At the beginning of November 1992, when they were captured in the village of Grabovica near Kotor-Varos, Mevludin Skoric saw his uncle Muhamed Botic for the last time. Since then, his search for the truth and the remains of around 160 people continues, while he loses faith in the judiciary.
Then 15-year-old Mevludin Skoric remembers the beginning of the war in Kotor-Varos by the shelling of the village of Vecici, where he lived with his extended family.
“Planes bombarded us there, every day. Not a day went by that 50-60 shells did not fall… And for food, we had what the people picked up before. What was sown, you had to go back and pick it up in the evening, but in the evening they threw illuminating rockets at night to beat us,” Mevludin recalls, as well as that at the beginning of November, in a group of almost 700 people, he and his family set off to Travnik.
“When we fell down into the canyon, the legs of some two guys were immediately blown off by mines. They wanted us to kill them, but you can’t do that – kill your own man,” he describes the event from November 1992, after which they surrendered in the town of Duboka, where children and women were separated from men.
He and the other men were taken to the school in Grabovica, where he saw his uncle for the last time. A day later, Mevludin was exchanged with 37 other prisoners.
The survivors, in memory of the missing and those who were killed during the attempt to cross to the safe territory, are organizing the Peace March “Silent Walk for Great Pain”, from Karaula near Travnik to the village of Vecici. The days of remembrance begin on October 30th with a religious ceremony, and the participants of the March come to the village of Vecici on November 3rd, where the central manifestation of the day of remembrance of more than 160 killed Bosniaks in the village of Grabovica is organized.
According to the data of the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), so far the remains of 157 victims who disappeared in the Kotor-Varos area have been identified and handed over to their families, while the search for 244 victims, whose disappearance has been verified in the area of this municipality, is still ongoing.
At the end of this year’s Peace March, Dzevad Cejvan, who was 23 years old when he disappeared, will be buried in Dabovci near Kotor-Varos. His remains were found 28 years after his disappearance, in September 2020, in the locality of Duboka, in the municipality of Knezevo.
