Tributes to Mladic, the victim from Sarajevo: ‘A defeat for remembrance’
Kanita Focak speaks out; she spent four years in the city besieged by the general’s troops: her husband was killed
“Mladic killed my husband. He took my friends, classmates and neighbours away from me. I saw children and innocent people die during those four years of siege.” This is how Kanita Ita Focak speaks, recalling the man who changed her life forever: Ratko Mladic. Born in Split, she has lived in Sarajevo since she was a child. There she graduated with a degree in architecture, got married and had two children, Faris and Daniel. When the war began, the situation was unclear, Kanita recalls: ‘Our politicians told us, “It’s just a mix-up, a misunderstanding; everything will sort itself out.”’ Instead, the war began to seep into the homes of every citizen. In May, about a month after the first clashes, Faruk, Kanita’s husband, was hit by an anti-aircraft shell whilst sitting in an armchair at home.
An immense pain that Kanita still carries within her: ‘I cannot bear to see that name, so dear to me, on a gravestone.’ Yet the general who besieged the city from 1992 to 1996 is now being honoured with the state funeral, a symbol ‘of the defeat of memory’ and of historical revisionism.
What do you think of the state funeral granted to Mladic?
It’s a scandal. What saddens me most is that some people in Bosnia continue to revere and glorify him, even young people who weren’t even born when the war broke out and the genocide took place. How can anyone take an executioner, a murderer, a war criminal as a role model?
Why are there still people who praise a war criminal?
