From Sarajevo to Gaza, from Karadžić to Netanyahu: Crimes visible to all, but justice nowhere in sight!

By: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

On this day, exactly 17 years ago, Radovan Karadžić was arrested, later convicted of genocide in Srebrenica and the most heinous crimes against humanity.

Although he received a life sentence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for the siege of Sarajevo, one of the longest and most brutal siege periods in contemporary history, to this day there is not a single indictment by the BiH Prosecutor's Office that would encompass the entire crime against the civilian population of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sarajevo was exposed to daily terror for four years - shelling, sniper attacks, psychological and physical torture. Civilians were killed while waiting for water, bread, while trying to survive in a city without electricity, heating, and basic necessities. This silence of the judiciary regarding the siege of Sarajevo remains as a wound and a message.

And today, instead of an institutional response, surviving victims are invited to SIPA to sign statements and give consent for the prosecution of crimes to be left to those who have denied, relativized, and even glorified them for decades.

The executioners are still at large in Serbia, where they enjoy protection and social status, while the victims continue to wait for justice. Then SIPA inspectors tell them that Serbia will not extradite them, but is willing to prosecute them!?

And so, 30 years after the aggression, it is difficult to shake off the impression that the BiH Prosecutor's Office does not serve justice. Because, if it did, witnesses who came to testify in the Dobrovoljačka case, and who mostly stayed in the Sarajevo battlefield, could have been heard, to speed up indictments for the siege of Sarajevo, if they are working on it at all!

It is difficult not to notice the parallels between the wartime images of Sarajevo and the current image of Gaza. Lines for humanitarian aid, civilians dying while trying to survive, hunger and fear as everyday life. Sarajevo went through that. Sarajevo remembers it.

Much time has passed from the arrest of Karadžić to Netanyahu and the genocide in Gaza, the world repeats "never again", but before its eyes the horrors of crime and genocide are repeated.

And therefore, on this day, besides reminding of the arrest of one of the key creators and protagonists of war crimes including genocide, we ask the question when will Sarajevo receive its justice? And can Gaza expect justice if Sarajevo is still waiting for it three decades after the end of the aggression?!