Day of Remembrance for Murdered Children of Sarajevo: Perpetrators Not Yet Brought to Justice!

(Patria) - Today marks the Day of Remembrance for Murdered Children of Sarajevo.

According to official data, 1,601 children died during the four-year siege of Sarajevo (1992-1995), the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to court verdicts at international and domestic courts, at least 53 children in Sarajevo were killed by snipers, and more than 14,000 were wounded. They were most often killed on playgrounds in front of buildings, where a shrapnel forever ended their childhood.

For the crimes against children committed during the siege of Sarajevo, no one has been held accountable so far.

In 2019, the Government of Sarajevo Canton passed a decision to mark May 5th as the Day of Remembrance for Murdered Children of Sarajevo.

Since February 2020, the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been collecting personal belongings of children killed during the siege of Sarajevo, which are exhibited in the memorial 'White Room' display.

The terror against the citizens of Sarajevo lasted 1,425 days. Attacks on civilians from the positions of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), according to the verdicts of the Hague Tribunal, took place everywhere and at any time of day or night.

With final verdicts, for the siege of Sarajevo, Stanislav Galić was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, while Dragomir Milošević, both former commanders of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps which held Sarajevo under siege for 44 months, received 29 years in prison.

Part of the life sentences for Radovan Karadžić, wartime president of Republika Srpska (RS), and Ratko Mladić, wartime commander of the VRS Army, relates precisely to the terrorizing of the civilian population of Sarajevo.

Before domestic judiciary, 12 individuals have been prosecuted so far for crimes in the besieged parts of the city.

Former President of the Republic of Serbia Slobodan Milošević was also charged with crimes committed in Sarajevo before the Hague Tribunal, but he died during the trial in March 2006, after which the proceedings were suspended.

Biljana Plavšić, former president of Republika Srpska, pleaded guilty to participation, among other things, in the crimes in Sarajevo, after which she was sentenced to 11 years in prison by the judges of the Hague Tribunal.