Photo monograph 'Behind Seven Camps' promoted at Sarajevo's Figure Atelier

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The photo monograph “Behind Seven Camps: From the Crime of Culture to the Culture of Crime” was promoted tonight in Sarajevo at the Figure Atelier.

The authorial work of photojournalist Hrvoje Polan, journalist and writer Viktor Ivančić, and journalist and researcher Nemanja Stjepanović, published by Belgrade's forumZFD, discusses houses of culture and cultural facilities that were turned into camps and torture sites during the wars of the nineties in the former Yugoslavia.

Journalist and writer Viktor Ivančić stated that the denial of crimes is omnipresent, but that in some cases and places it is certainly more brutal than others. He cited examples of several camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia where civilians were tortured during the war, and warned that in such places today there is no mention of victims, but there is mention of the army that participated in the torture.

“We all talk about our victims. But, we must also start talking about our crimes. Because, simply, catharsis must happen,” said Ivančić. He added that houses of culture undoubtedly served for detention and torture during the war in the nineties because their infrastructure suited such purposes, but he emphasized that this did not prevent him and his colleagues from seeing a kind of symbolism in all of this.

“Serbian poets came to Krajina in the nineties and, in houses of culture, at so-called poetry evenings, prepared the overture for tanks,” said Ivančić, adding that ritual killings later took place in those same houses of culture, which can be considered a reckoning with the past, as these facilities served for the emancipation of society in the former system.

Professor Nerzuk Ćurak from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo, who also spoke about the photo monograph at the promotion at the Figure Atelier, said that cultural violence is perhaps the most dangerous, “because it legitimizes crimes, through language, religion...”

“They commit crimes and are convinced they are doing the right thing,” said Professor Ćurak, emphasizing that the book “Behind Seven Camps” is a demand to end the culture of denial of crimes.

Professor Ćurak noted that “we all know that Biljana Plavšić confessed to crimes at The Hague”, but observed that this confession is not present in school textbooks, which, Ćurak added, is wrong because if this confession were included in school textbooks, children could re-examine the role of their fathers during the war, just as children in Germany do.

Photojournalist Polan warned that the camps he photographed for this book are in a neglected state, which he also considers denial of crimes, just as, he stated, “the denial of crimes and the silence of the local community about what happened in those camps during the war."