Zijo Ribic was only eight years old when the paramilitary group “Simini Cetnici (Simo’s chetniks)” killed nine members of his family, including both parents, six sisters and a brother, in the village Skocic near Zvornik. The eight year old boy was the only one who survived the shooting, and Zijo will go today to identify his four sisters that were found in a mass grave in Kozluk.
In May 1992, a group of members of Serbian Army, the so-called “Zute ose”, who did the crimes in Zvornik, was allocated under the command of Sima Bogdanovic from Ruma and formed a new unit called “Simini Cetnici (Simo’s chetniks)”.
After mining a mosque in Skocic, they found 35 hidden and frightened Romani persons in the house of Hamdija Ribic.
After the horrific torture on civilians that were caught, Bogdanovic gave the order to place them in a truck from which they separated three girls. They drove the others to the pit in the village Setic, where they killed 27 innocent Romani people and threw them into the pit.
Among the killed civilians was the whole family of Zijo Ribic, six sisters and a brother, and his sister Zlatija was raped before the execution. His heavily pregnant mother was killed as well with a two-year old son in her arms.
Zijo is 31 years old today, and he is working as a cook in Hotel Tuzla in Tuzla, and he is going to identify his four murdered sisters in the Commemorative Centre in this city.
He finished the practice in Italy through humanitarian organizations and he also speaks Italian. A book about his life will be published in Italy. He says that his job is relaxing him and making him calm so he does not think about memories from the tragic past.
He believes that people should reconcile and move forward and not look at the past, because, said Zijo, his peers are not guilty for what happened, adding that as long as there are good people, there will be as many bad people, regardless of their nationality.
(Source: klix.ba)
