18 ANNIVERSARY OF BIKAVAC LIVE PYRE - DO NOT FORGET!

Today is the anniversary of the Bikavac live pyre. Three years before the Srebrenica genocide, Bosnian Serb forces around Srebrenica (central Podrinje) were busy capturing Bosniak women, children and the elderly civilians and setting them on fire to burn alive in slow death. The purpose was to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible.

↓ Photo of a Bosniak girl Saliha Menzilovic who was burnt alive by Serbs, along with at least 60 other Bosnian Muslim women, children and the elderly civilians, in Meho Aljic’s house in Bikavac. Photo courtesy of Visegrad Genocide Memories.

One such incident occured in Bikavac, a settlement in neighbouring Visegrad. Last year, Serb war criminal and a former paramilitary leader, Milan Lukic, was sentenced to life imprisonment for this crime. According to Patrick Robinson, the presiding judge in Lukic trial:

““The perpetration by Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić of crimes in this case is characterised by a callous and vicious disregard for human life. In the all too long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Pionirska street and Bikavac fires must rank high. At the close of the twentieth century, a century marked by war and bloodshed on a colossal scale, these horrific events stand out for the viciousness of the incendiary attack, for the obvious premeditation and calculation that defined it, for the sheer callousness and brutality of herding, trapping and locking the victims in the two houses, thereby rendering them helpless in the ensuing inferno, and for the degree of pain and suffering inflicted on the victims as they were burnt alive.”

Photo: The Vilic family was burnt alive in Bikavac live pyre along with at least other 60 Bosnian Muslim women, children and the elderly civilians. The only remaning member of this family is Hamdija Vilic. Photo courtesy Visegrad Genocide Memories.

May their souls rest in peace.