailing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the BiH Prosecutor's Office is trying to prove with mass indictments against members of the Army and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that we were all the same, the international community is persistently giving in to Dragan Čović and Milorad Dodik, and now they want to tell us that young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina must not know that defending oneself is not a sin. We remind you that Dragan Vikić was acquitted by a final verdict of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in its liberation struggle for the lives of all peoples and citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina, amazed the whole world, and now political powers want to convince us that those who defended themselves and those who attacked are equally guilty.

And young people must know and learn that we are only as strong as we are willing to defend ourselves again. That is why they kill the very thought of a will to fight from the outset, inventing that a 'militant' monument can negatively affect young people, who must never forget that the independent and sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the result of the patriotic struggle of the members of the Army and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

And as those of us who live in freedom, thanks to the heroic resistance of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, say, it remains an obligation, especially in the current time of severe trials, to build a free, democratic state in which the results of aggression and genocide will not be amnestied, in which truth and justice will prevail, a state that will be capable of organized and institutional resistance to any evil.

And the tank is there, just to remind us of our obligation and debt to those who are no longer with us, and who gave their lives so that we could exist in the form we are!