After the war, Ziba Kavazovic received a letter in which a neighbor of Serb nationality, whose name she now protects, described how seven members of her family were taken from their family house in the village of Kusonje near Kalesija in June 1992 and killed, among them three minors, whose remains are still being searched for to this day.
In the handwriting of the neighbor, whose safety she now protects, she would learn that her family was killed in Snagovo – her father Dzevahir and mother Nurija, brother Omer with his wife Zlatija and their two children; daughter Fatima and son Dzevahir, who was named after his grandfather, as well as her nephew Edin Hrustic, who was not yet 18 years old.
“They led the women and children toward Kladanj, and the men were taken to the ‘Susica’ camp, while my seven family members had taken shelter in the village and made a hideout, because the forest was nearby. During the day, they would come home, cook a little food so they could survive. And at night they would sleep in that forest,” says Ziba, who last saw her parents in May 1992 when they temporarily took refuge in the place called Mahala, where she lived with her husband and child.
“There were still many people who remained in Kusonje. They were caught and killed one by one. Mine were caught at the end of June when they came to the house. The Serbs sensed the smoke from the old house, since we had four houses, and the old house didn’t have chimneys, so when a fire was lit, the smoke would spread. And when they caught them, they took them to Snagovo near the elementary school, handed them over to the ‘White Eagles’, and there their suffering began – first the abuse, then the killing,” says Ziba.
She told the State Agency for Investigation and Protection (SIPA) and the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) about what she learned from the letter. One of the pieces of information is that her family is buried in the village of Jasikovac, which is located between Kamenica and Snagovo.
“The Sarajevo-Zvornik gas pipeline passes through there. Allegedly, they dug a deep, large pit and then concreted over it under those pipes. Allegedly, mine are there. We don’t have solid data… And if it were to be dug up, how much concrete would need to be removed, so that’s the last information about where they are,” says Ziba.
“I would like to appeal to everyone who knows where their remains are, for their conscience to wake up, even after 33 years, to speak. Let them imagine what it’s like for me… I would also like to find peace like any person. It’s not just one, it’s seven. Who wouldn’t want to find their dead, for them to find rest? To go to the grave, to recite the Fatiha, for me to be at peace, for my soul to find peace. Like any person, I would like that,” says Ziba.
The dreams of her nephew and niece were extinguished forever
The hardest for her is the loss of the children. As she shows a picture of her nephew Edin Hrustic from a school competition, when he was a member of the traffic safety club, she explains how he was a smart boy who dreamed of becoming a pilot, and that the loss of the children is the hardest for her.
“He had passed the test in Sarajevo, but not in Belgrade. Then he enrolled in the math-physics high school in Zvornik. He was in the third year when he was killed. An excellent student, a straight-A student back then, today that would be a student of the generation. In the third year of high school, they were separated into a computer department, they planned to employ them in Glinica in Zvornik,” says Ziba, noting that he was the only one who didn’t survive among the close family members, while his father Haso survived the camps, and his mother with two daughters and a son left for Kladanj from Kusonje by bus.
“He loved comics, football, and spoke softly. I went to his parent-teacher meetings in Zvornik, since I was a bit older. He loved all people. We often talked about everything, about dreams he never lived to see,” Ziba recalls.
“I think I would find some peace for my soul, that it would be much easier for me, but I can never forgive. Whoever did that to them, because they were innocent children after all,” Ziba emphasizes, and adds that she finds it difficult to cope with this loss.
“There come days when you think like that, there come nights when you can’t fall asleep until four o’clock, five or not at all, you wake up and go to work. Sometimes, days come when you have to fight because you have your own two children. You have to fight for them, to raise them well, for them to be upright,” says Ziba.
Search for 50 more people
“From the village of Kusonje, 32 people disappeared. 108 people have been identified and buried in the Memorial Center Gornja Kalesija, and some in local cemeteries. 50 people are still being searched for. We have people for whom we have no trace of how they disappeared,” says Muradif Burekovic, president of the Association of Families of Captured and Missing Persons Kalesija 1992, Detektor writes.
