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- [00:00]
James
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
Grainger Advertisement
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- [00:36]
James
Cool Zone Media.
- [00:40]
Mick
Hello, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Mick. I'm here with James and Giorgio and we're going to be talking about the documentary Sarajevo Safari.
- [00:54]
James
Yeah. Hi, Mick. Thanks for. Thanks for having us.
- [00:57]
Giorgio
Hi, everyone. Good to be here.
- [00:58]
Mick
Giorgio, do you want to introduce yourself?
- [01:00]
Giorgio
I am Giorgio. I am a Bosnian genocide researcher. I'm also the founder of the educational tool Voices from the Drina, which is a new educational resource on the genocide in eastern Bosnia in particular, which allows researchers to follow the events of the genocide. So through a simulated social media style newsfeed, so the words of the survivors and the perpetrators come to life via the medium of social media. I'm also a member of the fantastic mutual aid group Lambeth Mutual Aid in South London. You can follow us on Instagram Lambeth Mutual Aid and you can follow me on the hellhole that is X at Giorgio. Con. Con is K O N not con as an economy. Yeah, that's, I think the, the key information.
- [01:58]
Mick
Okay, great. Then we're going to do the following. I've prepared roughly one page of context here for those of you who remember a few months ago it was announced that the Italian prosecutors want to try and find the people who participated in the Sarajevo safari. And we'll be talking about the documentary that highlights and tries to shed a light on what happened there. The main accusation is that the army of Republika Srpska, which is an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, that they charged lots of monies for tourists to come over and shoot at civilians, which is, yeah, obviously horrible.
- [02:43]
James
Yeah, horrific.
- [02:44]
Mick
Nowadays Bosnian Herzegovina is divided into two parts, which is like the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Srpska, which is essentially the territory that the Republic of Srpska army gained during the war. Because I don't want to be there any confusion as to who the parties are, but it's pretty much two entities living in one nation state.
- [03:13]
Giorgio
Yes.
- [03:14]
Mick
So after I've given some context on what happened during the Balkan wars which led up to this event. We're going to be talking with Giorgio about the documentary. Unfortunately, the documentary is not available with English subtitles. So I'm glad we're having you with us, Giorgio, to illuminate us a bit more. So I also want to preface that obviously it's not a thorough history of what happened there. That would be way too much information to condense into one episode. Also, while this episode will focus on the plight of the Bosnian people, I do want to note that pretty much every side in this entire conflict did horrendous things, committed atrocities, and I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention that. So we're going to start with, like so many things, the Second World War around the formation of Yugoslavia as a communist state, with the Serbian city of Belgrade being the center of power. The Balkans were a major point of conflict during World War II, with a lot of different parties and state actors trying to gain control over the region. Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania as some of the main actors. A variety of alliances and other entities were formed, which would all later be used in ethnic and ethnic nationalist discourse as a way to highlight the specific ethnic grievances. As a federation, Yugoslavia contained multiple ethnicities. Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Muslims, which would later become called Bosniaks. And that's how I will be referring to them. So at the end of World War II, Joseph Tito would be the dictator of Yugoslavia, and he would try to counteract all this ethnic descent and friction by promoting something that he called brotherhood and unity, which sort of put Tito on a pedestal as a fatherly figure under whom everyone from all the different factions and ethnicities would be equal as Yugoslav people. This was only partially successful. The friction was never really resolved. And after the death of quito in the 80s, marked the beginning of the end. It coincided with an economic crisis that sort of made all the different republics where all the different ethnicities were centered, beholden to themselves. It became a bit of a free for all. So after that point, like ethnopolitics and ethno nationalism became the focus of all politics. Just to be really concrete, like with ethno nationalism, we mean like a form of nationalism that is based solely on ethnicity, not on citizenship or participation in a community. It's a lighter version of the blood and soil politics that became very synonymous with a certain German period of time. So what happened with this ethnic centric discourse is that perceived ethnic and real grievances became central to almost all politics, most notably, but not certainly exclusively under Slobodan Milosevic, who came to power late 80s in Serbia. Ethnic rhetoric would be the focal point for his politics and a sense to power. He would say things that would turn into slogans and with that, captured a vital part of the animosity that a large part of the Serbian population would feel. Phrases like a weak Serbia means a strong Yugoslavia, hinting at the decline of Serbian power and the way they perceived this sort of slow fracturing that Yugoslavia was going through. Another one was in response to a Kosovari SERP who was allegedly beaten by a Kosovari Albanian. And Milosevic said, no one should dare beat you. Meaning that by virtue of being Serbian, they should be granted some sort of additional status or some sort of untouchability because they were ethnic Serbs. These examples serve to make clear that the changing and growing public opinion among the Serbs was that the only way for them to be secure and safe was as a national state controlled Serb by the Serbs. So the whole idea was that they would control the entirety of Yugoslavia and that their ethnic group would be in control of the majority of the political institutions that were present there. As I think you both can imagine, this did not go over well with other ethnic groups. Yeah. So. Who are just not very keen on being part of a federation controlled by the Serbs. In March of 1998, the Croatian War of Independence started, and later that year, Slovenia did the same. Both these instances sparked a war already with the Serbs. Bosnia and Herzegovina followed later. A referendum was held in early 1992 on whether or not they were going to secede. They chose to secede. And in March of that year, Serbian forces attacked Bosnia and claimed towns and terrain that they deemed to be Serbian territory. Near the end of May, the Yugoslav People's army attempted to gain control over the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, but failed to do so completely. At this point, the battle became a prolonged siege that would last until February of 96. Just to add a little bit more about the location, geographically speaking, defending Sarajevo was really difficult. The city lies between several mountains, which, which made it very easy for Serbian forces to set up artillery, ordinance and snipers. These would have very long lines of sight and greater range due to the elevated positions that they were set up in. If you look at a map of Sarajevo with like the terrain for Google Maps or something, you can see how much elevation there is all around the city. Roads and passes leading out of the city were blocked by Serbian forces. And once they had full control of the airport. There was little to no way for food, medicine or, or reinforcements to be deployed there. Within the city itself, Serbian forces also controlled a majority of major military positions. With additional snipers being positioned around them. Multiple areas became incredibly dangerous to cross. Our approach, particularly the main road leading towards the airport. It became known as Sniper Alley. And I think it is in this context that we should start to discuss the documentary and allegations. So.
- [10:07]
James
Yeah.
- [10:08]
Mick
Anything to add from either of you?
- [10:11]
James
Yeah. It might serve to explain how in the greater European political landscape, entities on the right, I guess, in the global north generally began to sympathize with actors in the former Yugoslavia. Right. And how like, maybe we can draw some like, lines between them based on their definition of nation, what they considered a nation to be. If that's something you'd like to like explain to people.
- [10:43]
Giorgio
Yeah, absolutely. I think what's really important to stress is that when it came to Bosnia, and it's still the case to this day, to a lesser degree, the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosniaks, found themselves at this very peculiar intersection of oppression in which you had the Western European rights framing the war against Bosnia as a restoration of Christian Europe. This was what John Major, how John Major was talking about it, who was then the Prime Minister of the uk. It's also the kind of language we heard from Mitterrand in France and to some extent in the Clinton administration. After Bill Clinton read that horrendous book Balkan Ghosts by Kaplan, his administration's rhetoric began to change and sort of framed this as this inevitable, you know, clash between these perpetually fighting tribes in the Balkans. You know, the legacies of, of that rhetoric are still heard in today's journalism. You know, I can't count the amount of times in even left leaning, supposedly Western journalistic publications I've seen the word Balkanization being thrown around. You know, and this, these, this is what I'm talking about in terms of the intersection of dehumanization, exoticization and oppression that particularly Bosnia and the Muslims of Bosnia, Bosniaks have found themselves at. And so you had that on the one side coming from the right and, and by the way, the Serbs nationalists knew this. They tailored their rhetoric so, so, so effectively to present this case of we are fighting Europe's battle against Islamist extremists. But at the same time you had the Western European political left. And by political left I mean your Marxist Leninists, that sort of tradition within the political left in Western Europe sort of buying into this co opting of anti fascist discourse from the Milosevic regime. You know, Mick referenced the no one shall dare beat you speech in Kosovo, which was actually in response to a, at best hyperbolized, at worst fictitious claim that the Kosovo Serbs were facing this institutional violence. And that co opting of that rhetoric that the Milosevic regime did so well as these anti imperialists fighting against the, you know, evil axis of the west did kind of work to some degree. When we're thinking about the response of the political parties on the left in Western Europe that were very sort of anti any intervention and we can have a conversation about, you know, NATO intervention and, and how problematic that was. But this very black and white thinking, very black and white rhetoric coming from those political actors in the west of. Well, this is nothing to do with us. Don't buy into the rhetoric that there are bad things happening is, you know, everyone's doing bad things, therefore we shouldn't do anything to put any pressure on the Milosevic regime. And so the reason why I'm bringing this all up is because if people can understand that, then it becomes more understandable how Bosnia was left to burn, how the Bosnian Muslims in particular, who are being targeted by Serb forces and Croat forces, both on the basis of their religious and ethnic identities, they found themselves completely abandoned. And obviously that abandonment really is embodied in the arms embargo that served none of the victims. It only served the Yugoslav army, which was effectively funding and sponsoring the Serb forces who were committing genocide in Bosnia. And of course the Croat forces had. Zagreb, had the Croatian regime funding them. So this arms embargo, which was supposed to be this, you know, for want of a better word, neutral stance for the world to take, was not neutral at all. Of course, as we know, there's no such thing as neutrality, blah, blah, blah. But this, this was really how it became possible for such a high number of people, the vast majority Muslim people, to be killed whilst the genocide was being televised.
- [15:50]
James
Yeah, that's super important.
- [15:51]
Mick
You brought up Bill Clinton reading that book. I thought of putting it in there, but I didn't want to besmirch Bill Clinton's good name here. But essentially what that book does is it sort of, correct me if I'm wrong, it sort of puts forth this clash of civilizations kind of rhetoric where these two people are so different, are so different, they will always inevitably clash and fight and kill each other as sort of a biologically determined factors almost.
- [16:28]
Giorgio
Yeah, I mean, we see a similar sort of thing. I mean, there are specificities to Palestine, but we see a similar sort of thing with the sort of liberal, humanistic rhetoric of let's view the what's happening in Gaza as beyond ethnic labels, you know, and we're going to see the humanity behind everyone. And, you know, we, you know, I saw there's a German comedian who was putting up posters of Palestinians who had been killed and Israelis who had been killed and removing the ethnic labels and just putting human killed. And it's going back to this. What you're talking about in terms of here are two communities that are always fighting each other and we lose sight of everyone's humanity as a result. And if they would just stop fighting, if they would just, you know, stop for a second and look beyond the labels, then the world would be a better place. And it's all, in my opinion, tied up in the same illogic as that book was.
- [17:32]
Mick
Was getting at a sort of, I don't see color approach, but the conflict.
- [17:39]
Giorgio
Yes, yes, yes.
- [17:40]
Mick
Okay.
- [17:40]
James
Yeah, yeah. A similar narrative that's deployed in Syria and Myanmar actually. Like, like it's the go to response of neoliberalism when they have absolutely no understanding of a situation beyond that there is conflict there and people are dying. Right. Like, it's a very easy response for anyone in a politician or an NGO or who wants to write a shit book. Like, it's very easy to do that and to sell that narrative right through appealing to people who don't know fuck all about it.
- [18:07]
Giorgio
Yeah, yeah.
- [18:09]
Mick
And I also want to add another thing, because nowadays Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into two parts, which is like the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Srpska, which is essentially the territory that the Republic of Srpska army gained during the war. Because I don't want to be there any confusion as to who the parties are, but it's pretty much two entities living in one nation state.
- [18:42]
Giorgio
Yes.
- [18:43]
Mick
This was also like a recurring theme when I was in Bosnia for my master thesis. There is a deep sentiment with the people, but also politically that Bosniaks were left to their fate because Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only Muslim majority country in Europe. And there is a very deep feeling of, like, the reason that we were left out in the cold, that we were abandoned is because it was a Muslim majority country. And I think that is just a very important thing to highlight because that is also a starting point of the vilification of Muslims by virtue of being Muslim. That sort of ideological war of the west versus the Eastern Muslims that sort of sort of started to coalesce at around that time, I think.
- [19:31]
Giorgio
I don't know if I'd say it was the start. But what I would say is the legacies of Europe's obsession with the Ottoman Empire really came to the fore in Bosnia because a lot of the rhetoric and the discourses that were being produced by Serb forces hinged around this idea that we, the Serbs, are finishing the job that we started in the Balkan wars of the 1800s and 1900s. We are finishing the job of getting rid of this remnant of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslims in Bosnia. And in fact, you know, I always go to a piece of footage from 11 July, 1995, when the General of the army of the Republika Srska Radkomladic, who is serving a life sentence for genocide, his forces entered, they invaded Srebrenica. Srebrenica had fallen. And he says to the camera, we have come here to take revenge on the Turks. And I think that really embodies what I'm trying to say here, which is that these legacies of this clash of civilizations that were sort of prominent in the various wars against the Ottomans came back and they were redeployed. They were reactivated by Serb forces in particular, but also Croat forces to a lesser degree. And, you know, I go back to what I was saying before John Major saying this is a painful but inevitable restoration of Christian Europe on some level. On some level, Western Europe was buying into it on some level. So, yeah, I don't think it was the start of the vilification of Muslims, but I think that it was intertwined with previous legacies that were reactivated.
- [21:33]
James
Yeah. And this was very much like the Zeitgeist at that time. Right. Like Huntington's. Right. In Clash of Civilizations. Then it seems like a lot of the response in much of the world to the end of the Cold War was to create another enemy and that. That became Islam. That's sort of the. The discourse after Fukuyama. Sorry to mention Fukuyama, but like, people didn't want there to be apart from him, like an end to. To the conflict over how to organize our societies. And because that's a ludicrous thesis. And, and so they, they, they. They very much re. I think a lot of the. The sort of fear that plays such an important role in politics in many of our countries was. Was remobilized in this Orientalist packaging towards Muslim people that, as you say, built on centuries of bigotry. My only engagement with the conflict when I was much younger was that somebody who I knew through cycling had previously been a football hooligan. I think that's probably how he would describe himself. There was a great deal of exchange in fan violence I guess would be the academic term between the former Yugoslavia and the rest of Europe, which is an interesting and not great way to learn about things.
- [22:56]
Giorgio
I mean, what's interesting is that there has been a direct connection between the far right nationalist gangs, the paramilitaries that committed atrocities and some of the Serbian football clubs and in particular the ultras in those clubs because those football clubs were the sort of gateway for mafia bosses to transition back into normal society. So yeah, it's a very interesting area of the. Of the broader conflict.
- [23:26]
Mick
Yeah, I think at this point we should get back on. Back on track a bit.
- [23:33]
Giorgio
Yes. Let's talk about the thing we came to talk about.
- [23:35]
James
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:36]
Mick
Well, we're going to talk about the siege of Sarajevo and the documentary Sarajevo Safari. But first we should experience the prolonged siege of advertisements.
- [23:55]
Grainger Advertisement
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- [24:29]
James
And we're back. As we said before we left to besiege areas with advertisements. We should talk about this, this Sarievo Safari. I guess maybe. Should we just begin by. By summarizing the. The maybe allegations still the correct word? I don't know. The, the events that are documented in the film. Let's say that.
- [24:51]
Giorgio
Yeah. So the Sarajevo Safari documentary was a. Is a documentary that was made by Slovenian filmmaker Miran Zupanic. And it presents longstanding allegations that there was a form of war tourism taking place during the siege of Sarajevo in which affluent non Bosnians were paying very high fees to shoot at civilians from sniper positions being held by the army of the Republika Srpska. These allegations and the. And the narrative of the documentary is presented through witness testimony including an anonymous former intelligence agent. And the, the film and the sort of the testimonies that are part of the film claim that this war tourism or this safari, this hunting human hunting game effectively business was a sophisticated, organized and secret operation. One of the most shocking allegations that the documentary brings to light is that these non Bosnian tourists For want of a better word, would pay even more money to shoot at children. Now in total, I mean, we don't have exactly figures, for various reasons, are very complicated. It's estimated that over 11,000 people were murdered in Sarajevo from these snipers. So the fact that this documentary is presenting these allegations that it wasn't just a Serb affair and that there were other nationals taking part in these crimes is huge. It is huge. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of the gist of what the documentary is trying to put across. Obviously there's more that I could say about the context and about sort of the context of the, of the case that has been taken up in Italy. But, you know, we can, we can talk about that as we, as we go. Go along.
- [27:12]
Mick
Yeah, I think one of the allegations is also that there's like tourists from like the United States, from Canada, from Russia and also from Italy. To not go down the rabbit hole instantly. I just wanted to ask you, Giorgio, because I first heard about this film when I was in Sarajevo and back then, well, my first instinct was this has to be some sort of conspiracy theory. And that is partly to do with the person I interviewed back then and the way it was presented to me during that interview, but also because I don't think any of us is shocked at the atrocities and the crimes against humanity of war, but this somehow feels like another level. So what was your first impression as Bosnian genocide researcher to something like this happening?
- [28:08]
Giorgio
My first reaction was, I mean, I don't want to take away from the gravity of the documentary. I was shocked, but not surprised. So it is shocking that this sort of spectacle of violence was happening to that extent, in the same way that it's shocking that the concentration camps of Omarska, Ternopolye, Keratern, all of those concentration camps, were being televised and were still in operation. I mean, yes, eventually the international pressure shut them down, but it took a long time. That is all shocking. It is shocking that the peace agreements that brought a formal end to the conflict legitimized simultaneously the political project of the Republika SRSKA by recognizing the entity. All of these things are shocking. So for me, the allegations of the documentary fall into this broader abject failure and complicity of the so called international community in the crimes that were being committed in Bosnia. So that is why I'm not surprised. It's shocking. The content is shocking. The fact that it was able to happen is not surprising. And I think the documentary speaks to the broader complicity of so many layers of society in the atrocities that were being committed. You know, let's be real, let's be really, really blunt here. The countries from which the tourists came are not the only countries that are implicated in the atrocities of the war and genocide. In Bosnia, you had far right volunteers from Greece who were being trained by Radko Mladic's army who were in Srebrenica on 11 July that the Greek state has never investigated. You had banks in Cyprus that were allowing Milosevic to funnel his money into them during the embargo. You know, there are so many states who on some level have played a role in the atrocities that have not held themselves or their nationals accountable. So, yeah, that is my reaction, if that makes sense to you guys, you know.
- [30:49]
James
Yeah, like we live in a, in an age where they get most people's thoughts are directly transcribed to their social media profiles at all times. Right. And I think it is probably easier than it has ever been for us to bear witness to a genocide as multiple genocides are occurring, like at the time that we're recording. Right. But obviously that's the most, I wouldn't even say the most well documented, the one that certainly gets the most social media attention is the one happening in Gaza for pretty obvious reasons. People are probably better placed now to understand this in the context of a genocide than they would have been five years ago even. Right. The project of a genocide has happened so in the open, and then they have seen nations which claim to be opposed to these things and institutions which were created to stop genocides do nothing. So I think it's probably easier than ever for people to understand the dehumanization that happens and the way that these things progress. But I wonder, like, it's just such a, like you said, Mick, like, it's one thing to go to war, right? And it's another thing to have war come to you. Like, like I have traveled to report on wars. But the, as you said, like, war is incredibly violent. And in this particular war, acts of inhuman violence happened often and from a great deal of actors. Right? But like, it's one thing when, if it's your community that is under threat, your family have been killed, and then you respond with violence like it doesn't make it right, but it, that is how war is. It's another thing to pay to hop on a flight and go and shoot a child. Like that is particularly craven. So I wonder, like, it seems like the cases that the prosecutions are mostly focusing on, like people from the Italian far right. Do you have an idea if, like, this was for them part of that project of like, like doing a second reconquista, right, for want of a better term, like purging Muslim people from Europe, or if it was simply the thrill of killing other humans, I think it.
- [33:13]
Giorgio
Would be remiss to try and detach the thrill of killing humans from who those humans are. Yeah, that's my honest opinion.
- [33:23]
James
That's fair.
- [33:24]
Giorgio
I think, you know, I know less about the granular details of these people from Italy, from the far right who were going to do this, but if I think about what I know about the Greek far right volunteers, where we have a bit more information to go on and why they were going to Bosnia, this was all about fighting the Turks. This was all about helping our Christian brothers, the Serbs, in their fight against the Muslims. And I. I suspect that it wasn't too dissimilar in the political imaginary of the Italian far right. And not just the Italian far right. I mean, as we said, from all the other countries where they were coming from. So, yeah, I think there was a framing that was behind a lot of this international participation that the sub nationalists were very aware of, and they were very deliberate in the discourses that they were producing. I'll give another example. When I was working at the Memorial Center, I was reading in. I was reading the transcript of the assembly of the Republica during the war. And in those transcripts, I can count on one hand the amount of times that Serb nationalist officials referred to Bosnian Muslims as Bosnian Muslims. They were, in the vast majority of cases, referred to as either Turks or Islamists or terrorists or even ustaa, who, for anyone listening who may not be aware, were the corporation se aligned regime that took control of what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina and also what is today Croatia during the Second World War. And so, you know, discourses, they are produced for a reason. And I know I'm going a little bit, you know, sort of f and. And whatever. I don't like talking in that way, but I will try to keep it as accessible as possible. When people produce discourses, it's to create not only a sense of what is true and what is false, but also it's to create this feeling of truth. It's what feels right. So, you know, it felt right to so many members of the far right to take up arms and hop on a plane or whatever and go to Bosnia to fight, you know, without questioning what actually the war and genocide was about. It felt right. And so that's how these discourses that's what they served to create this feeling of this is the truth and this is the right thing for us to do. Yeah, that was a very long winded answer. I apologize.
- [36:31]
James
No, it's either one.
- [36:32]
Giorgio
It.
- [36:33]
James
It reminds me a lot of the discourses that we saw in Myanmar preceding the genocide of the Rohingya people. Right. Like very rarely did we see them referred to by that name or as of them being natives of Myanmar. Right. Or them having been there for centuries. They're referred to as terrorists, they're referred to as Bangladeshis, they're referred to as illegal immigrants. They're often referred to as members of the Islamic State for Iraq and Al Sham, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of those last two words. But it's important, I think, to see these commonalities because we should be able to identify these things and see how dangerous they are.
- [37:14]
Giorgio
Yeah, absolutely.
- [37:17]
Mick
You know, who doesn't produce discourses that make people hop on flights to other countries?
- [37:24]
James
I'm not sure we can say that these days, but let's hope.
- [37:27]
Mick
Yeah, that's true, but we had to think of something, so I guess this will do.
- [37:33]
James
Yeah.
- [37:34]
Mick
Can't have golden pivots all the time.
- [37:43]
Giorgio
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- [38:16]
James
All right, we are back. Should we talk a little more in depth about like this practice of human safaris? Right. Or at least the allegations that are made so.
- [38:29]
Mick
Well, I am, I am curious, Georgia, because I was still reading into this a bit earlier today. One of the testimonies that popped up during the trial of Dragomir Milosevic, not Slobodan, not sure if they're related, to.
- [38:48]
Giorgio
Be honest, probably not.
- [38:50]
Mick
But there's an American called John Jordan who testified at the International Criminal Court. He led a volunteer fighter fighter units during the siege. But he also says that some of the people he worked with also had seen tourists in other areas and Mostar is named specifically. Is there any more detail in there about this happening in other areas of Bosnia or other places?
- [39:22]
Giorgio
Well, about Mostar in particular? I. I'm not sure because I've not heard myself of those allegations. Obviously There was the Greek volunteer guard who were in places like Srebrenica, but also Vishekrad. They went on after the war to become. Well, actually. Sorry, I'll correct myself. Even at that time, they were part of the. What later became Golden Dawn. The far right now criminal organization was a political party, so that, you know, you had that happening in terms of tourists, non combatants. I am not aware of other places where it was happening on a large scale, like in Sarajevo. So, yeah, I'm not perhaps best placed to go into more detail about that, but I will definitely talk to my contacts in Mostar about the allegation. Any allegations there?
- [40:26]
James
Yeah. I guess one thing that I want to ask is, like, we're seeing a very limited prosecution. Right. In Italy, and I think maybe also in. Somewhere in, like, is it in Belgium or the Netherlands? I thought I read that there was another prosecution. Not. Not to confuse those two countries mix. Sorry, but for the people who survived the genocide. Right. What does this. You can't speak on their behalf, of course, but, like, on the one hand, it is some very small move towards justice, but at least it's a movement. But on the other hand. Right. Like, the deaths of their family members are being played out in this documentary, and it must be very difficult to understand. Mm. Just. Just how, like, I don't know, casually, like, life was taken during the. This genocide.
- [41:22]
Giorgio
Yeah.
- [41:23]
James
Do you think it helps healing? Like. I guess I'm struggling to phrase that as a question, but, you know, like, I'm interested to know how this. This. This lands from that perspective.
- [41:32]
Giorgio
I guess the general mood among survivors in Bosnia is that no one cares about what happened to us. These films that go on to get awards potentially, and then, you know, the filmmakers get a pat on the back and all of that. They sort of. There's a lot of cynicism around that. And we saw this in particular in regards to Quo Vadis Aida. Not sure if you both watched that, but that recent. When was that? 2021, maybe a few years ago. Which, for anyone who hasn't watched it, is a film that depicts the genocide in Srebrenica. And, you know, and that won some awards. I can't remember the titles of them, but, you know, the. The. The sort of response among particularly the Bosniak community was one of mixed emotions. Yes. On the one hand, it was, you know, something that they were willing to support. You know, they would hold screenings of the film. They would, you know, collaborate with the director. But on the other hand, there was this sense of, okay, and now what. And I think from the conversations that I've had with Bosniaks and from the articles that I've read in response to this documentary, there's a similar sort of mood of, yeah, this is really important and we have been making these allegations for a long time, or we've been aware of the allegations for a long time. Why is it getting attention now? What's going to happen now? Can we trust that the Italians will. Italy will actually carry on with this investigation and that justice will be had? And also, you know, the notion of justice is so fraught in Bosnia as well. I think that it's sort of to imagine that we are on this path towards, you know, this linear path towards absolute healing and absolute justice and reconciliation, I think is. Is a sort of a notion that, that comforts a lot of Western NGOs, is not necessarily reflective of reality on the ground. So, yeah, I don't think I would be connecting this with any sense of healing at this stage.
- [43:59]
James
Yeah, I think that makes sense. It can be easy to see it as like, well, it's out in the open now and people have watched a film about it. Right. You know, like, I think a lot about the, the genocide. These are Yazidi people and how like, it essentially just has been like, what, 12 years ago now and it's been entirely forgotten.
- [44:27]
Giorgio
Yeah.
- [44:27]
James
By most people. Many of those people, you know, I have, I've been to where they are in. In terrible conditions in refugee camps in, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Right. And yeah, people are aware of it. Every now and again someone writes something about it. But like, those, those people are no closer to any form of. Of healing, you know, that they still can't even in many cases have not returned to their homes.
- [44:54]
Giorgio
I mean, this is the thing in, you know, particularly in the, in the Republica entity, you know, Bosnia are living in that entity, they face material precarity on an everyday basis. They face threats, they face genocide, triumphalism. Every year when the Republica substrate celebrates the founding of the entity, all of these everyday violences don't go away because of a film.
- [45:19]
James
Yeah.
- [45:20]
Giorgio
And I think that Bosniak's that I have come to know in living in the entity of the Republica circa, really carry that sense of we're dealing with ships every day, every day we are facing material battles and we're doing it alone most of the time. So, yeah, it's very difficult to put an optimistic, hopeful twist on, on these things.
- [45:49]
Mick
Yeah, I remember I was one, one year later than you were there. I was also at the memorial in Srebradica, Potochari. And I remember, I'm not going to name a name, but there was someone who was living in the area who spoke to us and someone from my group wanted to film that. And I remember that the man was very, very adamant that, hey, I do not want to be filmed. I like, I already need to walk these streets. That is enough. You should have asked for permission. I also remember, like Putin posters when walking through Srebrenica, hanging on certain windows.
- [46:31]
Giorgio
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:32]
Mick
But I also want to cut in with something else because after James mentioned that other countries were prosecuting as well, I quickly googled something. Apparently Italy has already named a, a suspect in the investigation.
- [46:46]
James
Oh, interesting.
- [46:47]
Giorgio
Yes. Now, 80 year old man. Yeah, yeah.
- [46:51]
Mick
Who was a truck driver.
- [46:53]
Giorgio
Yes.
- [46:54]
Mick
This, this is something that had not come up when I was writing and everything.
- [46:59]
James
I had assumed that this was something that was extremely, I don't know, expensive, I suppose, just because it, it's so fucked up and that. Yeah. Like it's once that it was someone who, if they're 80 now, would have been 50 at the time. So someone who was not young and had a relatively working class profession. Like, it's, that's, that just isn't the profile I had in my head. And I just wondered if you knew any more about developments in the case that might like.
- [47:28]
Giorgio
I mean, to be really honest, I don't have much more to, to contribute into in terms of that. The suspect and, and what this, what, what's going on? Yeah, you know, I think it was. They. He was summoned to testify last week. I think he was going to testify on the 11th or maybe, maybe the 9th. I think maybe the 9th, but I haven't heard anything beyond that. Okay, so, I mean, in terms of what you were saying about the profile of the suspect. Yeah, I mean, yes, on the one hand it goes against the whole idea that it was wealthy tourists only, but let's also remember that in terms of domestic participation, there was a lot of capital to be gained by serving the Republica SRKA project. I mean, you had everything from civilian, Serb civilian truck drivers who helped to deport civilians, Bosnia civilians. You had Serb civilians who were hired to dig secondary and tertiary graves, mass graves. There was an array of positions, capital that was created for people who had very little. And I think that's important to bear to bear in mind. Obviously that's in reference to the domestic to the participation of civilians within the former Yugoslavia. What the story behind this Italian truck driver is remains to be seen. But that's where my mind goes. When you were talking about his profile.
- [49:16]
James
Yeah. I mean, there are things to be gained internationally through that same participation in that same project. Right. Like, not necessarily, like, from the Serbian project, but, like, in terms of one's status in groups, in terms of, like, social capital on the right. I guess we shouldn't ignore that. I don't. Maybe it should just remind us that, like, especially these struggles can all seem so disparate. Right. But they're not. Like, the struggle against a domestic right in Italy was basically the same thing as the. Or at least, you know, shared. Shared a. Shared an enemy with the attempts to fight back against this genocidal violence there.
- [50:00]
Mick
Yeah. I think it is important to keep in mind that. I think when we all initially thought of the type of person who would do something like this and pay money for this, we all had an image in our head of the type. That type. And I just think it's very important to then take into account that it can also be everyday people who are. Who can be capable and willing to do something like this.
- [50:28]
James
Yeah.
- [50:29]
Mick
Also, another suspect who is not named but is mentioned in this article, it's from the Sarajevo Times, just to be transparent, is a banker. So it fits a lot better with, like, the image we had in our heads.
- [50:43]
James
Yeah.
- [50:44]
Giorgio
Yeah. Something to add about the documentary's context. One of the people who testified in the documentary is a man called Edin Subashic, who was a former Bosnian intelligence agent. Now, the reason why I'm bringing him up is because he actually says. I believe he says it in the documentary, or he may have said it in a subsequent interview. I'll double check. He has said that himself and the Bosnian intelligence agency first informed the Italian intelligence service about what they believed, what they had evidence was happening in terms of the sari safari. They first informed them in 1993, and then a few months later, in March 1994, the Italian intelligence service informed them that the matter had been closed. So that's just some interesting context to sort of think about in terms of perhaps some of the skepticism and cynicism that Bosniaks have about where this is going and the potential for change that could come as a result.
- [51:57]
James
Yeah. Are there projects in solidarity with the people and the descendants of people who survive this that you think people can engage with?
- [52:08]
Giorgio
I think that I would encourage people to follow Bosnians for Palestine on Instagram because what they are doing is that they are being very intentional in highlighting the commonalities between the violence against Palestinians and what Bosniaks in particular endured during the war and genocide.
- [52:33]
James
Okay, cool. Yeah.
- [52:34]
Giorgio
I would also point people towards a very interesting grassroots. I don't know exactly what they are in terms of, are they. They're not an ngo. I don't know if they're an association or just a grassroots initiative. They're called, it's a Bosnian title. They're called Austra nulla O S T R a new word M U L A and they are based in the Republica SRK entity, but they are a group of young activists from all ethnic backgrounds, all of the three major ethnic groups in Bosnia that Serb, Croats and Bosniak, who take an explicitly anti capitalist approach to their work. So they, they are very interesting. And the fact that they're doing what they're doing to fight against the corruption of the Republika Srska authorities and ethno nationalism, and they're doing that within the entity, I think, is really quite extraordinary. So you can also follow them on Instagram and keep up to date with what they're doing. I mean, they're always. There's always either a march happening in solidarity with Palestine or there was recently a reading of names of all the murdered children of Sarajevo alongside all of the murdered children of Gaza in the recent wave of the genocide in Gaza. So there's a lot of very interesting stuff happening which people from all around the world can at least follow on social media. And if you're in or around Bosnia, then of course you can meet some of these people in person, which is great.
- [54:20]
James
Yeah.
- [54:21]
Mick
Yes. For closing thoughts, I was pleasantly surprised to read that they have suspects, so I'll take this win. And I also feel I should have seen this earlier. But Giorgio, thank you for. For coming on and having a chat with us about horrifying stuff.
- [54:41]
Giorgio
Thank you for inviting me.
- [54:42]
Mick
Our pleasure.
- [54:43]
James
Yeah.
- [54:44]
Mick
Let's go, pet puppy.
- [54:46]
James
Yeah, Here we go. Feed my chickens.
- [54:51]
Giorgio
All right.
- [54:55]
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- [55:43]
James
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [55:46]
Mick
Guaranteed Human.