March to Sarajevo, March to The Hague

The grave of the famous philosopher Baruch de Spinoza is located in The Hague. Carla Del Ponte in her memoirs describes Spinoza as a philosopher who „identified the power that drives so many crimes: idolatry, envy, stereotypes and prejudices that the powerful manipulate and use in their efforts to seize power and enrich themselves.“ This is the same Spinoza who stated another contemporary Balkan truth: „He who steals a little is persecuted, tortured, imprisoned or even killed. He who steals a lot is a respected and honest citizen.“

On the eve of the horrific crime against Bosniaks and Croats, I was in Prijedor in the spring of 1992 and then withdrew to Sanski Most, sensing fear and tension at every step. Even then, there were people fleeing Prijedor. One of them testified to me how Dušan Tadić raped his relative in front of her husband, whom he had tied to a chair. I was shocked by what I heard and saw in Krajina those days. Prijedor experienced horrific terror and mass executions. Much later, the most terrible grave Tomašica revealed all the brutality of the Greater Serbia project. I wrote a text then about the horrors in Krajina, and mentioned Tadić as well. We were preparing another edition of Slobodna Bosna, in the Sarajevo editorial office of the Central Committee of BiH, where the late Nijaz Duraković had placed us, when the phone rang. The conversation went like this:

-Did you write about me?

-Who are you, I asked?

-Dušan Tadić, he said.

-What do you want?

-I called to tell you that I will come to Sarajevo to settle accounts.

-Come, I told him. Choose your weapon.

He laughed and added confidently:

-You didn't understand me. I won't come alone.“

-I thought you and I would settle it like men.

-You still didn't understand me, he laughed, I will come with my people.

-I have my friends too, I said.

-You still didn't understand me, I will march in with my people.

One could only march into an unarmed city.

While the war was still ongoing, the German police arrested Tadić in February 1994. He was identified as a guard in the infamous concentration camp of the Omarska mine. The judges opposed bringing an ordinary guard before the Tribunal. However, the then Chief Prosecutor Graham Blewitt initiated this first Tribunal trial for crimes in BiH. The court, on this day, January 26, 2000, delivered a verdict for Duško Tadić. The first man tried for crimes committed during the aggression against BiH was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Similar to Tadić's announcement that he would march into Sarajevo, Karadžić spoke when he said in the BiH Assembly:

-Do not think that you will not lead Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell, and the Muslim people perhaps into extinction, because the Muslim people cannot defend themselves if there is war here. Karadžić was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide in BiH.

Baron Estournelles de Constant, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1909, through whose efforts the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague was founded, noted after the Balkan Wars something that is as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. Read and imagine the current leaders of our neighboring countries: „The true culprits of war are those who mislead public opinion and exploit people's ignorance, who launch disturbing rumors and sound the alarm, inciting their own country and, as a consequence, other countries to hostilities. The true culprits are those who, driven by their own interest or inner impulse and constantly declaring that war is inevitable, make war truly inevitable, proclaiming that they cannot prevent it. The true culprits are those who sacrifice the general interest for their own interest.“ Nothing changes in the Balkans even centuries later.