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  • EASTERN BOSNIA - APRIL 2001: This are my grandmother’s hands. She survived two wars. 2nd World War and the Bosnian war for independence. Most of her family was exterminated in 2nd world war. Pretty much the offspring of the people that killed her family in 2nd world war committed atrocities in Bosnia in early 90’s. Eastern Bosnia is on the border with neighboring Serbia with river Drina as a natural border. Through the history Bosnia was always a border country between East and West, during the Ottoman period it was the border post towards Austrian empire, before that it was border between Eastern and Western Empire. This position made Bosnia quite a unique conglomerat of ckutures,traditions,religions. Other than that it didn't bring us too much good. When the war was over, a foreign journalist came to interview my professor of poetry, Marko Vesovic. Entering his appartment, the journalist noticed my professor's dog who was lying in a corner. 'What remarkable blue eyes he has,' the journalist said. 'Well, you see,' explained my professor, 'the dog used to eat the same food we ate during the war. Now he is blind. Dogs are ageing seven times faster than we do, so with us it is different. We still have to wait for the effects on us. I never witnessed a mortar shell exploding in front of the people in the market place or a sniper shooting someone in front of my high school. I was always a couple of seconds or minutes late, or I would pass by the market place just before the shell exploded and killed more than sixty people waiting to buy groceries, or I would be running in a dark street with broken glass falling on me. But I've seen people cleaning the streets after shelling, I've seen what was left of a young man after a thirty-kilo shell exploded near him, and I've also seen the face of woman who survived this unhurt. Lately, when I was in Jerusalem for the first time, I wanted to visit the Al-Aksa mosque. At the entrance I was stopped by an Israeli soldier, a native Russian, and an Arab guard of the mosque. 'You are not allowed to enter,' said the soldier. 'You are not Muslim.' 'But I am!' I insisted. They wouldn't believe me. In Italy, I told an acquaintance of mine that I was a Muslim. He was irritated. 'But then,' he said, 'you cannot be a European.' 'But I am!' I replied. The Turks have left us with an unsolved national question. Religion and culture have always been strongly intermingled in our country. When the Ottoman Empire conquered Bosnia in 1453, the strategy it used to establish its rule was Roman: Divide et impera. Religion was the vehicle. Favouring the Muslims helped the Turks run the country, but it divided the Bosnians. In the 19th century, during the era of Romanticism, when Central Europeans began to build up their ideas of nationhood based on concepts of cultural uniqueness, Bosnians developed their own cultural identities out of religious affiliations. But these cultural identities failed to develop into the idea of a Bosnian nation: Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodox were seduced by the ideas of a Great Serbia or a Great Croatia. Today Bosnia is a resort of moderate, autonomous European Islam. Actually most of the population are Christians: Orthodox and Catholics. The Arab countries were not too impressed by the Bosnian version of Islam and their help wasn't sufficient to help us defend ourselves against the former Yugoslav Army, one of the strongest armies in Europe. The body count in the recent war was almost all Bosnian Muslim, but for the first time in the last two hundred years we have a state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a language that is recognized….We've never been closer to a nation. I'm afraid that the fact that Bosnians are white helped us a lot. Probably that's why it took only four years for NATO to intervene in Bosnia. Before the fall of Srebrenica, the UN safe haven zone, foreign involvement was on the level of bringing humanitarian aid, mostly only where the Serbian Army allowed, and counting the shells and bombs falling on Bosnian cities. Then after the fall of Srebrenica and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims that followed it, NATO bombed the Serbian positions and brought peace. The first shelling of their positions around Sarajevo came at night. I remember our windows, covered with humanitarian nylon sheeting with UN signs instead of glass, opening because of the detonations, this time on the Serbian side. My mother cooked a pie to celebrate it. Our lives during the war were reduced to the basics. Having a bath with five-litre canisters and then using the water for the toilet. Making meat pie without meat. We became experts at peeing in the dark. The path to happiness was very short, and the learning curve was steep. Once we all adopted these vital skills, and even got used to our little limbo and for a moment stopped talking about peace, our politicians signed the peace agreement. We have a new anthem now. We also have a new flag. It shows a dark blue ground on which is placed a golden triangle, a row of golden stars on one side. The triangle is meant to represent Bosnia and the row of stars I guess imply the European Union. Today we have to stand in a queue to get a visa for every European country. The writer Ivo Andric, one of two Bosnian Nobel Prize winners, described Bosnia in one of his novels as a 'valley of darkness'. The valley is surely dark; it is dark with Bosnian blood, it is darkened by American ignorance and European impotence, it is dark because of the clouds above. Yet it is our valley (Photo by Ziyah Gafic/Exclusive by Getty Images)

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HRABRIJE OD ZLOČINA – SUPRUGE, MAJKE, PRIJATELJICE, KOLEGICE MEĐU NAMA

Written by TRIAL International - Ured u BiH on . Posted in Novosti

Istrajne u borbi, aktivne su sudionice bh. društva dok čekaju podršku države

Međunarodni dan borbe protiv seksualnog nasilja u konfliktu obilježava se danas širom svijeta, a organizacija TRIAL International – Ured u BiH i ove je godine odlučila dati podršku ženama i muškarcima koji su preživjeli ovaj oblik nasilja i pozvati odgovorne da ispune obaveze prema ovoj ranjivoj kategoriji građana i građanki BiH. Procesuiranje ratnih zločina je otežano i nezadovoljavajuće i veliki je broj još uvijek neriješenih predmeta. Većina preživjelih u BiH još uvijek nije primila adekvatno obeštećenje za štetu koja im je učinjena tokom rata. Unatoč problemima sa kojima se susreću prilikom pokušaja da ostvare svoje pravo na pravdu i reparaciju, preživjele ratnog seksualnog nasilja ne žele dozvoliti da ih uloga “žrtve” obilježi. Pokazujući u svakodnevnici da imaju i druge identitete kao supruge, majke, prijateljice, radne kolegice, te da istrajavaju u svojoj borbi ove žene dokazuju da su – hrabrije od zločina.

Predsjednica Udruženja žrtava rata “Foča 1992-1995”, Halida Uzunović, naglasila je da osobe koje su preživjele ratno seksualno nasilje nemaju dovoljno podrške te uputila apel institucijama vlasti da djeluju. “Danas na mjesto zločina ne dolazimo kao gubitnici već kao pobjednici. Vraćamo se na mjesto zločina dostojno, gordo i hrabro, sa istinom koja je jedna i jedina. Želimo cijelom svijetu poslati takvu poruku kojom ćemo nadamo se ohrabriti žene da govore o tome”, kazala je Uzunović. Razgovarajući o ovoj tematici Halida naglašava kako je posebno važno osnaživati žene kroz obrazovanje i da je važno da jedna drugu podržavaju, kao što to i one čine u svojoj radionici rukotvorina koja im je mjesto druženja, rada i inspiracije da istraju u svojoj borbi. 

U društvu je problem stigmatizacije rasprostranjen, što dodatno sprječava preživjele da zahtijevaju ostvarenje svojih prava.  Zato je neophodno boriti se protiv stigmatizacije i mizogenih mitova. “Svakoj ženi, čovjeku i osobi koja do danas nije progovorila, poručila bih da to uradi. Ako ne zbog sebe onda zbog budućih generacija. I da se ne stide onoga što se njima dogodilo, nego da se stide oni koji su to počinili”, naglasila je jedna od preživjelih ratnog seksualnog nasilje, Zehra Murguz. Ističe kako je važno da se država pobrine za one koji su najveći ratni teret iznijeli na svojim leđima, te da im je onemogućen pristup mnogim pravima i uslugama, koje su trebale imati davno riješene. 

Godinama su osobe koje su pretrpjele ratno seksualno nasilje portretirane kao žrtve, slabe i u podređenoj poziciji, što u stvarnosti ne odgovara slici koju o njima imaju profesionalci/ke koji/e ih sreću i sa njima sarađuju. Pravna savjetnica organizacije TRIAL International u BiH, Lamija Tiro, istakla je da se mitovi mogu i moraju rušiti stvarnim pričama žena i muškaraca koji su preživjeli ove zločine. “Mnogi od njih nisu dozvolili i ne žele da ih se predstavlja kao žrtve obilježene tim zločinom. Oni su prije svega borci i borkinje koji nastoje unaprijediti svoju zajednicu. Bore se za svoja prava i da njihove priče ne budu zaboravljene, te da služe kao lekcija za buduće generacije”, navela je Tiro i dodala da je važno govoriti o ovoj temi i podržavati preživjele, ne samo 19. juna, već tokom cijele godine. TRIAL International pruža podršku preživjelim u njihovoj svakodnevnoj borbi za pravedno mjesto u bh. društvu, uključujući pravo na pravdu i reparacije.