I am a simple foreman. I had worked with metal my entire life in all kinds of factories throughout the country.

I would be honored if you could publish this work of mine, now forged out of words instead of metal, in your magazine The Spirit of Bosnia.

I was born in Bosnia, on the 3rd of November, 1951.

As for the message that is coming from Brussels, that we should give up our past and reach for the future, I have only to say that they do not understand our suffering, the suffering that still echoes to this day throughout the country.

Right now, we have no future; our future was slaughtered along with our people!

We cannot look at the past either because most of it, or even all, is a lie! Our impossible future and the deceptive past have built our present.

When people tell the tales of Srebrenica, speak of the committed genocide, one cannot claim it is the past; the genocide is still ongoing, albeit in a verbal manner, and perhaps one even worse – the legalized and malpractice one. What kind of a past is it, when victims are still being slaughtered but left alive to experience suffering? At what future could mothers, having witnessed the murdering of their children, look to?

Those atrocities can never become the past. They will always linger in the air, ever tormenting the still living.

Only when the last person responsible for all the crimes had been brought to justice, can our future start shining bright in front of us again. And not just for the people, but for Serbia in its entirety, because only then will she stop sacrificing her people for such a cause that is the creation of the “Great Serbia” – one never to be grasped. During World War One, Serbia had sacrificed half of its people, who got killed or drowned in the sea, because the leading class, that of the King’s men, wanted to claim Bosnia for itself with the assassination of the Austrian prince Ferdinand; to an extent, they succeeded in that.

Now the genocide’s legacy has been materialized for Brussels has legalized it, ignoring every legal precedent in Bosnia, along with the birthrights of the people, allowing the plundering and the exodus of the Bosnians.

What will become of the world if something like this continues to be practiced around the globe?

In summary, the genocide must be punished alongside each and every one of those who have done, still do it, and those who plan it. Even now, we are being threatened; they are telling us the genocide will happen again as soon as international politics gives them ground for such a thing, and with that hope they greet every American president-elect.

If they ascend to the European Union fostering the same idea, it would be but solid evidence that they are being supported, and that we cannot expect help from anyone.

I believe that every Bosnian citizen should come back to his own rightful home, on his own piece of land, passed down to him by his basic birthright, to ultimately start unifying people in the building of a better tomorrow, unlike our politicians who only speak words of unity and stability but never in truth do anything, nor do they care to. With this work of mine, this perspective of mine, I am merely trying to convey the shock I was in, and still am, at the commitment of quite possibly the worst crime a human mind can think of and put in action.

Imagine the disbelief I was in, listening to some of the people who participated in it; they speak of it as if it were a thing most normal, the likes of greeting one’s neighbor in the morning. One would think that only a mentally ill person would be able to commit something like that, and yet here we speak of normal, sane people who were hypnotized with various forms of propaganda and advertisement. They are oblivious and blind to their actions.

It is upon the court, genuine history, and any other means, to de-hypnotize the people and wake them up, as much as possible.

How can anyone listen to this in cold blood and with a cold heart? Is that the right thing to do? Should we all just turn a blind eye to it? Look at the future with our eyes shut?

Our truth must be acknowledged in court, every last bit of it!

Before saying my farewell, I will quote my great predecessor Petar Kočić, “He who truly loves the truth, freedom, and country, is free and fearless as a god, yet resentful and hungry as a dog.”

It was an experience from his own life, and this one being from mine!

Translated by Bojana Vuković

The preceding text is copyright of the author and/or translator and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.