A monument against memory

The model was patented and successfully established ten years ago in Split. You set up a monument on the site of the camp or in the street where people were evicted from the apartments, precisely by those battalions, i.e. to the units that held the camp or raided the apartments, and that's how you conclude that story in public.

You count, of course, only on the resistance of those same few journalists, columnists and activists, on the complete lack of interest of the general public to constantly read about topics they want to leave behind and on inertia, and there you have the nineties, pure and unquestionable before new generations and the future.

Precisely from that process, which has long since been completed in Croatia, came the nonchalant statement of Ivan Anušić, the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Croatia, who calmly and proudly concluded that in Mostar in 1993 he fought for the Croatian cause, i.e. the people and state interests, which he gave at the Heliodrome during the opening of the monument dedicated to the Lipanjska zora action and the fallen HVO soldiers. And nothing, under the grace of God, seemed problematic to Anušić, neither the place where he said it, nor the city where he said it, nor the year he was talking about. And this carelessness really did not come only from ideological conviction, but also from the fact that the nineties with all their darkness and horrors of Tuđmanism were unquestionably canonized in Croatia.

But the important difference between those two cases is that today Croatia is nationally more homogeneous than it was ever in the past, and in the aforementioned Split, regardless of the fact that some people and families who went through the horrors of the nineties still live there, they live forgotten by everyone and without any influence or public presence at all. In other words, time and life have moved on a long time ago, those few columnists no longer give even two cents, and with the installation of the two mentioned monuments, one to the 72nd Battalion in front of Lora and the other to the Hosovci in Ruđer Bošković Street, along with the third, the monument to Tuđman in Pazar, the story in the nineties it was put ad acta.

What is happening right now at the Mostar Heliodrom has the same idea, the only problem is that the performance will be a little more difficult. Because Mostar has remained a multi-ethnic city where Bosniaks make up a significant percentage of the population, and the camp inmates and their families will not suppress '93. and '94. just like that. Even to erect a whole park of monuments and museums to the HVO on the Heliodrom and continue to forbid inmates from entering the grounds of the former camp on the anniversary of its closure.

Just as the memorial cemetery on Bilim above Mostar, to those who were killed without trial in 1945, but mostly defended the NDH until the last day, will not erase the character of that country, nor will the demolition of the Partisan Cemetery remove the Partisan heritage and idea from Mostar.

In this whole story about the monument to Lipanjski zora and the martyred members of the HVO, it is even more sad that these people are being used posthumously to cover the truth about the Heliodrom. In the same way, in which he cynically attacked Šehitluke near the cemetery of the people who died in the defense of Mostar in '93. and '94. year, erect a monument to the murdered Young Muslims and thus indirectly connect these dead with the latter's ideology.

To put it simply, to return to the case of the monument and the museum at the Heliodrom, we have at work a pure effort to erase the memory of the monument and completely recode it. Which is from the first day and everywhere the practice of institutional construction of the culture of memory.

Only, as I said before, it can work in relatively homogenous societies, and not at all in divided societies and cities, which are precisely divided on the question of their relationship to the past.

And until all cultures of memory receive the institutional right of equality in the same space, there will be no permanent peace, i.e. a society that cannot just be antagonized and potentially ignited on every sensitive topic.

It is a tragedy of such a poor imagination, in this particular case of Croatian nationalists. Who, to make matters more absurd, did not even learn anything from the practices of their arch-enemies, the Communists.

Was there silence from 1945 to 1990 about the events of 1945 and there was only one truth, additionally cemented by a series of monuments, including the most beautiful, magical Partisan Cemetery? It is.

So where is that one truth and silence about 1945 today? Exactly in the same place where in one hour there will be both truth and silence about 1993.

(oslobodjene.ba)