The families of the victims are dissatisfied with the attitude of the city authorities in Sarajevo towards family members of those killed in Kazani and demand the construction of a new monument in the area of the Centar municipality. Benjamina Karic, the mayor during whose mandate the memorial plaque was installed in Kazani, says that she is proud of the process of building the monument and that time will tell the best, but also that she is not familiar with the new initiative of the families.
The families of the victims hope for the construction of a new monument in the city center, says Slobodanka Komljenac Macanovic, whose parents were killed in Sarajevo, and whose bodies she is still searching for today.
”Losing my parents in one day is really horrible, especially since I don’t have the bodies of my parents. It’s a sadness and pain that I will carry in my soul and heart to the grave. In a way, I remained buried with them in Kazani, my life was sealed after that,’‘ she describes.
As Komljenac Macanovic said, she is grateful for the existing memorial plaque in Kazani, the unveiling of which she did not attend because she does not agree with the text on the monument, which, she believes, does not explain what exactly happened there to visitors who are not familiar with the crime.
The city of Sarajevo unveiled a memorial plaque in Kazani in 2021, and mayor Benjamina Karic claims that the victims’ families were invited to participate and contribute to the construction process.
In that process, she says, she analyzed verdicts, amendments, and monument culture in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), listened to all suggestions, spoke with numerous associations, and non-governmental organizations, and that the text and appearance of the memorial, after a public hearing, received the approval of the Commission for Monuments City Council and the City Council of the City of Sarajevo itself.
While the families of the victims of the crime, which qualifies as Sarajevo’s biggest stain, still consider it an unresolved issue and extremely important for truly dealing with the past, theAssociation for Social Research and Communications (UDIK) believes that the current memorial to the victims in Kazani is not a good solution.
”Such a monument does not provide the context of what happened in Kazani, nor does it list the perpetrators of these crimes. The important information that the number of those killed is not final is also missing. In the same way, the City did not deign to consult the families of the victims on this issue, but tried to find like-minded people in the implementation of the apparent memorialization and remembrance of the murdered,”UDIK said in a statement on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the crime, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
