BALKAN DISKURS (25/1/2016)
On 14 June 1992, 70 Muslim civilians were taken by a group of armed Serbs to a house on Pionirska Street in the eastern Bosnian town of Višegrad. They were locked in the basement, where the carpet beneath their feet was set ablaze. At least 59 people were burned to death.
A few days after the first fire, on 27 June 1992, in a house in Bikavac, Višegrad, arsonists lit another fire, which killed 60 civilians – again, all Bosnian Muslims. The house in Bikavac was destroyed, but on Pionirska Street the house of death, now a memorial to the victims, remains. It is one of the few memorials that exist for the Muslim civilians murdered by Serb forces in Višegrad.
“In the all too long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Pionirska Street and Bikavac fires must rank high,” said presiding judge Patrick Robinson when delivering the first instance verdict for Milan Lukić and his cousin Sredoje Lukić, who were convicted of various crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). “There is a unique cruelty in expunging all traces of the individual victims, which must heighten the gravity ascribed to these crimes,” the judge stated. Milan Lukić was found guilty of persecutions, murder, extermination, cruel treatment and inhumane acts and was sentenced to life in prison. He was also found responsible for the murder of 59 Muslim women, children and elderly people in the house on Pionirska Street (…)
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