Kulanić: Sarajevo was defended by citizens of all ethnic groups from siege, shelling, sniper attacks

Dr. Ahmed Kulanić, director of the Sarajevo Canton Memorial Fund, reacted to the conference held in Belgrade titled “Was Sarajevo a besieged and blocked city”. In his review, he stated that the rewriting of history and historical events is becoming one of the basic features of forming and shaping social consciousness and public discourse in the region of Southeast Europe.

"The textbook policy of omitting the history of the 1990s has recently produced generations completely devoid of an objective, scientific, and above all legally-founded perspective and view of the war and war events in and around Bosnia and Herzegovina. Numerous seminars, summer schools, and extracurricular activities, it seems to me, are not and do not produce the desired effects, because despite all the efforts of domestic and international actors, social discourse has taken on a completely new dimension – the triumphalism of crime and criminals, the rehabilitation of war criminals and their affirmation in society. The filling of the empty space in the education system has been taken over by many, less competent individuals, and under the instruction and supervision of grand ideological matrices and projects, numerous quasi-scientists.

Public opinion today is shaped by the very same people who committed the most brutal crimes or have been accused of committing them. This is given special attention by the perspective that this takes place in the public space without fear of ever answering for their deeds, despite active international warrants. In this regard, one should also understand the recently held conference at the Media Center of the Journalists' Association of Serbia under the patronage of the Representation of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian entity RS in Belgrade, titled “Was Sarajevo a besieged or blocked city?” at which Tomislav Kovač, accused of the crime of genocide against the non-Serb population of Srebrenica in July 1995, and who was also the commander of the police station in Ilidža during the siege of Sarajevo, gave his “presentation”. Modern Western and democratic states would make the prosecution of those accused of war crimes, as well as the crime of genocide, the basic line of distinction between civilized and uncivilized, modern and retrograde, as well as democratic and undemocratic orientation of a particular state. The rule of law represents the basic watershed in this regard. Before the eyes of all those international officials, official institutions, the non-governmental sector, and media associations are carrying out a complete rehabilitation of criminals and dehumanization of crimes and victims.

Legally founded facts and their omission

The organized “conference” primarily and solely aims to justify the numerous funds invested in the report of the “international commission” on the suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo, about which anyone even superficially familiar with recent Bosnian history can, beyond any doubt, determine that it sought to deal with marginal events and avoid the essence. In addition to the aforementioned rehabilitation of accused criminals, the conference once again sought to produce the view that it was not a siege but a blockade of Sarajevo, deliberately avoiding reference to the judgments of international courts which actually factually demonstrate and prove the opposite. In this regard, it is necessary to repeat parts of the verdict against the former President of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, and the convicted criminal for (among other things) terrorizing the citizens of Sarajevo, genocide in Srebrenica, and crimes in other municipalities: “The Chamber concludes that the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps (SRK) essentially surrounded Sarajevo and held it under siege, and that the city, as such, was under blockade”.

In addition to this, the transcripts of the 16th Session of the Assembly of Bosnian Serbs, held on May 12, 1992, establish the intention of Ratko Mladić, Lieutenant General, Commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska and convicted war criminal, to keep Sarajevo under siege: “...We need at this moment to put a ring around the dragon's head of Sarajevo and from it only those we let out can leave...”

Furthermore, the judgment of the Trial Chamber, Prosecutor v. Stanislav Galić, Commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps (SRK) of the VRS “states that the siege of Sarajevo, such a notorious episode of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, that nothing similar has been remembered in European history since the time of the Second World War. Never since then has a professional army conducted a campaign of such intensity without respite against the civilian population of a European city, reducing it to a state of deprivation reminiscent of the Middle Ages and constant fear of death”.

The political and military leadership, and primarily the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, as members of a joint criminal enterprise (JCE), conducted a constant campaign of deliberate shelling and sniper attacks with the primary purpose of spreading terror and terrorizing the citizens of Sarajevo, which resulted in thousands of killed men and women of all ages, including children, and the wounding and maiming of thousands of people of different ethnic groups. The aforementioned conference, as well as the already mentioned Report, do not mention this at all – on the contrary, they deliberately ignore and relativize it. Just as they relativize and deny the existence of more than 15 detention facilities, including the barracks in Rajlovac, Lukavica, and Nedžarići, the camps "Planjina kuća", "Bunker", "Kod Sonje", Kula prison, "Digitron Buje", "Šoping", the gymnasium in Pale, the garage of the Hadžići Municipal Assembly, the Cultural and Sports Center Hadžići, etc., through which over 10,000 prisoners passed.

Towards the future

For conducting the campaign of sniper attacks, shelling of citizens, persecution of the non-Serb population, the joint criminal enterprise and siege of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and crimes committed in the Sarajevo municipalities occupied by Serb forces, international and domestic courts have convicted a total of 36 individuals to 354 years and six months in prison, as well as two life sentences, namely: Radovan Karadžić, Momčilo Krajišnik, Biljana Plavšić, Ratko Mladić, Mićo Stanišić, Stanislav Galić, Dragomir Milošević, Dragan Damjanović, Rade Vaselinović, Saša Baričanin, Vaselin Vlahović, Goran Damjanović, Zoran Damjanović, Zoran Dragičević, Branko Vlaču, Jovan Tintor, Ratko Gašović, Vlastimir Pušara, Zoran Knežević, Goran Vasić, Boro Krsmanović, Predrag Mišković, Milan Šešelj, Momir Glišić, Borislav Berjan, Nemanja Jovičić, Mladen Milanović, Predrag Đurović, Duško Dabetić, Momir Tomaš, Slobodan Bogdanović, Goran Sladoja, Milorad Rodić, Željko Mitrović, and Ranko Boljak.

The conference, as well as the report, largely omit that among the numerous killed citizens of Sarajevo were precisely members of the Serb people who were terrorized by the VRS, i.e., the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, during the 1425 days of siege, through sniper attacks and shelling. Perhaps they are guided by the audio recording of war criminal Mladić when he issued orders to shell "Velušići" – "so that there is no Serb population there", because for them, neither then nor today, the residents of Sarajevo represented citizens, but rather a population to be terrorized. And finally, Sarajevo was defended from siege, shelling, and sniper attacks by the citizens of Sarajevo of all ethnic groups. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the First Glorious Knightly Brigade, which had in its ranks nearly 300 Bosnian Serbs, of whom five were recipients of the highest war decoration "Golden Lily", and 31 gave their lives for a free and independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, because being on the hill and in the city then, as well as today, is the basic watershed of civilizational values."