For a number of years, at the Centre for Nonviolent Action (CNA), we have been trying to find ways for our group of war veterans to join the commemoration dedicated to Serb civilians and soldiers killed in Skelani in the Srebrenica Municipality and together honour these victims who were killed on 16 January 1993.
The very fact of former enemies attending the commemoration together, paying their respects to victims of all wars, sends the message that we are no longer enemies and that we never want to be enemies again. That the suffering, fear and pain we have all experienced connect us and bring us closer together. That we grieve and empathise with each other’s pain, to ease it, and to make sure it never happens again.
The presence of our mixed group of war veterans from the region at the commemoration in Ahmići on 15 and 16 April 2019 completed a year-long journey along the untrodden paths of memory. Trusina – 16 April 2018 Ahmići – 16 April 2019.
While veterans from the region were paying their respects for the victims of the 1993 massacre in the village of Ahmici, Croatian activists were criticising their country’s leadership for not participating in the April 16th commemoration.
“We are here to show by our presence that we can and must show compassion and respect not just for victims from our own people, but for others too. To show that there is another way. Then we can set the foundations for peace and coexistence in this region, which is our goal. So that our children never have to go through what we went through,” said Krešimir Ivančić, a veteran of the Croatian Army.
Since 2008, the Centre for Nonviolent Action, with offices in Sarajevo and Belgrade, has been organising visits by groups of war veterans from Croatia, Serbia and BiH to sites of atrocities against civilians and soldiers committed in the recent war and to official commemorations honouring victims, organised by local and state authorities and victims associations.
War veterans at the commemoration in Stupni Do near Vareš, 23 October 2018
Text by Marko Čolić, HV war veteran from Daruvar, following a joint visit by war veterans to the commemoration in Stupni Do
We, war veterans, who came here to Stupni Do and pay our respects to the victims, we send a message to young people that despite everything that happened, we can live together,” said Mirko Zečević-Tadić, former member of HVO.