As in previous years, today, on the 30th anniversary of this city’s suffering, we have visited two sites where grave crimes against its citizen were committed – the Danube river and Ovčara. We have also lit candles at the St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox church for all the innocent victims and all the dead.
We have done so with a strong feeling of compassion for their suffering as well as for the suffering which their ordeal had caused and is still causing to their loved ones. It is our duty to remember them and to remember them in such a way as to strengthen a sense of peace among the citizens of Vukovar and of Croatia. Even more than that, it is our duty to strengthen the sense of peace on both sides of the river Danube.
Less than 20 years after the horrible World War II, Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer signed the Elysee Treaty or the Treaty of Friendship between their respective countries and thus created foundations of the post-war and of today’s Europe. Over the past 30 years, we have made repeated starts along this path only to return to the starting points. This is why today, and with the strongest feeling of piety for the victims of suffering of this city and the country, I would like to say the following:
I was not here in Vukovar 30 years ago, but it is as if I had been. I was not there in Glina 80 years ago, but it is as if I had been. We bear all these places, all these years, all these wars, in our minds to this day, but not in a proper way.
We should be living our lives and not the deaths of our dead. We should be living our lives and not the hatred of our own or others’ historic animosities. We should be living the lives of our children, unless we want someone else to live their lives. We should be living the future of our children and not the past of our fathers, grandfathers and grand-grandfathers. Those of 30 and those of 80 years ago. Yes, we should not be living in a circle, in a spinning wheel of death, hatred and the horrible past of our predecessors.
Coming here and to all the other places where we have been or where we would like and should go, we are coming for the sake of life and not death, for the sake of freedom and not hatred, in the name of the future and not the past. We come here to revive and rethink our ideals, the ideals of our future life and our future freedoms. We come here to move away from everything that was destroying lives, limiting freedoms, and obliterating the ideals of free individuals and free nations, so that we can have a clear view of this and be able to defend it in times of need.
We do not know how much more time it will take before moral and political authorities of nations, faiths and states should share compassion and regret at this and other places in such a way that piety of ones will become piety of others and last as such, without being restrained by the borders of identity or politics. What we do know, is that we must be doing all we can so that this wait does not turn into a permanent state. This is why we are doing what we are doing. This is why we are saying what we are saying. In the name of those who perished and those missing. In the name of peace and prosperity of each of us.
Vukovar, November 16th 2021