Vučić Prepares Declaration with Srebrenica Mothers' Flower on His Lapel

Vučić is a politician of a special kind. These days he is diligently working with Dodik on preparing a sinister Declaration which is, in fact, a product of the same manufacturer of aggressive memorandums called SANU.

At the same time, the HDZ BiH – advancing its own and supporting Dodik's destructive policy – refuses to adopt the law on punishing the denial of genocide, thus also certifying its pronounced and constant anti-European, uncivilized orientation. At the same time, from Sarajevo, such a Vučić occasionally receives praise, and not so long ago he even adorned himself with the Srebrenica Mothers' Flower. The Institute for Research of Genocide Canada rightly initiated that the Mothers withdraw the Flower from Vučić's lapel until he acknowledges the genocide in Srebrenica and apologizes to its victims. That initiative should be supported. So, these days, on several fronts, that famous visit of Vučić to the Memorial Center in Potočari is being reactualized, which means – unfortunately and despite the "positive verbalization" – that we are factually constantly in a negative context from which they never let Bosnia go.

On these occasions, I recall how, at the height of the terror over Sarajevo, I published a text titled "Shahids Rush for the Living" (Ljiljan, no. 91(12), 1994). At that time, I did not know whether I would survive the besieged Sarajevo, let alone whether I would again have the opportunity to write about the unusual relationship between shahids and the living – those who died violently to give energy through their death to those who are alive and who celebrate them as shahids. Because, without entering into the "status of shahids" in God's "system of values" (He says that shahids are not dead but alive, but you do not know that; Qur'an, 2:154), one should know that shahids, precisely as such, constantly provide energy for the protection of the highest values to generations that dedicate their sacrifice. Shahids are not "ordinary dead people," like all others, but they are always active through their status, propagating the highest values through Time and illuminating them from another perspective in a way that may seem unusual but is truly powerful – as in the drastic case I will briefly analyze here.

In 2015, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić arrived in Potočari, where the collective funeral and burial of the remains of a large number of Bosniaks as victims of genocide were taking place. Numerous controversies accompanied Vučić's visit (the word "visit" is still inadequate for the arrival of a Chetnik duke at such a place and on such an occasion!), as well as the announcement of his intrusion into the sanctity of the Commemoration, whose dignity and contrition he would noisily disrupt. It is incredible that after everything, despite his sacrilege of every kind, some Bosniaks even apologized to him. These were shocking manifestations of incomprehensible naivety. Among these controversies, special attention should be paid to one that took place in Potočari, at the Memorial Center.

On that occasion, the Mothers of Srebrenica adorned Vučić, like all other visitors – although he is different from all others in many ways – with the Srebrenica Flower.

It was a ghostly gesture. One of those at which even history itself, already accustomed to everything, is appalled, and must mark it negatively. Forever.

At that moment, Vučić was an institution – the Prime Minister of Serbia, which carried out aggression against BiH. Another kind of his important institutionalization was carried out during that aggression – when he was awarded the title of Chetnik duke for his wartime engagement in BiH. He never renounced that title. As such, he was a participant in the aggression against BiH, which means he was recognized as part of the system that committed genocide precisely in Srebrenica. Shortly before his intrusion into the Memorial Center, he used all the authority of his position/institution (Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia) to prevent the Security Council from adopting the Resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica (aside from the absurdity that it was precisely the Tribunal, as an organ of the Security Council, that delivered the verdict on that genocide, while the Council did not adopt the Resolution)...

Despite all the above, the Mothers decorate such a person with the Flower that symbolizes the genocide in Srebrenica! So, the Mothers decorate the executioner who massacred their children and families, the criminal who never renounced his role in such a mass crime. He did speak before the intrusion into the Memorial Center that a crime occurred in Srebrenica, but he persistently denied the genocide and his role as a duke in the system that committed the genocide. The absurdity is complete, unspeakable.

However, if the living make such terrible mistakes, the shahids do not err. The living err from the perspective of (their) temporality, while the shahids testify to the Truth from the perspective of Eternity. So it happened in the case of the Mothers and Vučić.

Namely, the world knows, history and the Tribunal have made their decision, the judgment on the genocide in Srebrenica. Vučić's role in that criminal system is also known. The best witness is the vast field of shahid tombstones in Potočari. There, at that place and on that very date, before the vast mass of shahids and the living and in their intense "exchange of energy," the wartime actor Duke Vučić receives on his lapel the Flower that symbolizes the massacre in Srebrenica. But the shahids do not allow themselves to be deceived by him. Vučić is deceived – in the very essence of things – because he appeared there to receive the Flower of Testimony, precisely "before those" killed by his institutions. There was absolutely no better way to present himself as a supreme hypocrite and manipulator; never and nowhere did he better present himself as incredibly unscrupulous and, in fact, as an unsurpassed moral misery, as a dark, underground character. He showed that he is ready for every kind of shamelessness, and it is precisely this that the shahids testify to, before whom he received the decoration. 

On the same lapel, the decoration of the duke-murderer and the flower-victim!

The Mothers made that gesture out of some servility, not knowing that they were trampling underfoot what remains for the victim as the greatest, perhaps even the only value: dignity. Vučić made a political and ethical spectacle for momentary political profit, but – the shahids manifest universal values and the Eternal Truth. They overwhelmingly, convincingly corrected the mistakes of both the living, in that kingdom of white tombstones; in the kingdom of horrific crime and bright deaths.

It remains for the shahids to convince politicians of their absurdity in holding political speeches there to gain political profit: in Potočari, an honest man – just as a Man – can only fall silent, bow, or recite a prayer. Nothing more, and nothing else.