AMIR SUŽANJ Merchants of Crime

By Amir Sužanj

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Political circles leading the systematic denial of genocide and institutional glorification of war crimes are facing a difficult test. Letters sent to a thousand addresses of the highest world officials, sent by 12 associations of war victims, demanding an end to the increasingly widespread practice of denying crimes and glorifying criminals, have already caused reactions around the planet. What has been whispered in diplomatic circles for several months could soon become a reality – many international doors will be closed to deniers of genocide and war crimes.

The denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, the most horrific crime in Europe after World War II, is not only a civilizational shame and a disgusting anti-civilizational act, but also conscious complicity in the crime. Attempts to minimize crimes and deny them, by definition, represent active participation in their commission, even decades after they were committed. Who, in their right mind, in the modern world, would want or need to accept people who deny crimes as conversation partners?

It is precisely these people, who, under the guise of concern for "their" victims, have developed an entire strategy of trading in human tragedies, who are an obstacle to the healing of deep war wounds. These political circles, through their constant inflammatory actions, actually prevent victims on all sides from finding peace. Without their destructive actions, ordinary people, who have suffered terrible losses, would somehow find a way to live the rest of their lives with as little pain as possible. After all, they, on all sides, seek only two things – that the perpetrators be held accountable and that the truth about the whereabouts of so many missing persons, who are still being searched for today, be finally revealed.

However, the merchants of victims and human tragedies do not allow wounds to heal and presume to be the supposed leaders of those who have truly lost their loved ones. In this endeavor, they do not limit themselves to the last war in which Yugoslavia bled out, but go further back into the past, to their favorite era – the time of World War II.

In the last few days, we have witnessed various commemorations in which the entire futility of their trade in human suffering can be observed. What moral credibility do people who deny one set of victims have to pay homage to others? With what credibility, for example, does Milorad Dodik, while denying the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, appear at a gathering commemorating the victims of Jasenovac in Donja Gradina? His very presence is a desecration of the memory of those very victims of terrible crimes in Jasenovac, because how is it possible to pay homage to the victims of one crime and not recognize the victims killed in the same brutal manner, in an equally horrific crime elsewhere? This mockery of both sets of victims is clear proof that such people do not appear at commemorations and gatherings to pay homage to the victims, but to exploit them politically as effectively as possible.

The case of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is even more absurd. He readily agreed to participate in the erection of a memorial for the victims of terrible Ustasha crimes in Donja Gradina, while completely ignoring the truth that a similar place exists in the heart of Belgrade – the former concentration camp at Sajmište, the only concentration camp in a capital city during World War II, where tens of thousands of people were also killed, including fifteen thousand Jews. This area formally belonged to the so-called Independent State of Croatia, but in reality – and Vučić knows this well – it was an SS camp where people arrested by Milan Nedić's regime were brought and killed, the same regime that various pseudo-scientists, with the full assistance of the current authorities, are trying to rehabilitate based on horrific falsifications. At the same time, in Belgrade, at the execution site in Jajinci, more than 80,000 people, men, women, and children, mostly Serbs from partisan families, were killed. And there, just as at the Banjica camp, where Serb anti-fascists were killed in waves, the masters were Nedić's police and state guard.

What is the difference between the victims of terrible crimes in Jasenovac and at Sajmište and in Jajinci? That one group was killed by Croatian fascists, and the other by Serb fascists, members of Nedić's regime, who were in the same dependent system on the occupying Nazi authorities as Pavelić's in Croatia!

Why would Vučić need to build a memorial in one place and leave another to oblivion and weeds? In both places, Jews, Roma, and Serbs were brutally murdered as victims of the most heinous crimes, following the same recipe, in the same way, and from the same fascist kitchen. So, what is the difference?

The difference is that he cannot exploit the Jews, Roma, and Serbs who are victims of Serbian fascism!!!

The tragedy of the victims in the Balkans is not only that they are victims of crimes, but that years and decades later they are turned into victims by merchants of their suffering. These political circles, who constantly, whenever they need to, awaken the ghosts of the past, are very recognizable today. Perhaps this major action by the 12 victim associations will finally mark them as a non-civilizational moral plague and close the doors of modern civilizational flows to them. Only then will ordinary people on all sides, who are merely seeking the truth, have the opportunity to find peace and somehow survive the rest of their lives in their pain.