Interactive narrative titled “Suppression of history and memories”, made by the Center for Transition justice SENSE and which depicts crimes against cultural, historical and religious heritage committed during the wars in BiH, Croatia and Kosovo, was presented in the Culture Institution “Parobrod” in Belgrade. It was organized by the Fund for Humanitarian Right.
“In the hierarchy of war crimes, crimes against humans are always considered more severe and more serious than crimes against property, heritage, stones. However, already at the beginning the Hague Tribunal mentioned crimes against heritage in its Statute in three articles. They are qualified as violation of laws and customs of warfare or as severe violations of the Geneva Convention, or as crime against humanity,” said Mirko Klarin, project director and one of the authors of the narrative.
Klarin added that just as crimes against humans have advantage over crimes against material goods, so the Tribunal gives advantage to crimes against religious facilities in comparison with secular ones in terms of crimes against material goods, “although everyone claimed that in these wars there was nothing about religious warfare”.
Klarin began his speech by reminding of religious facilities in Jajce that were destroyed, including facilities of all three religious confessions.
Project coordinator Mina Vidaković said that this narrative “in the same way or equally encompasses all conflicting parties in the wars during the nineties, equally as victims and as committers of crimes that were tried in the Tribunal”.
Over the past 20 years sixteen procedures were led before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which included robbery of cultural and religious heritage, characterized as crime against humanity and war crime. Only in BiH during the war more than 1.500 mosques, churches and culture monuments were destroyed.
(Source: faktor.ba)
