“You are now under the protection of the United Nations (UN)forces.” These are the words uttered 30 years ago by the then UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) commander in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Philippe Morillon. A mass of desperate women and children then forced him to stay in besieged Srebrenica.
At the beginning of March ’93 war is raging in BiH. Columns of refugees from Cerska and Konjevic polje arrive in Srebrenica fleeing the offensive of Serbian forces. There were already about 30,000 refugees from all over Podrinje in Srebrenica.
Wanting to see for himself the situation on the ground, the commander of the UNPROFOR, French General Philippe Morillon, encouraged by reports about the critical situation in the overpopulated city, decided to come to Srebrenica on March 11th, 1993. After the meeting with the representatives of the military and civilian authorities, General Morillon wanted to leave Srebrenica, but he was prevented from doing so by a crowd, mostly women and children, in front of the post office building where the meeting was held.
Recalling those days, Hamdija Fejzic, at that time the wartime president of the Executive Board of the municipality, and today the deputy mayor of the municipality of Srebrenica, told that General Morillon came to Srebrenica by a detour, through the forest via Zalazje, because the Serbs in Bratunac told him that The yellow bridge on the main road to the city was demolished. “While we were talking to him, I had the impression that he was wondering why we were still here. That we should not be in Srebrenica. We were suspicious of him because of the fall of Cerska and Konjevic polje, which followed immediately after his departure from those places, a few days earlier,” says Fejzic.
Stopping Morillon was a spontaneous action
Fatima Husejnovic was the founder and president of the wartime Women’s Act (Aktiv zena) in Srebrenica. She recalls how Srebrenica was in a hopeless situation: “We had no water, electricity, or food. Every day we were shelled from Serbia, people were dying.” She says that she had a bad headache that day and went to the hospital. “But when I heard that Morillon was in Srebrenica, I had to do something. There was a transporter parked in front of the post office. The idea came to my mind that we should not let the general leave the city and that way the UN would protect us. And the headache stopped immediately,” says Fatima and continues the story of how she “captured” the general.
A member of Women‘s Act lived nearby. I ran into her building and said that she needs to “urgently mobilize all the women and children from that neighborhood” and that they should come to the post office and stand in front of the transporter, explainedFatima.
She told the children, who were in front of the buildings, to go from apartment to apartment and told all the women and children that they had to go to the post office where the general’s transporter was. She said, she also went to the school where tired and hungry refugees from Konjevic polje and Cerska were arriving. “I hastily told them that if they are able, the women and children should go to the post office because we had to capture Morillon. The men immediately said that they would stay there to guard what they had brought with them, and that the women and children should go to the post office.” Fatima says that in half an hour several thousand women with small children and some men had gathered.
While Morillon was staying in Srebrenica, food convoys started arriving. Representatives of several international organizations also arrived. UNHCR, the International Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders came. The wounded and seriously ill were evacuated to Tuzla.
A little more than two years after Morillon’s departure from Srebrenica, the exodus and genocide followed.
A missed opportunity to learn the details of war games
17 years later, in 2010, he came to Srebrenica as a pensioner to pay his respects to the victims at the Potocari Memorial Center and, as he said, apologize for what happened 27 months after his departure. Women from several associations of genocide victims were very radical towards him, exclaiming that he was unwelcome in Potocari and he was literally driven out of Srebrenica.
Morillon tried to say that now that he was retired, he could say some things that he couldn’t when he was an active soldier, but the women wouldn’t let him explain and drove him away.
“He recognized me,” told Fatima Husejnovic. “I begged him to hold a meeting where he would speak. At one point, he lost his balance and held on to me. I had the feeling he was going to fall. Because of the indignation, even insults from certain women, he got into the car and left. I’m sorry that it happened that way because I believe that it was a chance to learn a lot about the war games in and around Srebrenica, about which even today, 30 years later, there is a lot of speculation,” Fatima Husejnovic pointed out, DW reports.
Photo: AFP
E. Dz.
