SDP's cryptopartisan Seki from Ilidža says: The RS Army is not criminal!

Written by: Rasim Belko

Cryptopartisan - a communist by political conviction and public rhetoric, but who in everyday life fully accepts and practices capitalist patterns of consumption and behavior; an ideological opponent of capitalism who simultaneously enjoys its fruits.

In short, from this definition it is clear that the cryptopartisans of our time are hypocritical political parasites who enjoy the full fruits of everything that is absolutely contrary to the ideology and political thought for which they supposedly fight nostalgically and ardently.

A cryptopartisan from Ilidža near Sarajevo recently showed that his budget-crypto life is so comfortable and dear to him that he is willing to go so far as to claim that the RS Army is not a criminal organization.

And the reason for such a reaction from the SDP's Deputy Chair of the Ilidža Municipal Council, Selver Zećirović, was a publication on these pages stating that the troika majority in the Municipal Council did not put to a vote a resolution that would, among other things, check the war past of members of the RS Army who are appointed and placed in public institutions of the Sarajevo Canton.

“I am for all criminals being punished, without exception, but this resolution puts all members of the RS Army in the same basket, and that is neither fair nor smart. What will we do with people who were sent to the front line under threat? What if one day a counter-measure appears, so members of the Army of BiH are banned from buying property in the Republika Srpska? We are councilors, our job is to work on things that help citizens, not to return to war whenever we run out of ideas. I survived the war, I was wounded and I know what it means to be a target, and that is precisely why I will not put a target on anyone else's forehead without justice and evidence. That is why I said clearly at the session: I will not vote for this because the resolution primarily labels one man. I don't even know that man personally, but I know this approach is wrong. And one more thing - the submitters of the resolution and their colleagues could have left the thematic session at which the named gentleman addressed, if they did not want to listen to 'such' a man.”

So this SDP cryptopartisan is absolutely for all criminals being punished, but he would a priori absolve some based on the fact that the entire leadership of that army was convicted both on command responsibility and on a wide range of other charges for the worst crimes since the time of Hitler and the Third Reich. That is like saying: the German soldiers who attacked Sutjeska are not fascists - what about those who were forcibly mobilized, because of them we must absolve all others, except those convicted. No way.

And don't be fooled, this is not the classic spin-populism we are used to from SDP cadres when they feel the need for brotherhood and unity of our peoples. This, unfortunately, has become the matrix of SDP policy, the same policy responsible for the fact that a significant part of Bosniaks had to leave the territory of the RS, which was previously cleansed by members of the RS Army, which according to Zećirović is not criminal.

“I want to clearly emphasize that the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) as an institution has never been officially declared a 'criminal organization' either by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, or by any other international or domestic court. It is true that certain commanders and members of the VRS have been prosecuted and convicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, but this concerns individual criminal responsibility, not a qualification of the entire army. Precisely because of this, we are not the ones who determine individual responsibilities; there are competent institutions and courts for that. Introducing a ban on the employment of former members of the Army of Republika Srpska in institutions of the Sarajevo Canton would be unconstitutional and illegal. Such a measure would represent a form of collective guilt, contrary to basic human rights and international standards,” Zećirović states.



I would like this “expert in international law” to clarify the following situation for me - Novak Đukić was convicted on command responsibility for the crime at Tuzla's Kapija. He did not fire the grenade, did not clean the artillery, did not bring ammunition, was not the driver of the truck that brought the cannons and ammunition, did not bring food and water to those criminal artillerymen… So, he ordered the firing and only he is guilty… And what about, Zećirović, all those listed? What about the moralists, what about the cooks…

“They are the same, those who slaughtered and those who brought water to wash their bloody hands and knives,” is a sentence I learned back in 2008 at the Institute for Research of War Crimes and Genocide of the University of Sarajevo. And I have no doubt that it is absolutely correct. And here, 17 years later, we are witnessing the open stance of one, admittedly local, political official among Bosniaks who would absolve everyone except the top of the VRS, and even the VRS itself from being a criminal organization.

And I think it is very difficult to find an army anywhere in the world, regardless of its structure, where such a large part of its command and other personnel has been convicted of the most serious crimes, including at least four convictions for genocide, rape, ethnic cleansing…

And such an army, as the cryptopartisan Zećirović “responsibly claims,” is not criminal. It would be superfluous to add or explain anything further here.

Over the past two decades, we have really gotten used to all sorts of things from the SDP, and somehow it is most often from this party that attacks have been made on members of the Army of the Republic of BiH, the only legal and only defensive army during the aggression against BiH. Most often, from such an SDP, attacks were made on the fight of the Army and the Ministry of Interior of the RBiH, and they were quickest to find excuses for appointing or absolving VRS cadres.

This is the party that, through the Law on Residence, helped the political leadership of the RS to finish what the VRS started.

That is why it is up to all other political organizations in the Sarajevo Canton to show seriousness and cut short every subsequent attempt to rape history and rights. Every new Zećirović will be a bigger problem for us, because rewriting and distorting history is a discipline that our enemies are developing quickly and efficiently.

It is up to the councilors of the Ilidža Municipal Council to remove Zećirović from the leadership; perhaps with a smaller salary, the burdensome part of his cryptopartisanship will be resolved. It is up to all other political organizations in the Sarajevo Canton to ensure that those who, as a paramilitary force, destroyed the system of this state, killed its civilians and devastated cities, never become part of the system of that state through their efforts.

Otherwise, black is already written for us.