Bosnia-Herzegovina
Report #6 – Srebrenica,
part one By Peter Lippman
August 2013
2013 Report index
Report 1: Kosovo, mid-July, 2013 Report 2: Sarajevo, July 2013 Report 3: Sarajevo, continued July 2013 Report 4: Tuzla, July 2013 Report 5: Mostar, July 2013 Report 6: Srebrenica, August 2013 Report 7: Srebrenica, continued, August 2013
Report 8: Prijedor and vicinity, August
2013
Report 9: Prijedor and vicinity,
part two, August
2013 Report 10:
Tomašica,
December 2013
To contact Peter
in response to these reports or any of his articles,
At
the end of July I traveled to Srebrenica to visit a few friends,
interview folks, and catch up on the situation there. There’s much
that’s been going on in and around the town since I was there last
fall.
Just a couple of weeks before I arrived, the annual commemoration
and reburial of newly identified remains of Srebrenica massacre
victims was held at the memorial cemetery in Potočari. It was July
11th, the eighteenth anniversary of the fall of the
enclave.
This year 409 remains were reburied. That number includes a newborn
baby girl who died just after being born, in the chaotic crowd of
terrified refugees who had gathered around the Dutchbat base on that
day in 1995. Dutch soldiers buried the infant in an unmarked grave
near the base, and her remains were not found until this year.
As of this anniversary, 6,066 identified victims have been reburied
at Potočari, and 88 elsewhere. Well over 2,000 are still missing.
A couple of days after the commemoration Srebrenica survivors,
including members of several women's groups and the March 1stCoalition,
visited several places that had been known to be killing sites
during the massacres. Among these was community agricultural center
in the village of Kravica, where some one thousand captives were
shot in one night. (For my previous writings about the March 1st
Coalition, click
here and
here, also reports #2 and 3 of this series.)
These locations were held as off-limits by the local Serb-controlled
police, and the women became involved in a scuffle with special
police as they attempted to enter the agricultural warehouse. The
mothers had cut through a wire fence and broken through a police
cordon to arrive at the building. The police responded violently,
injuring eight women, most of whom were widows and survivors of the
Srebrenica massacres.
Soon afterwards, Srebrenica police called several activists for
“informational conversations,” the traditional police euphemism for
interrogation. People from the March 1st Coalition and from the
mothers’ organizations alike were called. One activist from the
Coalition commented on the interrogations thus: “The policy of
harassment of returnees is being carried out from Prijedor and
Kozarac to Višegrad, Foča, Rogatica, Zvornik, and Srebrenica…it is
unacceptable that the families of the victims are being summoned for
interrogations because they were carrying out visits to honor the
victims of genocide, while on the other hand, the entire government
of the Federation becomes involved [i.e., undertakes security
measures] when representatives come from the RS to Sarajevo to
remember their fallen fighters.”
Hatidža Mehmedović, president of the organization Srebrenica Mothers
and one of those called for interrogation, sad that she is “prepared
to answer for everything,” but that “the law exists that allows us
to visit all the places of mass execution....Those places are not
private property. I know that I will be seen as guilty because I am
Hatidža. I am guilty because I was not supposed to survive, let
alone to visit the scenes of the crime.”
Emir Suljagić, coordinator of the March 1st
Coalition, said that there is “no longer any doubt that the
government in the Republika Srpska behaves as occupiers towards the
non-Serbs who live there…What happened today in Srebrenica, in
Europe can only happen in Belarus, as in Afghanistan. From the point
of view of human rights the RS entity is Kandahar and the government
in Banja Luka behaves towards non-Serbs the way that the Taliban in
Afghanistan do towards those who are not in their favor.” He also
accused the RS police forces of having participated directly in the
execution of Bosniaks, now summoning the mothers and children of
those victims for interrogation.
In response to
Suljagić's
comments, Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska
Željka Cvijanović announced that her government was preparing a
criminal indictment against Suljagic, saying, “We have analyzed
everything that Suljagić said, and in his statements there is much
more than that which is called unacceptable language. Hate speech is
in question here, which could cause serious disturbances in
relations between the ethnic communities.” In turn, Suljagić said
that he looked forward to such a court case, saying that he would
prove that “the RS is implementing a policy of occupation towards
non-Serbs, from their educational policy and the fact that public
institutions, the elementary schools, have Saint’s days, they force
non-Serb children to observe those Saint’s days, to what happened in
Kravica...Prime Minister Cvijanović and I know that nothing is going
to come of that indictment.”
Oddly, Srđan Dizdarević, respected president of the Sarajevo-based
Helsinki Human Rights Committee, concurred with Cvijanović. It’s
hard to tell what the background to this stance on the part of an
otherwise very reasonable man was, from a distance. In response,
Suljagić called on him to “come to Bratunac and to see how it is to
be a non-Serb under this occupying regime, in which the government
behaves like the Wehrmacht.” And Dizdarević answered that “any
speech that qualifies a contemporary state as fascist is undoubtedly
hate speech and should be sanctioned.” Suljagić’s lawyer pointed out
that Suljagić’s statements did not constitute an attack on any
ethnic group or religion.
Meanwhile the SDS, the Serb nationalist party which poses as
opposition to Dodik’s party, got into the act. The SDS is Dodik’s
rival, but the competition centers mainly around power, and around
which party will win laurels as the fiercest nationalist. So it was
just a political move when the head of the SDS caucus in the RS
Parliament criticized pressure on the activists by saying, “The RS
government should have stopped Suljagić in 2012 when we were all
watching what was happening in Srebrenica...Suljagić should be taken
seriously, as he has shown that he knows what he wants, how much he
can achieve, and he saw that the authorities in the RS closed their
eyes at certain moments regarding the March 1st
Coalition and the elections in 2012.”
One of the ways you can see that this is just politics is that, in
fact, the RS authorities did not close their eyes during the
municipal elections in Srebrenica a year ago. They actively brought
in “voters” from across the river in Serbia. They just didn’t bring
in enough of them. (I witnessed this and wrote about it earlier this
year – see
this.)
Attempts at repression against the activists continued. In mid-July
three burglars attempted to break into Suljagić’s house in Bratunac,
up the road from Srebrenica, when he was away. However, when they
discovered that not only was his dog there, but also a friend who
was guarding the house and taking care of the dog, they gave up and
went away. Police declined to investigate the incident “because it
was raining.”
Harassment of Bosniak returnees and expressions of hate towards
Muslim returnees have escalated in the eastern part of the Republika
Srpska. In early August, at the end of Ramadan, the 73-year-old
president of the local Islamic community, Nezir Dardagan, was beaten
by drunken attackers on his way to an early morning religious
service. Dardagan had to be hospitalized. In Srebrenica the only
Muslim doctor working in that municipality was summarily fired, only
to be reinstated under great pressure from activists and the
international community. In Višegrad a returnee was threatened with
confiscation of her house, which after the war had been occupied by
some displaced Serbs, because she was unable to pay them $15,000 for
improvements that they had made to the house – with materials
donated by the RS government.
Around the same time, in the Serbian Orthodox church in the center
of Srebrenica, visitors sang songs honoring Ratko Mladić, Radovan
Karadžić, and World War II Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović. And at a
country fair near Bratunac a visiting band sang of a “new Vukovar”
and a “new Srebrenica,” that is, implicitly calling for new
massacres of Muslims.
View of Srebrenica
More On The Proposed Law On Residency (Prebivalište)
Soon after
Ćamil Duraković won the mayoral election in Srebrenica a year ago in
spite of finagling by those wishing to throw the vote to the
candidate of Milorad Dodik's party (see
this), local police in the municipality began to annul the
newly-registered residency records of people who had voted for
Duraković. In fact, three hundred returnees' names were removed from
the residency lists based on accusations of
“fictitious registration.” Proof of false registration was never
demonstrated, and activists from the March 1st
Coalition appealed against this process to the District Court in
Bijeljina. In a rather surprising decision, the Court agreed with
the Coalition and required that the police in Srebrenica cease their
abusive practice.
After all these years the right to return to one’s pre-war home, as
enshrined in Annex 7 of the Dayton constitution, is still under
assault. The proposed new law on residency, still under discussion
in Parliament, threatens to establish new obstacles to return. Among
other things, it prevents potential returnees from registering their
residence in their pre-war home if their destroyed homes have not
been rebuilt. The new law also allows extensive investigation of
returnees’ residency including permitting authorities to demand
documentation beyond what was previously required. The law also
renders very unclear the rights of exiled Bosnians in the diaspora
who are potential returnees. The March 1st
Coalition has characterized this law as having the goal of “erasing
a broad group of citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina from the records
that afford numerous rights, especially the right to vote.” The
Coalition has pointed out that displaced persons are legally
entitled under present Bosnian law to treatment that eases, rather
than hinders, their return.
In mid-July the law was passed by the Council of Ministers,
(equivalent to the US Cabinet). Then in early August the
state-level House of Representatives did the same, but to date the
law has been blocked in the House of Peoples. Meanwhile, in spite of
the decision in Bijeljina, the Republika Srpska police have
continued with their illegal interpretation of existing laws,
putting the as-yet unadopted revision into practice and annulling
the residency of additional returnees.
Furthermore, the Republika Srpska government is starting to fine
property-owners who have been absent from their property if they are
not paying their taxes. People in the diaspora who own land with
demolished houses on it have often neglected to register their
ownership of that land since the war, and to pay taxes for it. The
RS has recently begun to implement a policy of penalizing these
owners by levying increasing fines on the land, eventually leading
to confiscation.
Some Visits
On arriving at Srebrenica I stopped first at the little kafana on
the way to the house where I stay. I call the place “Zahida’s
Shack,” even though Zahida, who works there from breakfast time till
nearly midnight, doesn’t own the place. But she’s the soul of that
kafana, everyone’s guardian, a warm presence. A force of nature, but
a gentle one. Zahida’s Shack has come to be the “anchor business”
for me in Srebrenica.
After a little visit with Zahida I went up to Suada’s, where I stay,
and chatted with her a while. Suada is an early returnee, and works
for the municipality. As such, she is an employee of the Republika
Srpska. She told me that the
RS reduced government workers’ pay by ten percent this year, after
having done the same thing three years earlier.
Suada doesn’t get involved much in life in the town. A friend of
hers invited her to a book promotion, and some people from
Srebrenica who live in Sarajevo and Tuzla were speaking. They have
finished their doctorates in those towns and they write about
Srebrenica. Suada said to me, “You come here regularly; if only the
politicians would come that often. No one asks the ordinary people
how they are living. Nothing is moving forward here. I went to the
book promotion, but I won’t go back. I experienced an emotional
shock there, because those people make their careers on Srebrenica
but they don’t give anything to the city. I won’t go back to those
events, because I don’t have two or three lives to live through all
that.”
*
I dropped by the Srebrenica Youth Center (Omladinski Centar)
to talk to Mikica Nikolić,
whom I've visited in years past – read
thisand
this. After many years of very effective and steadfast youth
activism in Srebrenica, she is now stepping down as director of the
Center. We caught up briefly on what’s new with that local
institution.
Mikica told me, “We have achieved some good results, in the sense
that we have developed good communication at the local level and
with other organizations in BiH. So we’ve been able to prepare
bigger projects. I’m glad that we’ve achieved this level of
functioning. The Omladinski Centar is in the municipality budget for
this year. We have 10,000 KM designated for the Center. And we have
7,000 KM for the work of the Youth Council of Srebrenica (Savjet
Mladih), for programs in the area of the municipality. This is a
new budget item. So there’s a real material basis on which to work.
We arranged to have two preparatory intern positions in the Center,
from September. This involves two people who have finished college
and will work here for a year. The municipality will pay for this.
So things are somewhat stabilized.”
Q: It looks like your relationship with the municipality is a lot
better than it was before.
Mikica: Yes, we are collaborating very well. We had a program of
monitoring the work of the municipal assembly. We had trained some
young people to do the monitoring for eight months, and at the end
they drafted a report. Through the process, we and the assembly
became better acquainted with each other. It became appropriate that
the assembly would be part of our projects and be aware of what we
were doing.
We have implemented a lot of projects: for example, in March we had
a group of ten people who came from five countries to do a project,
a theater festival. Those were five incredible days. We tried to
have the money that participants spent go to the local stores and
restaurants, to have them go to all the restaurants, and to stay in
people’s houses, so that people here could earn from that event. And
during those five days of people being here, 8,000 euro were spent
in Srebrenica. So those were some real resources that were directed
this way.”
Q: How did the “Baby Revolution, the Bebolucija, look to you
here in Srebrenica?
Mikica: “I supported the protests, although couldn’t be there. I
expected something bigger to happen, that it would carry on longer.
But activists have a big, long-term problem, in that ordinary people
are marginalized; they aren’t thinking for themselves. It would have
been good to see the Bebolucija grow; it needed to be taking place
in Banja Luka as well.
And you have to have people working in every little place, in
Srebrenica, Bratunac and elsewhere.
“In the long term, we need to work to overcome the boundaries
created in the Dayton agreement. This will mainly take place in the
economic sense. And when I look at this as an activist, we have
never offered the authorities a solution, for anything. Never. I
remember times when we have been involved in various projects and
protest actions, and we have not offered any solution, just saying,
'We're asking for this, we're asking for that,' and so on. Then,
without a concrete strategy and demands, it's easy for them to break
up our effort. So we need to come up with more concrete ideas about
changes.
“Unfortunately, the protest events became subject to political
manipulation. The media in the Federation supported the actions, but
in the Republika Srpska, politicians condemned the protest. They
blamed the whole thing on the March 1st Coalition. But
really – and the activists recognize this – part of the problem lies
with the clumsy and overgrown government in the Federation.”
We talked about politics. Bosnia is almost always either winding
down from one election or winding up for the next. Mikica said, “The
politicians here work in a manipulative way. That which should be
important is no longer important. For example, what are the
politicians offering in their platforms? How many people even read
someone's platform? Rather, they read the politicians' names, that's
all. And also, a politician may advocate for multi-ethnicity, for
employment for more people; politicians have to have their political
platform. But they know that people don't read that. Because,
understand, there are many uneducated people. That means not that
they can't read and write, but they are uninformed. So the
politicians don't care what those people think. And they're all
'democrats.' But the reality is completely different. And we
citizens are the ones who allow them to operate this way, and it
will stay this way until the people push the politicians to behave
differently.”
Above
the stage in the Youth Center there hung a banner that read, “Bunt
Protiv Mržnje,” Revolt against Hate. I asked Mikica what this
referred to. She told me that it was
an initiative of her organization, promoted by a network of eight
youth groups in Srebrenica and Bratunac. The network was formed in
April of this year, in response to periodic incidents that activists
characterized as having been caused by prejudice. This includes
recent desecration both of Orthodox and Muslim cemeteries, as well
as the above-mentioned singing of nationalist songs in Bratunac and
in the Orthodox church in Srebrenica.
In response to these and other incidents, youth organizations from
the two municipalities got together and held a series of workshops
on the theme, “Incidents committed from prejudice and crimes
committed from hate.”
The network of youth activists then carried out a survey of 451
citizens of the two municipalities, asking them their opinions on
the incidents. The response was that a majority of those questioned
were aware of the incidents, but they did not display an inclination
to react to them.
The network has since carried out some projects and actions,
including the plastering of public places in Srebrenica and Bratunac
with stickers that read “Revolt against Hate: Initiative for the
struggle against hate-motivated incidents.” Activists announced the
goal of raising the awareness of citizens about the existence of
incidents and to prevent further such incidents. A statement
released by the network in August expressed concern about the
singing of “songs that cause fear and insecurity on the part of
others,” which read, in part,
“We are concerned on behalf of our children and their future, where
such occurrences and hate speech are becoming everyday events, and
in all spheres of society, which causes fear and mistrust among all
citizens. In recent times we are witness that the majority of
activities that have been carried out by certain politicians and
religious leaders in our surroundings have resulted in greater and
greater discord and mistrust among members of the different
religious communities. We consider that the basic reason for this is
the lack of dialogue and will…
“The situation and the direct results of such incidents are visible
as well in the social networks where an increased level of
intolerant and violent speech can be observed. WE ARE ALL
RESPONSIBLE, and when we say ‘all,’ we refer to the entire local
community and every individual who lives in this area.
“We young people, gathered around the joint initiative, call upon
the community to take responsibility and we call upon the citizens,
that is, the civil, religious, and political sector to do the
same…the Revolt against Hate expects the mayors of Bratunac and
Srebrenica municipalities to weigh in on these incidents, to take a
position, and to initiate dialogue on these and other themes between
the Orthodox and Islamic communities and citizens…”
The statement’s heading reads, “The basic principles of every faith
are peace, love, and tolerance!”
*
I went up to the municipal building and visited Senad Subašić,
who works as an economic advisor to the municipality. We discussed
the economic potential of the municipality which, before the war,
was economically one of the strongest in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Senad said, “We need to concentrate on the economy, to work with the
potential of our resources, and to resolve problems with the
infrastructure. The Embassies have helped. They have helped fix the
roads, the clinics, and the playgrounds. And we could develop our
fruit production, raspberries, blackberries.
“In Yugoslavia the big mistake was that bad companies were
supported. You can’t duplicate capacities in a superfluous way, as
was done in Yugoslavia.
“There has to be two-way trade throughout the region. For example,
zinc is mined here. In Bulgaria they can smelt the zinc. Recently
there was a meeting in Croatia with the Serbs, Slovenians, and
Bosnia, to talk about such arrangement.”
Senad shows me a study, about two inches thick, of 250 sources of
drinking water in Srebrenica municipality. He shows me a bottle of
Vivia water from Lukavac, and says, “This water can’t be better than
what we have here.”
Senad brings up one of his current ideas, the promotion of
bioplastics – a word I had not heard before, although I have seen
plastic bags made from corn. He says, “There could be a factory of
bio-plastics here. You can make the plastic from corn, from
potatoes. If you plant a ton of potatoes, you get sixty tons back.”
I asked Senad about one of the strongest potential income
generators, the Guber spa which, before the war, attracted tourists
from around the Balkans and beyond. The spa has been famous at least
since Austro-Hungarian times for the curative powers of its mineral
springs. Senad told me, “Guber is the main way that Srebrenica can
come out of its economic crisis. People would come, and there would
be money.”
The restaurant and hotel that were surrounded by different mineral
springs, at the center of the spa, are located in the hills above
Srebrenica, at the end of a several-kilometers walk through the
woods. This building was bombed and burnt up during the war. I would
walk up there every time I visited Srebrenica, imagining and feeling
the good times that were had there in better days. There have even
been a few festive gatherings there since the war, for example on
May Day. Last fall I went to the former spa and saw that a developer
had started to construct a couple of massive buildings. But the
construction site was fenced off and no work was underway.
I asked Senad what was going on with the building project, and he
informed me that reconstruction of the Guber spa is being blocked by
the Republika Srpska government. He explained, “There is a
concession for the hotel, and a separate one for exploitation of the
waters. The RS government is not allowing the hotel owner to have
access to the waters, so he can’t function.”
We talked about the population of returnees in Srebrenica – this
refers both to Serbs and Bosniaks. Senad read me off the list of
nineteen local communities within the municipality, with population
figures for each one, compiled by a Japanese survey group. The
figures for everyone officially living in the municipality, Serbs
and Bosniaks both, totaled to 4,428 residents, with some two
thousand of these living in Srebrenica town.
These numbers refer to the registered inhabitants and, as always,
they can’t be precise. There are registered returnees who have not
actually returned or only spend part of their time in Srebrenica,
and there are returnees who have actually come back home to stay,
but who have not registered in Srebrenica – often because they
prefer the pensions and/or health services that they receive in the
Federation. With the recent census (completed October 15th),
whose results will be out early next, the figures may become more
accurate. Or maybe not.
Senad wound up our conversation on a positive note, saying, “The
conditions for real life exist here. There are cultural events:
Dani Srebrenice (the summertime festival Srebrenica days), and
a film festival.” I should point out that both of these events were
strongly supported by the Youth Center, as well as other
organizations including Prijatelji.
“Now the street lighting is LED, and we have a TV station. The water
is good. The internet service here is the same as in Vienna,” Senad
continued. “Around 2,500 people are employed here, and a thousand
unemployed. Though there are some farmers who are employed, but they
are not registered as such. If we can add 250 more jobs, then we
will be on a level economically with the EU.”
It’s pretty clear that Srebrenica is better off than when I first
went there in 1999, when it was a miserable place and no Bosniaks
had returned yet. But I’m not sure that the Srebrenica represented
in these last comments is the same one I encountered outside and at
Zahida’s shack, or at Suada’s. My friend Vanja at the NGO SARA says
that “it’s worse here than it was five years ago.”
Artist's conception of future Guber spa
Guber spa construction at a standstill
I
spoke briefly with Tatjana Mihajlović, an official at the local
office of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, an intergovernmental organization). She said, “People who
live here are all in the same situation, regardless of whether they
are Serb or Bosniak. In the villages it is difficult to buy things.
Places like Krušev Do and Luka are remote. And it is harder to get
employment here than in places like Sarajevo and Tuzla. The critical
mass of people here is lacking. There is a lack of investment and
jobs. For the amount of money that has been donated in the cause of
Srebrenica, the results are too small.
“Meanwhile, there are 102 people employed at Cimos [the
Slovenian-owned auto parts factory in Potočari. The company is
looking to sell the factory. They want to leave. So those people
might lose their jobs.”
All this reminds me of something that the journalist and activist
Hasan Hadžić had recently said to me: “The hope for recovery in
Srebrenica was lost when only ten percent of the population
returned. It lost critical mass in the late 1990s. If it had been
20% or more, things could have been different.”
But there are more hopeful people in Srebrenica, not only Senad
Subašić. There are the activists, pozitivci who are making
things happen.
*
I was sitting in front of Zahida’s shack one night. Emir Suljagić
came over and sat with Ćamil Duraković and some other people. As he
left he said hello to me. I told him to take care of himself,
because I had heard about the attack on his house. He said not to
worry, “They can go fuck themselves.”
*
I was talking to Amela, the daughter of my old friends Munevera and
Salih, at her brother’s kafana one evening. Amela’s friend “Rizo”
came over to sit down with us. He recognized me from somewhere and
the first thing he said to me was “agent.” (That’s pronounced “AH-ghent.”)
I replied to him, “It’s amazing that everyone knows that I’m a spy,
even though I know nothing about them.” Amela said that I was “Agent
007.” I said, “No, make that Agent 000.”
Rizo asked me what year I was born. In Bosnian you don’t ask how old
someone is, but what year they were born. When I answered him, Rizo
said I was one year younger than his father would be, if he were
still alive. He said that his father died when he was 45. I said,
“That’s very young!” Then he made it clear that his father had been
killed when Srebrenica fell. They were in the column of men who were
trying to escape through the woods. His father was about a half hour
from the free territory, when there was an ambush and he was killed.
I did not say anything, because it did not seem to me that there was
anything I could say to this. To say “I’m sorry” just feels too
puny.
Rizo said that he had started to write a book about his experiences
after the war, but that he stopped. He wishes he had done it, but if
he does it now, it makes him “too nervous.” He can’t do it. At the
time, he says, he remembered everything, all the details, but now he
doesn’t. I said that for some people, the writing could be a kind of
therapy.
As we were talking, the muezzin began calling the ezan, the prayer
that calls people to the mosque. The dogs around the mosque started
barking. Rizo said that this was because “when the muezzin starts
calling, demons that are hanging around the mosque fly away. The
dogs can sense them because they are more sensitive to that sort of
thing than we are.”
Rizo asked me what religion I was and I said that I was Jewish. He
asked me why Hitler killed so many Jews, and I said, “For the same
reason Šešelj killed so many Muslims.” Rizo was grasping for an
explanation, saying, “maybe it was because of fear.” Regarding the
Bosnian war, we agreed that the killing was about controlling
territory.
Rizo was very unhappy about what was going on in Bosnia and in
Srebrenica. He was saying, “They steal, and they don’t give us
anything. They have fixed facades to the buildings in Srebrenica,
what good do facades do us? Amela said, “Give us jobs and then when
we get money we’ll fix them ourselves.”
Rizo, looking up at the sky, asked me if I believe in God.
I said, “Ok, if I get to define God in my own way.” I told him the
story of the neighbor kid who asked me if I believed in God. I was
only about four years old, so I didn’t know the answer. I consulted
with my mother, and she said, “God is in you.” I didn’t understand
that, but I never forgot it. After about forty years I decided that
what my mother had said made sense. So this is what I told Rizo.
I said that I didn’t know why people think of God as out there
somewhere, or up in the sky. Rizo said, “It’s just what people do,
they look up when they mention God.” I said that as soon as you
separate God from yourself, you are separating everything essential
from yourself, and you are relinquishing responsibility for
everything good or bad, and relying on dogma. In that case, I said,
the whole proposition goes south and I don’t want any part of it.
Rizo said that some people have said to him that God doesn’t exist,
but that he believes. For example, if I have a book, and he steals
it, well, then something bad will happen to him.
I asked, “What about all the people who do horrible things and
nothing happens to them?”
Rizo answered, “Sometimes it is delayed. Or it will happen to their
children.”
I: “Sometimes nothing happens.”
Rizo: “Or they will get a bad conscience.”
I: “Some people don’t seem to have any conscience. You’re talking
about morals and conscience. Those are things that we have in us, if
they exist at all. So I’m sticking with what my mother said.”
That was the extent of our conversation. But thinking about it
later, I realized that Rizo was basically defining God as justice.
