An Erased Memorial, a Rape Motel, and a Nationalist Disneyland: Bosnian Genocide Denial and the Fight for Memory in a Bosnian Town

This article was contributed to Forum-the edition's portfolio of thematic content-by GJIA's Society & Culture section.

Content warning: Please be advised that this article mentions genocide and sexual violence.

In the early morning of January 23, 2014, several dozen heavily armed Bosnian Serb policemen accompanied a worker with a grinder who entered the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) cemetery in Višegrad, a town in Eastern Bosnia. A newly built memorial with a large white marble headstone stated: "To all killed and missing Bosniaks, children, women and men, victims of genocide in Višegrad."¹ The worker took the grinder and erased the word 'genocide' while a local news crew filmed the entire process. The policemen lined up outside the cemetery as a show of force. The erasure only took several minutes, and after that, everyone dispersed leaving the cemetery gate open.² It may come as a shock that these people underwent such effort and manpower just to grind out one word. However, erasing the word 'genocide' carries a heavy burden in Višegrad, as it is part of a large effort to revise history and conceal the awful fate of the town's Bosniak population.³

This article examines three aspects of amnesia enforced by the Višegrad authorities: the de-Turkifying of the town; the construction of Andrićgrad—the "Disneyland of Serb nationalism;" and the construction of Vilina Vlas, the spa hotel turned rape camp which is still functioning to this day. This article argues that amnesia in Višegrad is intentional, widespread, and in most aspects successful.

The genocidal campaign

Višegrad, a small, picturesque town on the Drina River, is famous for an old Ottoman bridge built by Mehmed Pasha Sokolović in the sixteenth century.⁴ This bridge itself gained notoriety when Yugoslav author Ivo Andrić's book The Bridge Over the River Drina, which was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1961 and is emblematic of Višegrad's role as the site of war throughout its modern history.⁵ In World War I, the Austro-Hungarian army fought the Serbian army nearby. In World War II, the Serbian Royalist forces, popularly known as the Chetniks, laid siege to the town and then massacred its Muslim population. In April 1992, after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA)—known in Bosnian as Jugoslovenska narodna armija—invaded the country, and one of the first towns it occupied was Višegrad.⁶ Soon the YPA turned the strategically located town over to a nominally autonomous but logistically dependent Bosnian Serb proxy army. This paved the way for genocide, aimed to permanently destroy the town's Bosniak majority. The Avengers, a special military unit of the Bosnian Serb Army with close links to the Yugoslav State Security Service, committed some of the worst wartime atrocities under the leadership of the notorious Milan Lukić, a cousin of Serbian Police Minister Sreten Lukić.⁷

The YPA aided the puppet-Bosnian Serb leadership, and from May to August 1992, Bosnian Serb forces led a genocidal campaign in which at least 3,000 Bosniak Muslim civilians were massacred.⁸ These forces executed hundreds, almost ritually, by throwing their bodies off the old Ottoman bridge and into the Drina River. Two of the most terrible crimes occurred on June 14 and 28, 1992, when Bosnian Serb soldiers and policemen burned approximately 140 Bosniak civilians alive, mainly women and children. In the neighborhoods of Pionirska and Bikavac, the civilians were barricaded into a house and petrol bombs were thrown through the windows. Those who tried to escape by jumping out of the windows were shot by Serb perpetrators surrounding the houses. While the house was burning, the soldiers drank beers and listened to music from their cars.⁹

By the end of summer, only Serbs remained in Višegrad. The Bosniak social, political, economic, and cultural presence was entirely eliminated. Those who were not killed were deported to Bosnian government-controlled territories where they were kept in...