It was the time of war.
It was in the days when all things human seemed to have been lost.
It was almost a decade ago, that something had happened, just across the river…
So we were told.

Something.

And for the next ten years, it was no more than that.

A vague implication, a remote possibility, a maybe…
Conspiracy, lie, deceit, justification… The unthinkable, hidden by uncertainty.

Until now.

I’ll admit it. When I heard that the video, showing Serbian soldiers shooting Bosnian kids and young men near Srebrenica in 1995, is on TV, I did my best to avoid it. Not that I doubted its authenticity. Nor was I trying to ignore it. I just thought I had my fair share of graphic images from the recent wars. Why would I want to subscribe to future nightmares? Why not just let it go? However, I finally decided I should see it. And I’m still not sure of the cause.

Looking at young lives being casually extinguished in cold blood… That is probably as close as one can get to seeing the face of evil. Mind you, not the evil grown from some old hatred or jealousy or desire for revenge. Nor was this the act of moment, committed in fear or rage. To that, you can attach some sort of basic instinct, if nothing else. But that was not the case. Killing that took place seemed to have been, for the killers, as natural thing to do, as was talking or eating…

It took me some time to recover. Not that I was in the Something camp. I had no doubt as to what happened in Srebrenica, so I was not shocked by the fact that it did happen. And, still, the effect of seeing a small fraction of what happened was terrible.

Following up on the reactions of local politicians, I noticed that our nationalist-lite prime minister seemed to have been genuinely upset. Consequently, the police had most of the executioners in custody within hours. Not that that surprises me. I’ll bet at least some of them still hold official police (or state security) identifications. The practice of making criminals associates of the state security was widely adopted under Milosevic, and the state security is known for keeping its contractors on a short leash. One way or the other, it’s a good thing the killers are behind bars. This also proves that, in a country of this size, arrest of any war crimes suspect is only a matter of political will.

And the will to do so has definitely gained a new boost. Most analysts claim that showing the video is a part of a broader campaign, with the goal of preparing the public for the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic. That may be the case, but the fact is that the tape was obtained only recently, by the NGO from Belgrade. It was then shown to the authorities in Serbia, and, soon after that, to the representatives of the Hague tribunal. Whether the Serbian government agreed that the video should be publicly shown in the Hague first (so as to avoid being seen working against the “national interests” by the nationalist voters), or the Hague used the recording on its own (so as to force the Serbian authorities to act), is still unclear. In any case, several high-ranking officials have made statements implicating that the “Mladic problem” (Karadzic is believed to be hiding somewhere in Bosnia) will be solved very soon, and that goes in favor of the organized campaign theory.

As a collateral effect, the video will probably have Milosevic convicted for genocide. Up to this point, Milosevic has repeatedly claimed that there were no members of Serbian police or military in Bosnia during the war (that is, police or military of the Republic of Serbia). He even had success in maintaining his claims, and the prosecution lacked any firm evidence in that respect. But, things have changed – the footage clearly shows members of a paramilitary group, under direct command of Serbian Interior Ministry, killing people in eastern Bosnia. And guess who was the president of Serbia at the time…

The local nationalists had organized a session “The Truth About Srebrenica”, just couple of weeks ago. The goal was, of course, to show that nothing had happened there. And even if it did, it was a just revenge by the surviving residents of Serbian villages in the Serbrenica region, ravaged earlier in the war by the Bosnian forces. Little did they know that in no time we’d be watching chubby members of Serbian black-ops paramilitary group, proudly wearing all the insignia of the Republic of Serbia on their brand new flak jackets, shoot kids in the back. I would really, really, like to know if any of the people that babbled about how it “never really happened” feel any shame now… Correction. I would like to know if they are able to feel any shame, period.

This matter of shame brings us to the Serbian Orthodox Church. The very beginning of the video shows a priest blessing the killers before they are dispatched to Bosnia. The words he’s using are: “…and may Your army of the faithful succeed in overpowering the enemy people…”

Not just the enemy. Or the enemy soldiers. Or the enemy forces. It’s the enemy people.

As of this writing, I’m still waiting for someone (anyone?) from the Church to come forward and condemn that despicable act. Having said that, I would like to add that I consider them a bunch of fat warmongering cowards.

It is difficult to guess all the consequences of this public broadcast. However, it has already had an immense effect on the general population in Serbia. For the first time, I feel that most people believe that the recording is true, and are not looking for some foreign conspiracy behind it. The creeping return of extreme nationalist way of thinking, and slow reintroduction of some of the more prominent nationalist leaders in the public life seems to have been stopped. At the very least, the next person I hear speculating on whether Something May Have Happened There will promptly get directions to where that Something can be seen in all of its unleashed monstrosity.