Page 508 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1148 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

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room for the generalization of the guilt as the collective guilt of the Serbian nation.
The other memorial that recently caused numerous debates in the public and media is
the Memorial to the Killed Children of Besieged Sarajevo (Spomen obilježje ubijenoj
djeci opkoljenog Sarajeva, Figure 5) erected in 2009. The word that caused discontent is
“besieged’’ because parts of Sarajevo were under the Serb control and thus the memorial
excludes children who died in the Serb held territory. 21
Paradoxically, with the memorial-building boom in Bosnia and Herzegovina there is
also the absence of memory. Jasmina Tapić writes that a certain denial about the events
of the past is present at all levels of society: “Denial of certain facts from the 1992-1995
conflict, or the creativeness of interpretation to include negation, is furthermore con-
nected to the culture of victimhood in BiH, whereby ‘everybody wants to be a victim’.
Such victimhood, at the (ethnic) group level and individual level, implies denial of the
Other. It is important for people to present themselves as the ones who were on the
‘right’ side, which removes any (collective) guilt and attempts to evade being marked as
an aggressor by others.” 22
The insufficient legal framework and one-sided interpretations of the past mostly
affect one ethno-national group that wants to build a memorial in a community where
the other group is in the majority. These demands are usually initiated by the survivors
or the families and the associations of the victims. The most well-known case is the
Omarska mine near Prijedor whose surviving inmates, 21 years after the closure of the
camp, are still waiting for the building of the memorial center and for the exhumation
of missing persons. The President of the Association of Detainees “Prijedor 92”, Mirsad
Duratović, a former inmate of Omarska, Trnopolje and Manjača, stated that the main
obstacle is the opposition of the local authorities in Prijedor. In addition to this, the
23
place where the camp was located is now held by the steel giant ArcelorMittal, which
further complicates the situation. Far-reaching economic development is crucial for the
future of the country, but the issues of economy and employment can also serve to con-
24
ceal the real motives behind the opposition to erect a memorial. There are numerous
cases that lack any memorial such as Kazani near Sarajevo where Serbs were murdered
by the Bosniak paramilitary groups or places of mass rape; such as hotel Vilina Vlas in
Višegrad and the sports center Partizan in Foča. Generally, places of suffering in Bosnia
and Herzegovina are not protected by the state and are subject to ruin and the culture of
silence that prevails in the country. The memorials dedicated to a minority group that
have been erected so far are usually in marginalized areas or in the places where many

20 Mirjana Ristić, Silent vs. Rhetorical Memorials, Sarajevo Roses and Commemorative Plaques, in Alexandra
Brown, Andrew Leach (ed.), Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zea-
land: 30, Open, Gold Coast, Qld: SAHANZ, 2013, vol. 1, pp. 117-121.
21 Disputes started before the erection of the memorial. See: Oslobođenje, Sarajevski Srbi o budućem spome-
niku, I naša djeca su ubijana, 15.11.2006; Oslobođenje, Kako će se zvati spomen-obilježje ubijenoj djeci
Sarajeva, Neslaganje vječnika oko naziva spomenika 2.11.2006.
22 Jasmina Tepić, Perspective Series… p. 22.
23 Mirsad Duratović, interview with the author, Association of Detainees Prijedor 92, August 2012.
24 Jasmina Tepić, Perspective Series…, p.36.