Mental Divisions

by Emir HABUL

Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo, Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina, B-H, June 6, 2000

On Friday morning, on the occasion of the murder of Ljubisa Savic Mauzer in Bijeljina, radio Fern opened its program to its listeners. The opinions of the listeners were strongly influenced by their ethnicity; for Bosniaks Mauzer was a war criminal, while for Serbs he was a hero who had defended his people. Such a sharp confrontation about the person and deeds of a paramilitary commander from Bijeljina, made the topic of the conversation pointless and revealed the depth of the political, mental and ethnic divisions regarding our immediate past. Radisic's statement about Mauzer as "a respected fighter and a commander" also fits in the official framework of the Serb politics about the character of the recent war. The denial of genocide by the same politician, last year in an interview to Ljiljan, is a part of that collective consciousness. The idea of the Washington US Institute for Peace about the establishment of a commission for the truth and reconciliation, which would establish historical truth based on expert opinion, has not been received well. That need still remains. However, the discussion about Mauzer, which was at times on a verge of a fight, indicates that the collective consciousness about the recent war is so deeply rooted that no expert opinion will be able to pull it out of the current generation. It is only left to the Hague Tribunal to distribute justice and partly tell the truth about Keraterm, Ahmici, Srebrenica or the one thousand and three hundred days of the siege of Sarajevo, as well as about Kazani and Grabovica. It is difficult to build a future of a country without basic agreement about the past. Bosnia is now condemned to on behalf of the future forget the wounds of the past and blame that would be assigned by the locals. Every conversation about that divides the country and digs the interlocutors in deeper. In these conditions Bosnia can only be built on the challenges of the future and a vision of a better life through a common currency, railways, economy and trade that will tie in the interests of the whole country. From the comfort of a better life, it will tomorrow be easier to search for the truth.

Translated on September 13, 2000