Hiding the place of suffering and trying to rewrite history. With these words, former inmate Emir Hajdarovic from Mostar explains the intention of building a museum of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) in that city in the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
The museum should be opened in the “Stanislav Baja Kraljevic” barracks in the Rodoc neighborhood of Mostar, with co-financing from the Ministry of Defense of BiH.
It is about the area where, according to the claims of former camp inmates, the central prison of the Heliodrom camp was located, where members of the HVO imprisoned Bosniaks during the 1990s.
“The museum is being opened in a building that is synonymous with suffering. The goal is to forget everything after a certain time and to give such places another function,” says Hajdarovic.
The HVO Heliodrom camp in Mostar was one of the most infamous during the last war in BiH, and was open from September 1992 to April 1994.
In November 2017, the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia sentenced the leaders of the so-called Herceg-Bosna to a total of 111 years in prison. The judgment also mentions the establishment of a camp for Bosniak civilians.
The former camp guards, Miroslav Marijanovic and Anto Buhovac, were sentenced to seven years in prison by the Cantonal Court in Mostar in 2007. The Appellate Panel of the Supreme Court of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) issued a final verdict sentencing Marijanovic to two and a half years and Buhovac to two years in prison.
On February 24th of this year, the Court of BiH convicted three former members of the HVO in the first instance. With that verdict, Nedzad Tinjko was sentenced to 13 years in prison, Jure Kordic was sentenced to three years, and Drazan Lovric to one year in prison.
The BiH Prosecutor’s Office accused them of persecuting and abusing the Bosniak population of Mostar, as well as imprisoning them in camps, including Heliodrom.
Who funds the museum?
The reactions and condemnations of the former Mostar inmates come after the construction of the HVO museum in Mostar was announced at the end of February by Slaven Galic, Deputy Minister of Defense of BiH, Slobodna Evropa reports.
photo: Bljesak.info
