‘We have to live with our pain until the end of our lives’
Hardly anyone had dared hope that Radovan Karadzic would one day be arrested. But once the news sinks in, people say they are glad. They hope that he will finally have to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
The news has not yet filtered through to everyone in Srebrenica, the village where 8,000 Muslim men and boys fell victim to genocide in 1995. Avdo Purkovic works at the only hotel in Srebrenica. He says he could not believe his ears when he heard on Tuesday morning that Radovan Karadzic had been caught.
“Has he been arrested? Really? I didn’t know that, I just woke up. That’s good, excellent. It comes to me as a little bit of a shock. I’d be more happy if he [former general Ratko Mladic] was arrested than Karadzic, but both of them have done horrible things.”
Most Bosnians see Ratko Mladic as the one who was responsible for the siege and taking of Srebrenica.
“It would be good if Mladic also had to stand trial, but if that does not happen he will receive his punishment anyway, whether in this life or the next.”
Avdo Purkovic is not afraid that the arrest of Karadzic will lead to unrest in Srebrenica. There are about as many Serbians in the village as Muslims. He thinks that many Serbians will be angry now that Karadzic has been arrested; they still see him as a hero, but they will not go into the road and cause trouble.
Inesa Jasarevic’s mother is less certain of that. Inesa lives in the Netherlands, but she is on holiday with her grandparents in Bratunac, a village not far from Srebrenica. She heard the news about Radovan Karadzic’s arrest late at night, through a text message on her phone. She first thought someone was having her on. But when she came downstairs to breakfast with her grandparents, she heard that it was really true.
A wall full of bullet holes in Srebrenica is a reminder of the war.
Muslims in Bratunac are celebrating the arrest in a subdued way, in order not to offend the Serbian villagers.
“My grandfather and grandmother are talking about this in a very low voice, so the neighbours won’t hear anything,” Inesa says. Her mother called from the Netherlands, imploring her to leave the village, in case of angry reactions from Serbians in the village. But Inesa says there is no trace of any outbursts, and it is actually very quiet outside. Yet she and her grandparents will be leaving Bratunac soon.
Someone who hardly reacts to the news about Radovan Karadzic is Hasan Nuhanovic. When the mass murder in Srebrenica happened, he was working as an interpreter for the Dutch battalion of UN forces who had to protect the enclave against the the Bosnian Serbs. He has taken the Dutch state to court. His father and brother were sent away from Srebrenica by Dutch Major Franken when the enclave fell. It has never become clear what happened to them after that.
Mr Nuhanovic says the Dutch state has offered insufficient protection. Radovan Karadzic, he thinks, is only part of the problem: “There are literally thousands of war crirminals still at large in Bosnia. They live in our neighbourhood and they also have to be arrested.
“This arrest came 13 years late. Listen, this man means nothing to me to be honest. There will never be satisfaction for me or other Srebrenica genocide survivors. We will have to live with our pain until the end of our lives.”
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