Welcome to free Srebrenica: No surrender, we go to victory!

For NAP writes: Ćamil Duraković

"Dear citizens of Srebrenica", "My dears", "Dear guests", I am trying to start a sentence for another difficult speech. Every day I have to motivate hundreds of people, show them how important what we are doing in Srebrenica is.

For every reason why it is important, I receive criticism, which is more often about something that was before me or about someone outside of Srebrenica, than about us, in the municipal administration and the people who have been trying to make this municipality a better place to live for the last four years.

There are two weeks left until the elections. Srebrenica is marked in red letters in the preparatory activities of all television stations, every international mission, and every party calendar across the country. How much is Srebrenica worth? As much as we are worth.

Messages from our Srebrenica residents are coming to me from all over the world. Someone sent ballots, someone else has problems. We call everyone we can, I ask for help from everyone, we check data, I look for where the oversight is.

Every person is important to me, not because of their vote, but because many have sacrificed their holidays to get documents, because they have struggled to complete the paperwork from a distant country. I don't know, somehow I feel that I owe them my respect and full care.

No one who loves this country can sleep peacefully these weeks and months. The circle closes on Srebrenica. It always has and always will. And imagine if everything breaks on us. We are carrying the burden of the world again, and they didn't even inform us. Promises of help are arriving, some late, some again at the right time. I clench my fists tightly and with wide-open eyes.

Many before me promised a lot. They promised because donor funds were flowing into Srebrenica at the time, so it was easy to promise. And even then, they knew how to disappoint and break their word. Today I cannot and do not promise much.

I am telling the truth, because we have to live with it for the next four years. I warn that we are intentionally being deprived in the budget, bypassed with public investments, that at SNSD election rallies, it is openly threatened that they will continue this in the future. I point out that we are losing educated people, that we are mentioned less and less, that the trace of us is being lost, that new tragedies are taking minutes in the news, that few look back at those who are alive, at our children who want to grow up and stay here.

I know well what it was like when we went to Sarajevo with tents, seeking special status. I know thousands of attempts when we thought they wouldn't betray us and that this time we were going 'all the way'. After everything, life goes on, but each time a piece of the people is torn off, another field is taken, as if another house disappears, one surname is erased, one village falls silent. But how will we look each other in the eye if we lose Srebrenica on October 2nd?

There will be a lot of 'hindsight' then, and many would be eager to blame everyone but themselves for that defeat. There is no cure for that, because even if we win, there will still be many who are 'smarter' than all of us who live here and share the fate of Srebrenica.

I stick to my vision. It is supported by pro-Bosniak political parties, those that did not participate in the planning and execution of the crime of genocide, and those that today do not participate in the open denial of judicially established facts about the greatest crime in Europe since World War II.

In terms of values, our side is on the right side of history. Politically, we have proven to be more mature and smarter. Humanly, we have not insulted anyone, uttered any harsh words, or called anyone by a bad name. All of this points to the civilizational line of division being here.

Not between peoples, but between the policies led by those who pretend to speak 'in the name of the people'.

Two more weeks, and we will know who votes and who counts the votes. We will know where we stand and which path we are taking. The results of votes from abroad and votes of displaced persons from the Federation will not arrive at midnight. By then, the media will be buzzing that we have fallen. But do not worry. We will not give up then. We will fight to the last, until every vote is counted, until all oversights and frauds are determined. Even when they finalize the results and when it seems like everything is over, we will continue again.

Do you think there is no life after October 2nd? Who, if not us, will continue the fight for the right to the Bosniak language in schools? Who, if not us, will insist on investigations into hate speech and attacks on returnees?

Who, if not our community, will watch how laws are passed and budgets are adopted, react when we are deprived, and we are always deprived? Who will care, if we don't watch them every day, how our children are educated, how they progress, and who among them will continue all this one day? Who will take care of our elderly who have no children, so we have to take them to the hospital in Tuzla or Sarajevo?

There is life after October 2nd, our fight has just begun, and there is no surrender in it. Regardless of everything. That is why we are destined to be winners. It may not be today or tomorrow, it may only apply to the years to come. Because we are left here alone and we will survive here alone. Only because we believe in each other. Welcome to free Srebrenica. To victory!