In an earlier post, Mr. Mladenovic wrote: "Just recently, a few days ago, the Bosnian Muslims destroyed another Serbian church, this time in the town of Ilijas. This is the territory that has recently came under the control of the Izetbegovic government."
In my response, I mentioned that Andras Riedlmayer who hosts the NYT Times Bosnia forum on Cultural Heritage and others are working to make such deliberate annihilation of cultural and religious heritage defineable as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On a more immediate level, international aid agencies can help by refusing to transfer any funds to any governmental agency or political party or individual, either of the Bosnian federation or of the Republika Srpska that may be still involved in either commissioning or deliberately condoning the destruction of religious and cultural monuments.
Mr. Mladenovic, do you have further information to share with us one this church? What was its name? Any specific information on the date of its destruction, the actions (or lack of action) of the local police, any possible suspects, the reaction (or lack of reaction) of local religious and cultural leaders? Is the local priest and other people involved with the church safe? Were any local Serbs injured?
If you can find this data, it would be very helpful to share it with us. If there are any photos of the church, I believe we should make them available on the internet, as we are trying to reconstruct all the destroyed monuments on the internet.
The goal of "ethnic cleansers" is not only to destroy the monuments, but to destroy the memory of them. I think we must work to prevent the physical destruction, to punish those who carried out, and to make sure the destruction of historical memory can never succeed.
Michael Sells