“Dear Jovo, thank you for everything“. Throughout the night Sarajevo paid homage to its hero, Jovan Divjak, the Serbian general who defended the city during the 1,425 days of the interminable siege of the Bosnian capital. “Dear Jovo, thank you for everything”. The good face of “Uncle Jovo”, as everyone in the city called him, projected on the beautiful facade of the Town Hall to remember this man, who died on Thursday at the age of 84, who chose to stay with the weakest and defend the city that had welcomed him. “It was my duty, moral and personal. We are who we choose to be and identity is not immutable. My choice was Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said years ago in an interview.
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Divjak was born in Belgrade in 1937. In the Yugoslav capital he studied at the Military Academy, he was among the young officers who were part of the personal guard of the Marshal Tito, towards which he never hid his admiration. He begins to make a career in the JNA, the Yugoslav army. In the mid-1980s he was in Bosnia, in Sarajevo, with the role of commander of the Territorial Defense. A few years later, with the army now under the control of the nationalist delusions of Slobodan Milosevic and with the troops of Radovan Karadzic advancing towards Sarajevo, in 1992 Divjak decides to abandon the JNA and join the newborn Bosnian army, becoming the number two, to defend the city from the siege that caused 14,000 deaths.
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Considered a traitor by Serbian nationalists and Republika Srpska – the Serb entity of Bosnia – he was instead a hero to the Bosnians. In 2011, hatred of the “traitor” Divjak prompted Belgrade to issue an arrest warrant against him for war crimes. He was arrested in Vienna on his way to Italy for a conference. After three months he was released and was able to return to his Sarajevo, where he continued to live among the people who loved him.
After the war he dedicated the rest of his life to the youngest by founding the association Obrazovanje Gradi BiH (Education builds Bosnia and Herzegovina): thanks to his commitment over 50 thousand young people obtained scholarships to continue their studies. On Tuesday, April 13, the day of his funeral, the Sarajevo government decreed a day of city mourning.
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