Road to Ratkovići village

Having visited a number of villages in the Drina River valley, and observed a wide variety of horrors inflicted on their Serbian inhabitants, we thought that few surprise lay in wait for us. However, this time also it has turned out that for every evil there is another one which is greater still and even more striking. It had taken us a long time to take the decision to sit down and to write a few sentences about this village because of the strong impressions produced by what we saw and the feeling that they could  be conveyed, if at all, then only with utmost difficulty. It is a challenge to describe so much horror concentrated in a single place. Ratkovići is simply something that a person needs to see. Ratkovići is a village which compells you to reflect and to pose innumerable questions for which there do not seem to be any answers.

As we are moving along in our auto in the direction of the village, we do not even suspect what spectacle awaits us. Our attention is drawn to the Moslem villages that we are passing through, starting with the village of Osmače, then Podkorijen, Dedići and Poznanovići, all the way to Močevići, which is located just on the other side of Ratkovići. What all those Moslem villages share are several common characteristics. First: the villages have been fully renovated and they are brimming with life and carefree children. Second: in some of those villages, roadways have been asphalted, and new schools and playgrounds have been constructed, as well as the entire infrastructure presupposed by normal life. The first question that comes up is this: are Serbs entitled to the same kind of life as their Moslem neighbors? Ratkovići, to remind those who did not know, is located in the midst of the aforementioned Moslem villages.

Such a shockingly cruel treatment of a people, if we may say so, is scarcely to be found anywhere else. That is evident, first of all, from the contrast between the fully renovated Moslem villages and Ratkovići, which lacks even electricity. Mentioning any other amenities would be quite superfluous. We are not aware that such double standards are practiced anywhere in Europe toward communities who live so intermingled in such a comparatively small area. How did those concepts of justice and equality, which foreign diplomats are constantly lecturing us about, get lost in the shuffle? That exemplifies the hypocricy of a good part of Europe and America because their reconstruction and development organizations in this region have declined to invest a red cent into this, or any other, Serbian village. To put it in simple terms, they are uninterested in suffering if it happens to be Serbian. One gets the impression that they are not at all pleased even when others try to talk about it because their countries’ policy is oriented in a different direction where, clearly, Serbs are not seen anywhere on the horizon. A telling indication of how they view Serbs—as second class citizens—is the road which leads to the village. It is enough to see it in the photograph for all illusions about equality and human rights to unceremoniously collapse. To avoid any misunderstanding, the roads which lead to the nearby Moslem villages are either asphalted or they are in quite decent condition so that any of them can easily be reached by auto.

Finally, after walking for several kilometers, we found ourselves in Upper  Ratkovići. The first thing that you notice is the size of the village. Before the war, the village had the administrative status of a „local community“ and it was one of the largest in the region. That is also confirmed by the presence of several cemetaries in Lower Ratkovići.

Should we make special mention of the fact that in this village we did not run into a single inhabitant? The village is completely desolate and empty. While walking down the muddy road, you feel the silence surrounding and pressing down on you, it is the apsolute absence of sound. And the fog descending upon the remaining ruins makes it eerier still. True, in the village there does stand one house that was built by some locals, but they do not actually live here. They have found refuge somewhere on the other shore of the Drina River.

The village was attacked on June 21, 1992. While pillaging the village, the Moslems torched every home they could lay their hands on and they killed every local who did not manage to flee, or who tried to defend his homestead. Among them, there must have been those who had faith in their Moslem neighbors and for that reason had decided to remain in their homes. They paid with their lives for that misplaced trust, but their experience is bound to teach the younger generations a valuable lesson.

The surviving locals after the attack got around to erecting a monument to the victims. On the monument, among other names, you will also find the following: Stanojević Desanka, born in 1920; Milanović Cvija, born in 1919; Maksimović Vinka, born in 1927; Djurić Radosava, born in 1933; Pavlović Novka, born in 1939; and Prodanović Zora, born in the distant year of 1911.

It is more than likely that all those Serbian mothers posed a serious threat to the Moslems who, for that reason, found it necessary to liquidate them on their doorsteps. Today, the burden of those heinous crimes lies at the doorstep of the Bosnia and Hercegovina Prosecutors’ Office in Sarajevo. But the fact is, it has not moved beyond the doorstep. It is up to them to identify and punish the perpetrators. If they fail to do that, they will have to demonstrate that it was those Serbian mothers who were offering disproportionate resistance while defending their homes with their very lives, which surely absolves the criminal perpetrators of these murders. To be fair, it should be noted that not all of them were murdered with firearms. The Moslems demonstrated during their attack a remarkable parsimony with ammunition. Since she was practically immobile and well into the eighth decade of her life, Granny Desanka was not dispatched with a bullet. The Moslems burned her alive within her house, while evidently saving the bullet for some other Serb. The remnants of her burnt skeleton were found scattered over the foundation of her torched dwelling ten years later.

The second aspect of the tragic fate of this ghostly village are the homes, or rather their few upstanding remnants and surviving foundations, because during the attack not a single dwelling was spared. With our camera we recorded more than 50 completely destroyed Serbian homes. Some of them we were unable to approach because of the heavy vegetation. Others are practically no longer in existence because the ravages of time have wiped them out forever.

Dobrila Prodanović finds the skull of her murdered son Živan.

There is one more tragedy associated with this village. It is the picture of the Serbian mother holding her child’s skull in her hand which has travelled around the world and which the Moslems have misrepresented as the depiction of one of their own victims. The mortal remains of her son, Prodanović Živan, rest in this village. His gravestone is located right next to the torched former Prodanović residence.

Finally, it should be pointed out that Ratkovici before the war counted over 300 inhabitants. Today there is not a soul left. Part of the inhabitants were murdered, part were expelled, their homes—as depicted in the photographs—were totally devastated, and the village has been since then essentially dead. That is the long and tortuous road which this village began to walk 17 years ago, thanks to its Moslem neighbors. Perhaps stranger still, today the village continues to move down that same dismal road. True, that is no longer because of its Moslem neighbors, but now because of those who have chosen to close their eyes and to callously turn their heads away from this crime.

The only trace of life we found in Ratkovici village.

Destroyed Serbian home in the village of Ratkovići.

Photos of razed homes from this village are included in the section: Serbian villages 15 years later.