Some people took everything from me, others gave me everything
At the protests organized due to the enormous increase in prices and fuel, which were recently attended by about a thousand Tuzla residents, we met four-year-old Sara smiling carefree, safe on her father’s shoulders. She said she came for ice cream.
When she grows up, she will find out that her dad, Zijo Ribic, is a widely known peacemaker, whose childhood was nowhere near as carefree as hers. Ribic carries indescribable pain and trauma in his soul, but also unconditional faith in love and good.
As a boy thrown alive into a mass grave
“I witnessed the worst atrocities of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was eight years old when my pregnant mother, 6 sisters, two-year-old brother and father were raped and killed before my eyes. I was wounded and thrown into a mass grave. By sheer luck I was saved and somehow crawled out… I was saved by two JNA soldiers, they hid me and treated my wounds in Zvornik, and thanks to them I came to safety in Montenegro”, says Ribic and explains how he continued to be treated in Montenegro for two whole years and how it took him a long time to start talking and crying again.
Without anyone of his own, a difficult fate and the war brought him from his native village of Skocic near Kozluk to Tuzla, where he found refuge in the Home for children without parental care. He also met his current wife at the Home, and today he is the proud father of little Sara and a cook at PI Nase dijete.
From pain, peace was born
“Some people took everything from me, others gave me everything. Because of them, I know today that forgiveness and peace are the only way. Because of them, I am talking about everything I went through, so that it never happens again to any child. Because of my Sara, I forgive, because how can I teach a child about evil after everything? I also sent my message of peace in October at the Interreligious Prayer for Peace in Rome, where I participated at the invitation of Pope Francis. It was a great honor for me, where I proudly said that I am a Bosnian and Herzegovinian, a member of the most numerous national minority, Roma. Unfortunately, there is no space for my voice to be heard in my homeland, because I do not belong to any constituent peoples. Because I’m unfit. Because I am not interested in anything but reconciliation, happiness and better conditions for all of us. That’s why I’m at the protests. That’s why I’m talking. If, because of me, five people decide that hatred is not worth anything, I will be happy, because I hope that one day, we will all be people again”, says Ribic and adds that due to his obligations this year, unfortunately he will not be able to be in Srebrenica on July 11 to pay his respects to the victims of genocide. He himself, as he says, is still looking for the remains of one of his sisters, while he has buried other family members over the past years.
My daughter will walk through life with an open soul
“Whenever I can, I visit their graves, so that they give me strength and confirm again and again that I have chosen the right path in life. When it’s hard for me, I stand in front of the mirror and open my soul to the man I see in the reflection. That’s how I ease my soul. Life is full of injustice and pain, but that is no reason for my Sara not to walk through life with an open soul and love for everyone. The children are not to blame for anything,” our interviewee explains that his four-year-old daughter is his biggest motivation.
Although fate played a cruel game with him, today Ribic is happy that he started his family life in Tuzla. For him, it is one of the rare cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina that today remains the same as it was before the war. However, as he claims, peace is built in peace and the messages of unity must be louder, especially if we take into account the complex political situation in our country. In this regard, he adds that it hurts him when he sees that the pain of those who have lost their loved ones is used for various political purposes and personal interests. For him, July in Srebrenica is a day of remembrance, remembrance and respect for those who lost their family members. Understanding, respect and support are the only values that we should carry in ourselves in July, says Ribic.
He sends messages of peace around the world
With great faith in good people, in August, Ribic will visit the memorial center and the former Auschwitz concentration camp, where he will once again open his own wounds in order to preserve peace and send a message of forgiveness and love. He will walk the path of peace as long as he lives, for a better today and for a better tomorrow, because he knows that his family would be proud of him today. With a request to send a message of love on his behalf, we say goodbye, because he is going to get ready for the next working day in which he will cook with a smile for the children of the kindergarten where he works. The children’s laughter that he hears every day at the workplace are for him a song, motivation, life.
Below are parts of Ribic’s address before the participants of the Interreligious Prayer for Peace in Rome:
On July 12, 1992, “Sima’s Chetniks” – a paramilitary unit from Serbia entered my village of Skocic near Zvornik, which had a Roma population. We believed that no one would harm us, because we have never done anything wrong, we are not warriors.
I watched them beat and torture men, rape girls and women, I watched them rape my 13-year-old sister Zlata, demand money and gold, load us like cattle into a truck and take us to the village of Malesic near Zvornik.
God wanted me to survive, gave me the purpose to look for my loved ones, to testify, to warn, to say that revenge is not the way, nor is hatred.
All of my family members were found and identified in the secondary mass grave “Crni vrh”, all except little Zlata who was only 3 years old. No one has yet been held accountable for this crime.
I proved everything with the first verdict, they got 72 years in prison, but when the state stands behind the crime and annuls the verdict due to lack of evidence, and your state, your people do not stand behind you in proving the crime, then the murderers are still walking free – unpunished.
Source: mreza-mira.net
