by Teofil PANCIC
Conscience Itch: Perverse disappointment of a not-so-smart adolescent would not even be worthy of memory, and even less mention on this occasion, if it weren't an example of the symptom of a mass, pandemic disease, a product of a hellish mixture of bad conscience and nurtured bad memory. True, the planned murder of Sarajevo was not carried out totally perfectly, some people did survive after all, and some buildings can be used for living! It almost makes you think that the survivors should somehow feel guilty for failing so miserably, and being unable to satisfy a cruel "projection", which actually did not look for anything but a "confirmation" that all-that-was-not-so-bad-after-all... Petit bourgeois imagination direly needs such a quasi-relative consolation. It needs such measuring, comparing, banality of Evil like oxygen and a prompt to preventively free itself of all possible "unpleasantness" which could be caused by uncontrolled outbreak of conscience itch. And that, in any case, should be prevented. That is why the "patriotic circles" here, for years already, with persistence characteristic of hypocritical and loquacious criminals, insist so much on every, even minute, and for the Overall Picture so irrelevant "crack" in the horrible, shameful and to the core of Basic Humanity incriminating story about the siege of Sarajevo and systematic terror against its residents. Actually, setting aside all silly "folksy" categories, against people who had the misfortune and "guilt" of being at a certain place at a certain time. That is the origin of voluminous and miserable tractates about Markale [market massacre] as a "Muslim frame up", about Vasa Miskin street [massacre], about this and that... As if any of that, even if true, could cancel the fact that fascist madmen for four years, day and night systematically took it out on thousands of persons who served for target practice, and over whose suffering, fear, hunger, cold, they ignominiously gloated and laughed at from Pale, through the mouth of improbable anthropological phenomenon known as Risto Djogo, and many others, similar to him, but less "creative". As if all those Deaths in Sarajevo were ever and in any way possible outside the "framework" set up by the Siege, which implied automatic abolishment of all concern and rules of human - rather than cannibal - life and survival. That is why that is the story about them, the way they were, and that is why that is the story about Sarajevo, not as a superficially idealized and idyllic city of merriment and forgiveness, but as an innocent spot (because every spot is innocent by definition!) where people lived and still live (in their thousands!), people who were thoroughly exterminated by some other people, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, people who very well knew what they were doing, and did that supposedly in the name of Us Innocent In A Madhouse, us who, that is an overwhelming majority of us who all that time Minded Our Own Business... Everything else that could be said about that, then and today, is verbal trickery. And that trickery is needed by those who cannot offer anything else in their defense - in front of people, in front of the Hague, in front of God, whatever.
Syndicate of Crime: I do not intend to remind the readers here of the statistics of crime, more than impressive (it is enough to say that 1800 children did not survive the Murder of the City); those who by now haven't "learned" that statistic, will never learn it, no matter how many time it may be repeated for their benefit, because they do not want to learn it, because they chose that sort of ignorance, or even worse, they chose to "know" a Pile of Convenient Lies of the sort that can be used to quickly and efficiently prop up conscience, brainwash, and in advance squash every "traitorous" seed of conscious and responsible humanity. But, all of that is not only now, After Everything, true. It should be said, not for the sake of ethical and "just" strictness, but for the sake of easily verifiable facts and common sense, that every and everyone's Ignorance in Serbia, since 1992, about what happened with Sarajevo and in Sarajevo (and in Bosnia in general) is definitely a result of personal choice. It would be really an exaggeration to say that citizens of Serbia had an easy time learning the truth about what was happening in Sarajevo at the time (naturally, the crime syndicate known as "Slobodan Milosevic's regime" shamelessly lied about that, just like about everything else), but so little "effort" was needed to find out the truth (for example, walk to the nearest newspaper stand or find a particular short wave radio station on your radio dial) that every person who "did not know anything" or "was misled" either consciously or unconsciously chose the Wrong Side. And along the way drew a striking self-portrait.
Cold Cyborg: The man who was behind all of this is now pathetically posturing and complaining in the Hague, cold and contemptuous like an egotistical cyborg; the duo of his chief accomplices is gliding through Bosnian forests, like demonical Bob from Twin Peaks, and at least one of them was until recently - let's believe them when they say that they don't do it anymore - guarded and protected by the army of a democratic government, which was given the mandate to clean up after the criminals!!! The one in the jail has earned general hatred a long time ago, but mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with Sarajevo or Srebrenica, for example, while the two "foresters" still stumble around in deep Balkan forests, still adored by the Ignorant Mob which is perhaps sexually and primordially excited by human blood on their hands.
Ten times since then, since April 6, 1992, spring has come to Sarajevo, the city has been patched up as much as it was possible, and Belgrade finally gave itself a chance. Vengefulness of Self-Beatified Victim is futile, and only pickpockets, thieves and murderers profit from it; that is why that vengefulness is almost totally absent in Sarajevo, at least among "ordinary" people (while it can still be found among some politicians and media personalities), as I've had a chance to personally confirm many times. But let's leave that to those who survived the Siege. "Our" job on this side of the Drina river is not struggle against Vengefulness but against Forgetting. The local pickpockets, thieves and murderers find organized Forgetting beneficial. That is why they should constantly be reminded who and what they are, so that they do not get carried away and start believing that their self-image can ever be accepted as the truth and mark of life and death in the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century. Because the truth about them was written in human blood, on the bridge over Miljacka river, where Bosko and Admira died together, sacrificed in the ball of Cannibals. And that truth will be their judge, even if the Hague lets them be.