“FATIMA, NA FAL”!

Fatima was born in Potocari, a day after the Republika Srpska Army entered Srebrenica. At scorching temperatures, thousands of people fled in panic from the Serbian Army, into forests, hills, as far away as Tuzla, in Potocari. Serbs this day, they have well understood their commander's orders, the moment his filthy boots broke into Srebrenica. They celebrated and sang late into the night, while the bosses were carrying out the mass slaughter, and all the machines from Serbia were gathering... for hunting in men, for the “command on their knees! ”, for lies “nothing will happen to you, freely exit”. On 11 July, women, children, elderly and young people were leaving for the UN base. They didn't know, how could they know, that they're running to the waiting room to die, and to their place in a mass grave.

At the stage of the frightened souls, there was also the pregnant Queen Havana, afraid that she might fall to the earth, and that human mass would tread upon her. On the first night of Potocari, Havana was born in unimaginable conditions. The night was more terrible than the day, the heat hell was swallowing thousands of people who were sharing the terrible air of shelter. She gave birth to a daughter.

At the same time, 120 kilometers away, in dirty Belgrade, gentlemen sitting on chairs were watching the News (Dnevnik) show and listening to the general's statement: “Here we are in Serbian Srebrenica. Finally the moment has come to avenge the Turks in these” spaces. Women completed preparations for tomorrow's festival, Petrovdan. A few days later, in RTS Dnevnik, the voice of MP Vucic, who threatened by the assembly speaker: “kill a Serb, we will kill a hundred Muslims”.

Thousands of Muslims have already been thrown into mass graves. After being filled with people, the bodies were broken and transferred to the second cemetery, again packed, then thrown into the third cemetery... Serbs had full-time work until the end of the summer. Who led the escapers? Who directed buses from Valjevo, Shabaki, Uzice to drive people from Potocari to where they were shot? Who took out the bodies and threw them into the pits of Tomaszica, Kozluk, Budak, Snagovo, Kamenica?

The commander of these assassins, 16 years after the genocide, was under the protection of our state, <x0 fugitive”. He was often seen in Belgrade, in sports matches, among guests at various feasts. Then he disappeared. Today we know he was hiding in a military facility at Topcider for a while. Who are Drazen and Dragan? Two guards found dead on October 5, 2004 at the same military site. Our state and the media claim this is murder and suicide. In fact, the guards were killed because they saw the devil accidentally that morning. At the time, the defence minister was Boris Tadic.

General “found” in 2011 in the village of Lazarevo near Zrenjanin. Police, full of pride, immediately promoted his real name, cursed. Boris Tadic then briefly informed the public that the hero was arrested. The commander immediately asked him to visit the tomb of his daughter Anna, buried right in Topcider. Anna committed suicide in 1994, shooting herself in the head with her father's gun. According to rumors, his daughter's death was so deeply affected by what he changed “his war strategy” because of her.

Do you remember Fatima? Hawa Muhic named her daughter in 2012, when the bones of her baby were identified. They were small and mixed with others, it was not easy to locate, nor to identify whom they belong. Fatima is the youngest victim of genocide in Srebrenica. There are at least 8,371 victims like that, but Fatima lived short during that July hell night. The fate we imagine today as the smiling woman passing through Bascarshi died the same hour she was born. She will never see the mountains of Sarajevo, nor drink a cold sip of water. Her mother today sees the announcement of the decision about her child's killer, while her other killers live freely among us, some of them in power, some in opposition, some of us are teaching us kids in schools, some of us write the news, some of them run with our country.

*Autor is a human rights activist and associate of the Faculty of Media Studies, The New School University in New York, USA.