Tomo Buzov

Tomo Buzov (1940 – February 27, 1993) was a retired officer of Yugoslav People's Army who was murdered for trying to prevent the Štrpci massacre.

His death has been the subject of the 2024 Palme d'Or-winning short film The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent.

Biography
Buzov was a Croat, born in Kaštel Novi near Split in 1940. As a professional soldier in the Yugoslav People's Army, he moved to Belgrade. He was a navy officer and signalman. He went into early retirement some time before the war because he felt he should not be an active soldier any more.

On 27 February 1993, Buzov took a train from Belgrade to Bar to visit his son Darko, who was doing his regular military service in Montenegro. As the train was passing through Bosnia, where war was raging, armed members of the army of Republika Srpska stopped the train in the village of Štrpci. They selected 20 Bosniak civilians among the passengers. One of those civilians, a 17-year-old boy, was sitting in the same compartment as Buzov. Buzov asked the soldiers what they were doing and what army they belonged to. He said he was a retired officer. They said it was none of his business and started to take the civilians out of the train. Buzov told the boy to remain seated and went out instead of him. The 20 civilians including Buzov were taken to the local Serb command post, beaten and handcuffed with wire, and taken to a place near Višegrad where they were shot and thrown in the River Drina. The Serb commander Milan Lukić participated in the massacre.

Aftermath
In 2009, Lukić was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Court in the Hague for other crimes. A Bosnian court accused him in 2020 for the massacre in Štrpci, but Lukić, imprisoned in Estonia, refused to acknowledge it. In 2023, a court in Sarajevo sentenced seven Bosnian Serbs to 91 years in prison for murdering 20 non-Serbian civilians from the train.

The Bosniak youth saved by Buzov survived the war and has three children.

Legacy
The municipality of Novi Beograd placed a memorial plaque on the building where Buzov lived. The inscription reads: "Tomo Buzov. JNA Captain First Class. In memory of the humanity and courage of the man who lived at this address. April 2023."

There is a memorial plaque and a dock named after him in his hometown of Kaštel Novi.

Buzov is the subject of the 2024 short film The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (in Croatian: Čovjek koji nije mogao šutjeti), based on his tragic death. It was directed by Nebojša Slijepčević, with Dragan Mićanović portraying Buzov. The film was a Croatian-Bulgarian-French-Slovenian co-production. At the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Short Film Palme d'Or.