In April, Radio and Television of Republika Srpska broadcasts a feature in Dnevnik 2 in which it publishes a list of the Republic Center for Researching War, War Crimes and Searching for Missing Persons of the RS. The list was taken from the publication Children Victims of War 1991-1995. That list also contains the names of 106 children of Serbian nationality who died in Sarajevo, without naming the persons responsible for their deaths.
The publication did not name those responsible for the death. Those responsible for the death will give the RTRS contribution. So those responsible start from the “so-called Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina” to “Mujahedin”. And with that, the contribution says what the publication was not allowed to. Eminent authors and reviewers did not mind. Until yesterday, the families contacted – three of them – who found the names of their children and brothers on the list: Marko, Mirjana, Darko.
“It is a shock that after so much time, the names of innocent children who died are being used, as if they are not satisfied that they were killed,” says Miroslav Lukić, the brother of the murdered Marko Lukić.
“We know what we who were here survived for four years and what kind of childhood we had. You lose something you hold most dear, and then someone steals it from you. This is, quite literally, identity theft. It wasn’t enough for them to kill him, now they are taking his first and last name as well,” said Danijela Šahat, the sister of murdered Damir Dodik.
The Center’s list also includes the name of Danijela Kovačević, who they say was killed. It is true that after the death of his father Ivo, the young man killed himself. And before we had recovered from the shock caused by RTRS’s contribution, the announcement of the Center arrived, in which there is no room for apology – neither humanly nor professionally:
“We respected the media appearances of the family members who came forward and removed their relatives from the existing publication that is publicly available. Their names will not appear in the new editions either.”
That the names of dead children were used for the purpose of manipulation is more than enough for the decision that a lawsuit against RTRS and the Center will be filed. And the only thing in common with the attachment is that they all call on the judicial institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina to react.
“Until the judicial institutions do their work responsibly – there is no end to this,” says Fikret Grabovica, president of the Association of Parents of Murdered Children of the Siege of Sarajevo in 1992-1995.
Miroslav Lukić says that he is disappointed in the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina that allowed this.
Revisionist tools are nothing new, and neither are their goals. If we would admit that now, then we would admit everything for which the war was started in the first place. That Serbian nationalism never coincided with the interests of the state. And that’s where revisionism comes in. To justify everything that escapes reason. Just like a broadcast feature. As a colleague said, the death of a child is the twilight of humanity, just as RTRS’s contribution is the twilight of reason and honor.
