Bosnia Spends €2 Million on ‘Divisive’ War Memorials

'A memorial shows that time can't erase everything'

The Gunpowder Depot building near Kalinovik, where Bosniaks were imprisoned during the war, remains unmarked as a detention site. Photo: BIRN.

The Novi Grad municipality in Sarajevo is one of those that have allocated the largest amounts over the past four years - around 220,000 euros.

In one of the most lavish projects last year, the municipality of East Ilidza allocated some 150,000 euros to build a major memorial in the Serb-majority city of East Sarajevo as a tribute to Bosnian Serb soldiers killed in the war, a project backed by Serbia and the city of East Sarajevo.

The municipality of Kalinovik meanwhile issued a tender last year valued at over 112,000 euros for the construction of a memorial complex honouring around 350 Bosnian Serb Army soldiers killed during the conflict in the area.

A Bosniak association of war victims from the Kalinovik area said that while spending money on commemorating fallen Serb troops, the municipality has continued for years to obstruct the construction of a memorial to Bosniaks who were killed there.

Samir Vranovic of the association of families of missing persons from the Kalinovik area, Istina-Kalinovik '92, said that the municipality has not been asked to provide funds for the memorial, and that the victims' families have the resources to build it themselves.

He described the allocation of a large amount of municipal cash for building the monument to Serb soldiers alone as "unfortunate and sad".

"We have no possibility of marking detention camp locations [where Bosniaks were detained by Bosnian Serb forces] in Kalinovik in a dignified manner by putting up memorial boards or monuments," Vranovic said.