(Written on 10th of December)
Between 12th and 16th of August, 1992, Bosnian Muslim men, separated from women and children, were meticulously executed in various location in north-eastern Bosnia after Srebrenica was invaded by Serbian forces, to virtually no action from UNPROFOR Dutchbat battalion that was tasked with securing the area. I'd been to some of those locations – if you don't know about their past, nothing on the facade will clear your mind. Most of those 8373 men – and this is only Srebrenica case, not to mention Visegrad, Prijedor and other massacres – were afterwards buried in mass graves, sometimes reburied in another locations after some time, in an effort to conceal what happened. Serbian forces in Bosnia knew the weight of the crime they were committing. It isn't particularly easy to quote a convicted war criminal, but even Ratko Mladic, commander in chief of armed forces of Serbia in this conflict, said about plans made for Srebrenica takeover, "(...) we cannot precisely arrange for only Serbs to stay in one part of the country while removing others painlessly. I do not know how Mr. Krajišnik and Mr. Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide." The road of most civilians killed during this genocide ends at the table pictured, in Podrinje Identification Project in Tuzla. Facility dedicated to identifying the NN that positively gave name back to more than six thousand men killed after the fall of Srebrenica.
Why I am writing about this today? Because in few hours, Nobel Prize committee will give an award to a person who is convinced that this never happened. Peter Handke, awarded in literature, spent most of his time after 1991 on fighting for the Serbian cause. Even saying that he is from Austria isn't entirely correct, since he gave up his citizenship and adopted an Yugoslavian one in the late 90s. A man who happily stayed in a rape hotel three years after the war. A man who had written a book on how Serbia is always unfairly blamed. A man who testified before ICTY in defence of Slobodan Milosevic. A man who just recently said, asked about Srebrenica, "I tell you, I prefer the anonymous letter with toilet paper inside to your empty and ignorant questions."
This is also somewhat uneasy for me to point out, as at the very same time most of my Polish friends would be cheering, as other literature prize goes to Olga Tokarczuk, in a moment when her victory is regarded as a highly political case in Poland. Over the years, I had taken part in numerous discussions about the role of art – in my case, documentary photography – in changing the world. I don't believe this notion for a bit, and I am inclined to believe that my role is to observe and make it possible for other people, for them to possibly make their own opinion on a subject. I spent seven years researching and documenting places which were killing grounds and concentration camps of Bosnian War of 1992-95 with that specific intention, to make it possible for the people to know about the suffering of civilians in Bosnia, 50 years after "Never Again!".
So, those are human remains that, in opinion of a one Nobel Prize winner, don't exist.
