Bosnian Serbs/Republika Srpska/Serbia refusing to admit genocide

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Ok so the news story is that they are due to make genocide denial illegal as well as the glorification of convicted war criminals.

https://apnews.com/article/europe-government-and-politics-genocides-6821e5d3a71bf86db830fda1e81a6123

Briefly: genocide was carried out by Bosnian Serbs in Bosnian on the Muslim population. It was not done through the actions of a lone wolf operator, and it is documented that  'ethnic cleansing' involved the planned displacement of Muslims from mixed communities near the Serbia border and, under quiet, their extermination. Certainly coordinated by Ratko Mladic on the ground and partly/passively tolerated by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

Having visited the area relatively recently, it is clear that the conflict remains unresolved and the entire area held in a sort of uneasy stasis. Each side leans heavily on its own victimhood.

While Serbia and Bosnian Serbs were agitators in the conflict, along with the Croats the war museum in Banja Luka (in quasi-state Republika Srpska inside Bosnia) is an almost laughably one-eyed account  (laughable if it didn't involve detailed retelling massacres and mistreatment of POWs) that leans heavily on the mistreatment of Serbians by Croats at a concentration camp while giving no information whatsoever about their systematic genocide, with only a vague acknowledgement on one panel about 'crimes committed on all sides'. This is not a healthy way to go about things.

In Croatia, effectively a nationalist movement with its origins in Fascism were victorious. Their memorials and museums regarding the war are again focused on their own destruction and suffering such as the devastation of Vukovar and crimes on the eastern border, and the shelling of Dubrovnik.

Then in Bosnia you can visit the Genocide Museum in Mostar that is unbelievably harrowing, mostly well documented, again perhaps without full balance. It is a deep dive into the reality of one sides utter misery and desperation. A spiffing day out.

It is only really when you get to Sarajevo and visit the museum of war childhood where this partisan propaganda finds some sort of anchor, as the siege of Sarajevo lasted for so long, without the ambiguities of other aspects of the conflict. Exposing the daily terror and almost banality of evil way that children in Sarajevo lived through and had to adapt to through a series of childhood objects and videos explaining their significance. A lot of the children were the same age as me and understandably I found that the easiest route to put myself in their shoes, as it were.

Anyway, the conflict arose due to rising nationalism, and nationalism is still at the heart of why Serbia cannot face up to the wrongdoing. Germany was forced to accept what it had done because it was so well documented and because their military defeat was total and unconditional. With this conflict, this was the UN/Nato/Western powers basically pausing the conflict midway through. There was no particular satisfactory resolution or closure for any sides. Serbia felt they were relinquishing territory, Bosnia felt that dividing the country would lead to wider issues in the long term, Croatia also ceded a bunch of (largely useless uninhabited) land on its Eastern border.

So you have a Serbian state and a quasi-state whose official position is denying a well documented genocide because to acknowledge it and to go through that grief and reckoning and introspection with the public involves confronting dishonour. Dishonour is at the opposite end of the pride underpinning nationalism. Acknowledging genocide and going through the process of truth and reconciliation also comes at a political cost, as we know from closer to home, which no-one in their countries is brave enough to pay.

[Norton Canes]

PARKLIFE!

[imitationleather]

One of my best mates is from Kosovo. You should hear him once he gets going on the topic of the Serbs!

But yeah the entire thing is just so completely shocking it's hard to comprehend it actually took place in Europe that recently. Someone posted up that health spa in Bosnia recently that was a rape camp during the conflict where 200 or so women were killed and the now-majority Serbian population of the town (as all the Muslims who lived there got pushed into that big river) refuse to admit anything ever happened there.

You kind of feel until Serbia acknowledges what happened there's always a danger it's going to kick off again eventually.

EDIT: Typing is awful this morning.

[flotemysost]

I once went to a talk by a journalist who worked in that area during the conflict, it's one of the only times I thought I might actually throw up from listening to someone's description of stuff they've seen.

I have a couple of friends from that region too (Kosovan and Bosnian) whose families were refugees of Muslim heritage, and although they're most likely a bit too young to remember much detail, it's just not something I've ever felt I can ask them about or bring up.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The first time I had the opportunity to speak about the subject with anyone who lived through it was with a man now known by the group I was with as the most boring man to ever live. His anecdotes didn't have punctuation or chapters or context, they were an infinitely linked chain of events, some alarming, some mind-meltingly prosaic, with no prospect of allowing your brain to compartmentalise anything.

We should have known from the looks the locals flashed at us when he started on his tale. I think we sat through an hour and a half of it and quite frankly death sounded alright as opposed to spending another second in that man's company. Perhaps he was always that way, perhaps living among shelling and seeing your friends dead in ditches does that to you.

[imitationleather]

Have you read some of the books about the era, such as Seasons in Hell by Ed Vuilliamy? I've got a couple of others but their names aren't springing immediately to mind.

There's points where I was genuinely struggling to believe the stuff described was real. Not in the sense I thought it was made up, just that I couldn't believe people could be so savage to one another.

[Buelligan]

I think the savagery, man's inhumanity to man, is everywhere.  Go to any village in Europe, the Middle East, anywhere[nb]Maybe not anywhere, the UK and the US get off mostly[/nb], and, if you dig deep enough, you'll find a story from the last hundred years of something foul enough to make you weep (done by state actors, rather than individual lunatics).  We draw a veil because how could we have armies or arms industries if we actually looked at what they produce.

[imitationleather]

Yeah I don't doubt it. I guess this conflict is the only one I've read about in any real depth because I did a module on it at university, and also because of how the telly coverage of it looked like memories of watching TV during my childhood means it feels as thought it is part of my own personal timeline. Even though I obviously have no connection to the region other than a few friends made years later. (Including a Serb, for balance! Never, ever broached the subject of it all with her, though. When I mentioned I'd visited Kosovo she said she'd never been and I thought, "Ha. I bet you fucking haven't!")

[BlodwynPig]

I think the savagery, man's inhumanity to man, is everywhere.  Go to any village in Europe, the Middle East, anywhere[nb]Maybe not anywhere, the UK and the US get off mostly[/nb], and, if you dig deep enough, you'll find a story from the last hundred years of something foul enough to make you weep (done by state actors, rather than individual lunatics).  We draw a veil because how could we have armies or arms industries if we actually looked at what they produce.

Walthamstow on a friday night

[Buelligan]

I have my own little idea about how these violences and horrors earn their keep.  I'm related to people who've lived through dreadful shit.  When they grew up, they visited terrible shit on their families.  I think this happens. 

I think the politicians and armaments manufacturers seed our fields with hell, knowing that, even after all the guns have stopped, the barbarity lives on and infects future generations as customers and voters.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Ratko Mladic

Saw him being interviewed on youtube a wee while back. He was going on about a film he'd made about some band and sounding all pompous. He's grown a beard now. Didn't look well.

[buttgammon]

I always get Mladic and Karadzic mixed up. Which one looks like Morrissey and which one looks like Dermot Morgan?

[peanutbutter]

I got a bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade nearly a decade ago, required going to what felt like an extremely segregated part of the city that the serbs live in to a bus station exclusively for traveling to belgrade. I guess the place wasn't that bad but the vibes were fucking awful. Can't really imagine what it'd be like to live in Sarajevo for 15-20 years after all that stuff as a serb. Was quite fortunate to bump into this Ken Loach loving Serbian guy who helped me a load with my booking and then chatted on the bus for a few hours because I was def coming in there with a bit of a dumb preconception of "this is where the bad people live" and everyone else there was an unhelpful prick so it was only being reinforced.

You only have to spend a day in Belgrade to see how hard the NATO bombings have made this stuff from being fully resolvable in my lifetime. They're still there and they look like they could've happened no length ago, except they're now coated in ads for the army and similar shit (or at least they were when I was there).

[imitationleather]

I always get Mladic and Karadzic mixed up. Which one looks like Morrissey and which one looks like Dermot Morgan?

It's a shame Are Dermot died before he had a chance to play Karadžić in a film. There would be plenty of knockabout comedy potential in the section where he hides while posing as a new age alternative medicine doctor.

[Dex Sawash]

Nice one. More countries/areas should bar genocide from entry.  GBOL.

[imitationleather]

You only have to spend a day in Belgrade to see how hard the NATO bombings have made this stuff from being fully resolvable in my lifetime. They're still there and they look like they could've happened no length ago, except they're now coated in ads for the army and similar shit (or at least they were when I was there).

The lass I know from Serbia always says Belgrade (where she currently lives) is a total shithole and can't get her head around why I or anyone else would be interested in visiting.

[peanutbutter]

The lass I know from Serbia always says Belgrade (where she currently lives) is a total shithole and can't get her head around why I or anyone else would be interested in visiting.

I agree tbh, but it was grand for a two day wander and there was a night train to budapest

[bgmnts]

Do they still venerate Gavrilo Princep in Serbia? A Serbian girl I spoke to in Hungary was ambivalent.

[Cold Meat Platter]

I thought that was illegal over there.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The lass I know from Serbia always says Belgrade (where she currently lives) is a total shithole and can't get her head around why I or anyone else would be interested in visiting.

It has miles of the most brutal tower blocks imaginable so you'd love it.

[imitationleather]

It has miles of the most brutal tower blocks imaginable so you'd love it.

This is what I said to her.

[thelittlemango]

I have a bunch of Serbian friends who are 2nd generation Serbs living in the UK. As is often the way when you're a step apart from your parents/relatives who were born in the country, my friends tend to overcompensate for this with a degree of nationalism, which sadly includes this subject with a couple of them. Their general theory is that NATO fucked them over and they're being persecuted when in reality everyone was culpable in different ways, and in fact the Serbs crimes weren't as bad as others, which seems particularly deluded.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Serb nationalism is tied into centuries of feeling like they have been the vanguard of Islamic invasions. Like Hungary their borders and importance declined considerably in modern history and their overall military record is abysmal save for some isolated heroic victories. It is logical to think how that sentiment expressed at national level in a country that literally still has orthodox religious patriarchs that make the likes of Iain Paisley look like a tree hugger is sheer poison. Yugoslavia was the best thing that ever happened to the region (In my still probably uninformed opinion)