Regional war veterans will gather in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici on April 16th to commemorate the massacre of more than 100 Bosniak civilians in an effort to promote peace, the Centre for Nonviolent Action said.
Since 2008, the organisation, with centres in Sarajevo and Belgrade, has been organising visits of veterans from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to places where massacres occurred during the 1990’s war, regardless of who the victims or who the perpetrators of those massacres were.
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Forces of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) attacked the village on April 16, 1993, as part of an ethnic cleansing operation, killing 116 Bosniaks. Among them were 32 women and 11 children.
The families of the victims are still searching for 29 bodies of their loved ones.
Six people were convicted for their involvement in the Ahmici massacre, five of them in the Hague-based International Court for Former Yugoslavia.
Among them is Dario Kordic, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was released four years ago after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
A court in Bosnia also sent Pasko Ljubicic behind bars for ten years for his role in the massacre.
“With our attendance at the commemoration, we want to pay our respects to the residents of Ahmici and show that former soldiers are a social group which has a high degree of credibility and potential for working on peacebuilding on the ground, particularly because we have directly, often in a very brutal way, experienced the war ourselves,” the Centre said.
The veterans want to “strengthen peacebuilding which is needed among a huge majority of the people in this region,” it said.
The veterans will also call upon authorities to prosecute all those who have committed war crimes and are yet to face justice.
The Centre has already organised veteran visits to places where massacres occurred in Bosnia in Gornji Vakuf, Zavidovici, Stog near Vozuca, Novi Grad, Sanski Most, Sijekovac near Brod, Laniste near Brcko, Trusina near Konjic and Stupni Dol near Vares.
In Serbia, it organised visits to Varvarin near Krusevac and Aleksinac, while in Croatia it organised such visits in Pakrac, Varivode and Gosici near Knin.
