In a joint action to mark unmarked sites of suffering, the Association for Social Research and Communications (UDIK), together with the Centre for Nonviolent Action and ProPeace Bosnia and Herzegovina, marked the site at the Zanatski centar in Brčko where Husein Kršo and Hajrudin Muzurović were killed.
At the start of May 1992, the Brčko Police Station was used as a site of detention for Bosniak and Croat civilians. Members of the Army of Republika Srpska had control over the facilities. On 7 May 1992, from that Police Station, Goran Jelisić took two civilians, Husein Kršo and Hajrudin Muzurović, to the Zanatski centar Street and killed them. Belgrade photojournalists Bojan Stojanović and Srđan Petrović caught the killing with their cameras and their photographs were used as evidence of this war crime in Brčko before the ICTY.
The bodies of the victims were discovered in 2006 in the Gorice secondary mass grave, some ten kilometres outside Brčko. Goran Jelisić was convicted, inter alia, for murders at the Zanatski centar in Brčko. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) pronounced him guilty and sentenced him to 40 years in prison.
“It is important and significant that we are here today, to mark this location properly and call attention to the need for a site of memory for the killed Husein Kršo and Hajrudin Muzurović. Here, but also in many other places across BiH, there are sites that are still being ignored and denied, and in the vast majority of cases, they don’t have a dignified memorial to remind us and warn us about the evil that took place there. We stand in solidarity with all victims and for this to never happen again,” said Tamara Zrnović, member of the team from the Centre for Nonviolent Action.
“We are fostering an inclusive practice of memorialisation,” said Ljiljana Siničković, director of ProPeace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an organisation supporting UDIK in creating a culture of memory. She added that this meant honouring all civilian victims of war, irrespective of their ethnic, religious or other background.“This is not just an act of remembering, but an important foundation for strengthening social cohesion and preventing future violence.”
For four years now, the Association for Social Research and Communications (UDIK) has been appealing to the institutions of the Brčko District of BiH to install a memorial plaque in the Zanatski centar Street, so that the site of the killing would be permanently marked.
“Marking this site would preserve a permanent memorial in honour of the victims killed at the Zanatski centar. The executions documented on photographs are a permanent record of the ethnic cleansing in Brčko,” said Edvin Kanka Ćudić, UDIK coordinator. “The District has a duty to preserve the memory of its killed citizens and we will continue to insist on this in the future.”
Association for Social Research and Communications (UDIK)
Centre for Nonviolent Action (CNA)
ProPeace Bosnia and Herzegovina