On the 30th anniversary of the crimes committed in Ahmici near Vitez and Trusina near Konjic in which 138 people were killed, today reveals a picture in which, under the weight of suffering, life flows quite differently in these two villages. While in Ahmici the houses were rebuilt and the population returned to their homes still hoping to find the missing, in Trusina there are almost no Croatian houses left, and the inhabitants scattered around the world still do not understand why all this happened.
Ahmici, located in the Lasva Valley, at first glance, doesn’t show any signs that a terrible crime took place in them 30 years ago. The houses were rebuilt, and the population continued with their lives, but the memorial is the first reminder of the 116 civilians who were killed on April 16th, 1993 by members of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO).
In Trusina, on the same day, members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) killed 15 civilians and seven soldiers who had previously surrendered. There are almost no Croatian houses left in the village, and Bosiljka Mijic, who lost her parents at the time, talked to the journalists by phone from Capljina, where she lives today.
“Evil returns. You can’t hope for good… The entire area was destroyed,” says Mijic.
Almost a hundred kilometers away from Trusina, her fate is shared by Huso Ahmic, whose parents were killed in 1993, and their bodies were burned in the family home. He thinks it is important to talk about what happened, but it is difficult, he notes.
“Many years have passed, but the memories are fresh. When I close my eyes, I see the path I took to get to the house that morning, and that can never be erased,” he said while showing the names of his parents Dzemal and Rasma, as well as other family members, on the memorial board.
Crime in Trusina on the same day
The day after the visit to Ahmici, journalists went to Trusina near Konjic, where they found Dragica Tomic praying at the monument to civilians and HVO members killed on April 16th, 1993. The houses around the monument collapsed, and the Croatian residents fled to other Herzegovinian cities, as well as abroad. The interlocutor with whom the journalists were also supposed to talk that morning did not feel well enough to speak about the crime in this village.
Tomic was not in Trusina that April morning, but she points to her house on the hill, from where she says, she heard screams and cries in the early hours of the morning.
“The civilians were in the houses and the soldiers were in positions. They captured the families and then blackmailed them into surrendering. They arrested those who were in the houses and put some in the lower part of the village, and others in the upper part, and then they blackmailed them with their children, with their wives, and they mistreated them. They had to surrender, and they surrendered and gave their weapons, and then later they were killed in front of their families,” Tomic describes her knowledge of this crime.
Before the commemoration 30 years after the crime, the surviving residents of both villages still do not understand why it had to happen.
“Even today, I feel a burden that I can’t erase, I can’t put away, I can’t change… I feel the injustice of what was done without any reason, what was done to someone who has no idea that he is guilty, who did nothing,” Ahmic says.
“30 years have passed since the crime in Trusina, since the crime in Ahmici, and my message, the message of all good people, is that such a crime should never happen anywhere and never again. Anywhere in the world,” Tomic concluded, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
