"Sarajevo safari": Documentary film by Slovenian director Miran Zupanić

“Sarajevo safari” (2022): Documentary film by Slovenian director Miran Zupanić

IRINA MIROCHNIK

(safari – a reserve where hunting for wild animals is allowed in Africa)

Sarajevo Safari tells the story of wealthy Westerners who paid Serbs to kill Bosnian civilians in 1992-1996.

An investigation conducted for the preparation of the documentary showed that during the siege of Bosnia, wealthy people from America, Russia, Italy and Canada paid the Serbian army and fired on civilians from the front.

It is noted that rich people who paid money were first taken by plane to Belgrade, and then by a special car – to the Serbian fronts, where they were placed in comfortable conditions and allowed to shoot civilians. It is pointed out that rich people who had the right to shoot had to pay more when they wanted to shoot children.

To date, the identity of those who paid money for the “hunt” has not been established.

In the announcement of the documentary, witnesses of this “safari” and relatives of civilians who died as a result of shelling from the Serbian fronts spoke about their experiences

Rocket strikes on critical civilian infrastructure in Ukraine during the autumn-winter period echo Miran Zupanić’s “Sarajevo Safari” (Slovenia 2022), a documentary about perhaps the most bizarre pathological event that took place during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996

It is known that snipers in the hills around Sarajevo, occupied by the Serbian military, fired randomly at the inhabitants in the streets below in the valley.

It is also known that selected Serb allies (mostly Russians) were invited to fire a few shots at Sarajevo, but this was considered an honor, a sign of special appreciation, and not paid “VIP tourism”.

Now we know about the real deals: dozens of wealthy foreigners (from the US, Britain and Italy) paid high fees for the opportunity to shoot at the inhabitants of besieged Sarajevo. The trip was organized by the Bosnian Serb Army and their clients were transported from Belgrade to Pale (the Serbian capital of Bosnia in the mountains near Sarajevo) and then taken to a safe place overlooking Sarajevo in the valley.

From the documentary, we learn that not only the leadership of the Serbian-Bosnian army knew about this safari, but also the NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia – but why didn’t they make it public or simply bombed the positions of snipers?

Of particular interest here, however, is the form of subjectivity of the “hunter” safari: the victims were not personified, they remained anonymous, a symbolic wall separated the hunter and the target; but it was not a video game, the victims were part of reality, and the realization of this fact constitutes the perverse meaning of such a “hunt”.

More precisely, not only the victim was out of reality, but also the “hunter” himself, who excluded himself from everyday reality and felt himself above reality.

Thus, reality itself became part of the spectacle in which the hunter could pretend not to be personally involved.

There’s something perverted about that, isn’t there?

Another example of the same madness. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president who is now vice chairman of the Russian Security Council, recently said that “the US-led NATO military alliance would be too afraid of a ‘nuclear apocalypse’ to intervene directly in a conflict in response to Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons”: He believes that even in this situation, NATO will not directly intervene in the conflict, Medvedev said.

“After all, the security of Washington, London and Brussels is much more important for the North Atlantic Alliance than the fate of a dying Ukraine, which no one needs. The supply of modern weapons is a clean business for Western countries. Demagogues overseas and Europe will not perish in a nuclear apocalypse. That is why they will agree to the use of any weapon in the current conflict.”

But is he really that far from the truth, you ask yourself?

Back in August 2022, Medvedev said that the proposal to punish Russia for war crimes in Ukraine threatens the existence of mankind in view of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal.

Again, why does Medvedev rely on his own subjective logic when he says this?

He does not count himself among those who will perish, as if he somehow survives a global nuclear catastrophe, as if humanity (something like Sarajevo) is located in the valley, and he is at a safe distance higher on the hill, watching the fight in the valley. Of course, he knows, cannot but know, that the end of humanity is its end, but he speaks as if he does not know or understand this.

Against the background of the formal annexation of Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, Medvedev’s words should be interpreted as follows: any Ukrainian invasion of these parts could be declared a threat to the survival of Russia as a state, thus justifying the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

In the Bosnian War, they paid for shooting at the besieged Sarajevo.

The killer safari that made criminals untouchable. When Dmitry Medvedev now threatens Ukraine and the world with nuclear weapons, he means something similar. But he is making a mistake that Western pacifists repeat over and over again, starting with NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg: if only there was no escalation…

For months, the West has been obsessed with what goes on in Putin’s head, though his goals are mysterious and obscure only to the liberal West.

Remember how, in the early days of the war, the Western powers offered Zelensky to take him out of Kyiv on a special plane, implying that Ukraine was already lost to them.

This hysterical, hasty proposal clearly showed the West’s true desire to quickly overcome the crisis, to return to the profitable “business” with Russia, thwarted by unexpected Ukrainian resistance.

And isn’t the collective West ready to sacrifice Ukraine today for the sake of world peace and appeasement of the aggressor?

The real madness is that we are talking about the threat of nuclear annihilation while we are ALL committing collective suicide, ignoring catastrophic environmental changes – as if the self-destruction we are already slowly moving towards would be less frightening if we focused on the potential future of nuclear war.

This threat of nuclear annihilation makes us (those who can make decisions, push buttons) a version of Homo Deus, but in a negative way: the only divine act we are capable of today is self-destruction, something that we have only recently learned can make even the stupid COVID-19 virus.

The situation of human hunting described in Sarajevo Safari is increasingly becoming a reflection of the EGO of the privileged elite, not only in the West, but in all parts of the world.

We do not live in the real world, the reality is far away from us in the valley, which we observe from a safe distance.

We intervene in order to get an exciting experience, an adrenaline rush, finally, the pleasure of the spectacle without putting ourselves in danger.

Unfortunately, reality catches up with us from time to time, and we habitually react to it as a “sickeningly peace-loving West”, trying not to provoke a local Apocalypse too much, not to spread it to the entire planet.

[Writer Irina Mirochnik is the President at IMMER Group & Doctor of Philosophy in Law(PhD)]

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