A Western Warchild, part 2

Bosnia 1992-1995 from Midhat Mujkic

23 years have passed from the beginning of the genocide in Bosnia and wiping off my home country Yugoslavia (nowadays: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo) from the map.

24.05.1992 - was the day when my parents had gathered together with their families for a cup of strong afternoon coffee. Black gold was already served but non of them got a chance to sip it before the grenades and bombs started their rumble, blood started to spill, memories were destroyed from photo albums, school diplomas became meaningless and only F was left from families. For some not even that one F stood on its feet after the war that took three long years of torturing, raping and mass murdering. All that is still continuing in different form today, thanks to Deyton and world that messed things up so that it is almost impossible to go on because of the division of BiH into two different states where war criminals rule and where police arrests only Bosnian (catholics or muslims) people for all different reasons... By posting this picture here, with the legal Bosnian flag even I am now a criminal and a terrorist in the eyes of Nazi serbs and could be arrested on my next vacation. it is injustice. Genocide is still going on and world does nothing.

1. My grandma and grandma seven years after the war in front of their house 2. My house 3. Me (left) , my cousin Elma (right) and my mom at the refugee camp 4. My face on the Seura- magazine.

This is a cigarette holder (mustikla) my dad did on time period he went through different concentration camps. That time period was from 26.05.1992 to 01.10.1992, four months of surviving, torture, mass killings and hard work by digging new mass graves for your friends and family- maybe even yourself. Four months of not knowing if your family is still alive or not. I was a 1,5 years old baby back then hiding with my remaining relatives who were not killed because they managed to escape and my mum, who had just given birth to my first baby sister Elvira and walked 40 km's to the next save spot with us through mountains avoiding land mines, rapers and killers. Elvira lived her four first months as a refugee with us in cities Prijedor and Travnik in different cellars in constant hunger, fear and darkness, the first sounds she heard were not happy ones and she slept under the table on concrete floor.

Not all were that lucky. Some of them unlucky ones were my four uncles aged from 17 to 23 years, they all were tortured to death by serb forces. All in all, only this little town called Kozarac had 27 000 inhabitants who all were either killed or forced to a life of a refugee for the rest of their lives. Almost 95 % of all homes were distroyed and all mosques and catholic churches were bombed to the ground. All what was left were houses of serbs and their orthodox churches. We managed to escape to Karlovac to a refugee camp on 02.10.1992. That is when my dad saw her newborn for the first time and our family was reunited. Dad had changed so much both physically and mentally that I couldn't recognize him. Finally we got a flight to safe place called Finland 01.11.1992. 

Meanings of the days my dad had engraved:

24.05. - our house and Kozarac were attacked

26.05. - concentration camp Keraterm;

27.05. - concentration camp Omarska;

06.08. - some were moved to concentration camp Trnopolje, another to concentration camp Manjaca;

27.08. - UNHCR registered all in Trnopolje

17.06. - Elvira was born, the information he received on 01.10.92 through UNHCR

And how could we possibly forget it all? Especially when it is still going on... There is only one good thing in war, it is much harder to kill us all when we are all (2 millions) dispersed around the world.

More about this same subject, here: http://lolimte.blogspot.fi/2013/04/a-western-warchild.html

- Herminica