Three days after the beating, nineteen-year-old Osman Mehanovic from Bratunac is recovering. He says that because of the attack, which took on nationalist proportions even 31 years after the war, he now lives in fear. The question arises as to why minors attacked Mehanovic for these reasons, but also why the first man of the municipality is silent.
With heinous nationalist curses and insults in a public place in Bratunac, three juveniles of Serbian nationality, after yelling and shouting, beat the nineteen-year-old Bosniak Osman Mehanovic. It was only after this unpleasant information appeared in the media that the Zvornik Police Department issued a terse press release. The perpetrators have been identified, and given that they are minors, the proceedings are under the jurisdiction of the Prosecutor’s Office, it was stated.
“I don’t like to say it, but this attack was on a national basis. I am very sad that in the 21st century, there is still hatred among people, and this is very common in our area, in such a small town,” says Mehanovic.
“What happened and what they said to him, that they beat him on a national basis, I would never have thought that the Serbs remained on a national basis. Many Serbs have called me who regret what happened,” emphasizes Osman’s father, Hazir Mehanovic.
Podrinje associations that gather survivors as well as the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide state that the attack on Osman Mehanovic is another proof of the deterioration of the situation in the Republika Srpska (RS). They also call on international forces to react. Bosniaks from Bratunac condemn the attack on Mehanovic.
“We condemn that act and hope that the police, the judiciary, the prosecutor’s office will do their part,” says Enver Secic, deputy president of the Association of Disabled Veterans of the Tuzla Canton (TC).
“Of course I condemn it. Let the police do their part, what and how they should. The guys who did it should be held accountable,” Safet Golic stated, councilor in the Bratunac Municipality Assembly (SDP).
The attack on Osman Mehanovic is not the only one. Over the past few years, over 30 attacks on Bosniaks in the returnees’ places have been recorded. However, the authorities in the RS have not reacted.
“Unfortunately, this is about minors who have succumbed to the general atmosphere and political ideology that prevails, which is an ideology of hatred, division, an ideology in which returnees are seen as some kind of malignant tissue that needs to be removed,” Nerin Dizdar pointed out, Minister of Displaced Persons and Refugees of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) (SDP).
“These children did not beat Osman, but he was beaten by a system that allows such occurrences without the rigorous sanctions that should follow,” concludes RS Vice President Camil Durakovic.
The police, the prosecutor’s office, and the court, which should prevent and sanction such occurrences, must react. The Mayor of Bratunac, Lazar Prodanovic, ignored calls and text messages to comment on this unpleasant event. It is an open question to which journalists have not received an answer, what kind of message is being sent to Bosniaks in the RS when the government there continues to observe silently and does not sanction similar events?
E.Dz.
