text:
Post-Traumatic Stress versus Post-Traumatic Growth (Part V) | Balkan Diskurs
Bruce Clezy
June 20th, 2017
What role can the visual arts play in public health? How can a nation recover from widespread emotional and psychological trauma when there is a deficit of psychologists and psychiatrists to support its population?
What role can the visual arts play in public health? How can a nation recover from widespread emotional and psychological trauma when there is a deficit of psychologists and psychiatrists to support its population? In part V of our ongoing publication series exploring Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the visual arts, registered nurse Bruce Clezy discusses the topic of post-traumatic growth. To begin at part I of this series, click here.
For our upcoming and final piece in this series on the role of visual arts in public health, we explore “Ordinary Heroes,” a documentary series produced by Sarajevo’s Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) in association with Pinch Media. To date, the series contains four 30-minute episodes, each of which tells the story of ordinary Bosnian citizens, who, amidst the horrors of war, chose to risk their own lives to save the lives of others. In many cases, those rescued belonged to a different ethnic group than the rescuer. Jagoda, a Bosnian Croat, saved Hamdija, a Bosnian Muslim. Zoran, a Bosnian Jew, saved Azra, a Bosnian Muslim, along with countless other lives from all ethnic groups. Mina, a Bosnian Muslim, put her own safety on the line to save Ferid, another Muslim, despite having witnessed firsthand her own family being exterminated during World War II. Đorđe, a Bosnian Serb, saved the lives of countless others, including his Bosnian Muslim neighbor Salih, who was detained in a concentration camp. What was it about these individuals that made them act with such integrity in times of mass violence? How did they manage to resist the madness of the time and do the “right thing” while the world around them was falling apart? What can we learn from these people to prepare for future times of crisis and trauma so that others can act with integrity and humanity? It is these questions that lead us to the idea of post-traumatic growth (PTG).
What is Post-Traumatic Growth?
PTG is a relatively new concept in psychological literature. Based on the groundbreaking work of Tedeschi and Calhoun, PTG acknowledges that while traumatic events can lead to much pain and suffering, trauma also allows many people to experience positive change in their lives (Krippner, Pitchford & Davies 2012; Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014). Fundamentally, PTG involves a change in self-perception brought on by the traumatic event. While trauma may make the world seem more dangerous and unpredictable, increasing the sense of an individual’s vulnerability, trauma can also lead to a sense of the individual being tested, of surviving the worst and of actually being quite strong (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014). Tedeschi and Calhoun summarize this idea of personal growth as being “vulnerable yet stronger,” or as “on my worst day being my best” (Krippner et al., 2012). If suitably addressed, post-traumatic stress may actually lead to an increased sense of resilience in the face of future adversity (Krippner et al., 2012; Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014).
An important point to make here is that while PTG may lead to increased resilience, they are not the same. As Krippner and his associates point out, highly resilient people may experience less PTG than those who are less resilient (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014). This is because their resilience, their ability to “bounce back” from the traumatic event, may limit the extent to which they experience the psychological effects of trauma, thereby impeding the ability to grow and learn from the experience. PTG is, in fact, a process, an intellectual and emotional laboring in which the person reconfigures his or her self in light of a perceived threat or catastrophic event. PTG occurs when people are able to formulate more adaptive worldviews (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014).
A second important point is that this process is available not only to individuals but also to whole communities. Japan’s meteoric rise after World War II, for example, is a telling instance of the wider cultural implications of PTG (Krippner et al., 2012). In the wake of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the horror of the astronomical death toll- which exceeded three million, Japan nevertheless emerged in the 1970s as a global economic superpower. Faced with further disasters, such as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency of 2011, political leaders could invoke this past triumph as a sign of the Japanese people’s resilience, strength and determination in the face of adversity. The nation knew that it could survive and prosper because it had done so in the past.
If PTG, then, is a process that is available to both individuals and cultures alike, how can it be leveraged to prevent future disasters, such as mass violence and genocide, and the resultant trauma?
Next up: Living in the Aftermath: Post-traumatic Growth and “Ordinary Heroes” (Part VI)
—
Further reading
Calhoun L, Tedeschi R. (2014) Handbook of Post Traumatic Growth: Research and Practice. [electronic resource] Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Krippner S, Pitchford D B, Davies J. (2012) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood.


text:
Living in the Aftermath: Post-Traumatic Growth and “Ordinary Heroes” (Part VI) | Balkan Diskurs
Bruce Clezy
July 6th, 2017
This is the sixth and final installment of our series on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the visual arts.
This is the sixth and final installment of our series on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the visual arts. You can start from the beginning of the series here.
Halting genocide and mass violence is very difficult. It is more effective to focus on early prevention: responding to difficult life conditions, developing positive attitudes and constructive ideologies that humanize the “other.” – Ervin Staub (2012)
“Ordinary Heroes” is a documentary series produced by the Sarajevo-based Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) in association with Pinch Media. To date, the series contains four 30-minute episodes, each one telling a story of ordinary Bosnian citizens (Serb, Croat, Jewish or Bosniak alike) who, amidst the horrors of war, chose to risk their own lives to save the lives of others. These individuals are the “living rescuers” of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The project is ongoing, with PCRC actively encouraging young Bosnians to discover more tales of bravery and human compassion within their communities. These stories need to be told not only for their historical legacies but also because of their power as tools through which to foster post-traumatic growth (PTG) out of the chaos and carnage that was the Bosnian War. So, while the content of the documentaries is fascinating, what is equally interesting is how the documentaries are being used.
Since 2014, PCRC has been using “Ordinary Heroes” as an integral part of their “Heroes in Training” youth workshops held throughout Bosnia. Based on the work of the well-known psychologist Ervin Staub, the workshops are designed to teach and nurture moral courage among Bosnian youth by highlighting and exploring the social influences that can lead to war and mass violence. Across a lifetime of work, Staub labeled some of these psychological processes as inter-ethnic rivalry, demonizing the “other” and the “bystander effect.” PCRC uses tales of PTG to counter some of these social dynamics and foster moral courage among the workshop participants.
In this short video Velma Šarić, Founder and President of PCRC, explains the structure of the youth workshops, their use of multimedia and how the documentary series “Ordinary Heroes” is incorporated into the discussions. You meet Agata “Strawberry” Čolić – one of the inspiring “living rescuers” profiled in “Ordinary Heroes.” You also briefly see Hamdija- the man she rescued.
allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox">
To date, PCRC has held over 30 “Heroes in Training” workshops across Bosnia, with over 1000 youth participants. Highlighting tales of moral courage and PTG, these workshops send a clear message that “history” does not mean “destiny.” PTSD is rife in Bosnian youth. “Ordinary Heroes” and the associated workshops allow Bosnian youth to internalize the post-traumatic growth of their elders, claim it as their own and see themselves as significant agents of change for the future. As Krippner, Pitchford and Davies (2012) so beautifully remind us, it is not the event which caused the PTSD that is crucial; “it is the way that one interprets the event that can lead to strength or weakness, to growth or to frailty” (p. 142). Post-traumatic stress and intergenerational trauma are not life sentences. Bosnia and its people can heal and move on from the war.
Conclusion: questions of interpretation.
This series began with the question “What role do the visual arts play in public health?” Over the past few weeks, we have explored the public health issue of PTSD and its implications for intergenerational trauma and post-traumatic growth. We have investigated a number of different works including sculpture, documentary films and mixed media presentation. What I hope to have communicated is how these various creative approaches and mediums offer an interpretative framework for the health issues concerned. Whether the aim is to “lay bare” the public memory of genocide (“One Million Bones”), or to question who exactly are the victims of war (“Uspomene 677”), art helps to put the idea of “public” back into concepts such as PTSD, intergenerational trauma and, indeed, public health itself. At a time when there is an increasing tendency to individualize health problems such as PTSD and blame individuals for their suffering, the visual arts can remind us that all health issues, particularly those that result from war, are truly social problems.
Further Reading
Krippner S, Pitchford D B, Davies J. (2012) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood.
Staub, E. (2012) the roots and prevention of genocide and related mass violence, Zygon: Journal Of Religion & Science, 47 (4): 821-842.

source: news-balkandiskurs

created: July 6th, 2017

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: Bruce Clezy


text:
“Transitions”: The artistic process to depict the journey from conflict to peace | Balkan Diskurs
Struan Kennedy
July 7th, 2017
Transitional Justice is a term uttered across societies; the concept of creating a just peace as a means to a lasting peace. But what does this term, easily explained in academic and legal terms, mean ‘on the ground’?
Transitional Justice is a term uttered across societies; the concept of creating a just peace as a means to a lasting peace. But what does this term, easily explained in academic and legal terms, mean ‘on the ground’? Balkan Diskurs correspondent Struan Kennedy sits down with two members of the ‘Transitions’ curatorial team to discuss the process behind making ‘transitional justice’ relatable and digestible to audiences around the world.
‘Transitions’ is a multimedia photography exhibition that explores the journeys of transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict nations. The initiative was co-curated by teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the United States. Through this international collaboration, curators and photographers reflect upon each country’s transition from war to peace. This collection of photographs, texts and timelines do not intend to provide a comprehensive overview of any one nation or community, but instead, offers introductions and intimate glimpses into a selection of intersecting issues and themes across diverse regions.
The information that follows digs deeper, to get behind the process of ‘Transitions’ via the personal and professional insights from interviews with Leslie Thomas, founder of ART WORKS Projects, Chicago and initiator of the project and Leslie Woodward, co-founder and vice president of the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), Sarajevo. Together, they comprise one half of the international curatorial team behind ‘Transitions,’ working alongside Yole!Africa out of Goma, DRC and Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica in Bogota, Colombia. Photographers Sophia Nahli Alison (US), Midhat Poturović (BiH), Martin Lukongo (DRC), and Juan Arredondo brought each team’s vision to life.
‘Transitions’ formally began with a huge amount of exploratory discussion before the taking or selecting of any images. Brainstorming potential themes was facilitated by team members’ prior knowledge (for instance, in BiH, PCRC’s founder and president, Velma Šarić, is an investigative journalist by training, with in-depth knowledge of transitional justice mechanisms in the Western Balkans) as well as extensive research and collaboration with area experts. In BiH, four distinct themes emerged from these brainstorming sessions:
An argument could be made that deciding on themes may have been the easier step in the process; how to appropriately visually represent these themes – often couched in legally perplexing jargon – was the teams’ next challenge. For the Bosnian curatorial team, a portion of the photo series planning was built around getting coverage of established events and known dates. Whilst a solid first stepping stone, the team was keen to capture a more organic side of transitional justice; to look its day-to-day emotions and actions directly in the face. This photographic behavior predictably raised some suspicion around certain memorial sites, often protected within communities. So while justice itself can be played out concrete terms, the teams were always prepared to use creative methods to overcome this challenge of capturing exactly how each post-conflict society measures its development. Acquiring these creative methods was assuaged by the curators’ direction to the photographers: they were granted freedom to interpret the themes through their own lens.
Accompanying the visual component was a required exegesis to disclose those facets not immediately communicated through the photographs’ formal elements, i.e. color, shape, line and composition. For ‘Transitions’, each team produced a timeline of related events that chronicled the breakdown and subsequent partial restorative journey back to normalcy. These timelines were designed as such to illustrate that the journey to justice is neither neat nor linear. For the US, the Civil War was a moment in the fight against slavery, yet this fight, albeit in an insidiously evolved form, is not over. In BiH, the timeline features major moves forward in the search for truth and justice, such as the international recognition of rape as a crime against humanity. Just as the line goes beyond the primary limits of a conflict to show a current, post-conflict situation, it also starts before the official beginning of a conflict. In BiH, the team went back as far as General Josip Broz Tito’s death in 1980 to give adequate historical space for a greater pre-conflict context.
But what of the language used to compose each conflict’s timeline – how did the teams maintain neutrality? All members were, of course, aware of the importance of this particular type of language given that it is describing terrible events, and such language demands precision in its description, not hyperbole. One technique in staying as close as possible to a neutral position was to rely on factual references: the findings of the ICTY were a primary source for the development of the BiH timeline. As expected, the more details included, the harder the task of maintaining neutrality, hence the tightrope the team walks over the course of the project gets longer. To combat this reality, strenuous efforts were made to seek equal representation whether racially, ethnically or geographically. By doing so, the project elucidates that conflict is rarely black and white; even the divide between victim and perpetrator can become blurred at certain times and places along the journey. These attempts at inclusivity were on occasion a struggle, but as Thomas pointedly remarks: “Everyone struggles with representing a/the truth. That is life and art.”
Clear and concise communication was the ballast for an otherwise unnerving organizational design – four separate units over four different continents could have so easily become a tribulation. Discussions were lengthy, involved all participants and happened regularly. These conversations coalesced in Chicago during an ‘immersion weekend’ which allowed for an ardent exchange of experiences. Similarities in themes materialized, for example, the issue of child soldiers overlapped in the cases of Colombia and DRC. Contrarily, differences in how far societies have come in their journey proved useful comparisons in the stages of transitional justice. This can be conceived of as chronological distance from a period of conflict: America is roughly 160 years away, BiH is further out than DRC and Colombia has just started to move away from its conflict period. Another apt metaphor may be the idea of these post-conflict societies as travelers on different roads but all walking toward the same location – peace. With some travelers further along their path, they can look back and give direction or offer helpful tips of best routes, sharp turns to be wary of and even sudden pitfalls ahead to avoid. In addition to communication between relatively small teams, local community knowledge was also a vital tool. Contacts streamlined research and were a gift of detail to the photojournalist perspective. Woodward recounts how local sources provided a well-defined example of unity where two men from different ethnic groups started a business together after the war.
Editing was an additional imperative in structuring a balanced exhibition of positive and negative imagery. Each theme was assigned 8-10 images, which not only had to have visual appeal but the correct ordering of a set narrative that did not overturn the emotional balance and that incorporated some form of hope. An episode that captures this intricate relationship between positive and negative is the 2014 political unrest in BiH known as the ‘Bosnian Spring.’ This series of demonstrations by grassroots movements had not yet been seen during Bosnia’s post-conflict transition and proved encouraging. That same year, the region was blighted by the ‘Southeast European Flood’ (13-19 May). Yet, out of this natural calamity emerged a secondary, unforeseen hope: people put aside their ethnicity to help each other in their moment of need.
Now, with the unveiling of ‘Transitions’ in Chicago, Bogotá, and Sarajevo, and the upcoming opening in Goma, each team director charts the likely future of ‘Transitions’, assessing the possible benefits and beneficiaries, as well as prospective obstacles in implementing their planned strategies within each specific context. Ideally, each project partner would stage a national tour of the exhibition consisting of a public display in highly trafficked locations in principal cities, e.g. Tuzla and Banja Luka as stops on the BiH tour. To further the impact of ‘Transitions’, opening ceremonies will be held, at which political, civil, religious and educational representatives will assist in the unveiling.
In Bosnia specifically, ‘Transitions’ will be utilized as a means to provoke an internal dialogue among its viewers about what justice means to them. Plans are also in the works to implement a series of youth and civil society workshops with 6-8 hours of contact learning for participants. Subjects covered will include an exploration of what Woodward calls the transitional justice ‘landscape’ comprising the various successes, failures and challenges. Workshops will also aim to dissect lessons learned from international projects and processes and to compare and contrast conventional mechanisms of justice with unconventional and artistic approaches. This latter point really pronounces ‘Transitions’ raison d’être. While didactic text and data about conflict and the conciliatory rebuilding gives people a straightforward enough account, it lacks involved engagement. The striking visuals of ‘Transitions’, however, compel audiences to view the peace process in a more intimate manner. In scanning these snapshots of struggle and success, those moved by conflict can frame their troubled state in relation to broader connections.
Obstacles do still lurk on the long road to recovery, such as post-conflict citizens’ very real fear that their peace may not endure ongoing ethnic tensions or institutional segregation. In recent decades there has been a global acknowledgment that sustainable peace cannot simply be denoted by the absence of war, but rather the presence of justice. The notion of justice and how best to achieve it is still nebulous for many, but projects like ‘Transitions’ endeavor to strengthen inter-ethnic dialogue and move communities further along this road. Thomas closes by asserting her faith in people’s willingness to raise the necessary questions and search for the answers; ‘Transitions’ contribution to an answer is the transforming of ‘justice’ from a cloud of ambiguous ideals to a series of tangible goals.
—
The Balkan debut of ‘Transitions’ took place during the 4th annual War Art Reporting and Memory (WARM) Festival in Sarajevo from 28 June to 2 July 2017. Organized by the WARM Foundation in collaboration with the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), the WARM Festival brings together artists, reporters, academics and activists around the topic of contemporary conflict.

created: July 7th, 2017

author: Struan Kennedy


text:
Surviving Srebrenica: Senad’s Story | Balkan Diskurs
Nevena Medić
July 10th, 2017
Two years ago, I visited the Memorial Center in Potočari with a friend from Holland. That day, I began getting to know this man, Senad, as he told me his incredible story of courage and survival.
Two years ago, I visited the Memorial Center in Potočari with a friend from Holland. We noticed that the doorman was in a wheelchair. As we approached, he greeted us with a slight smile on his face: “Hello girls”. We were both drawn to his energy and warmth. That day, I began getting to know this man, Senad, as he told me his incredible story of courage and survival.
After spending two hours with Senad on the benches of the Potočari Memorial Center, he had revealed to me that he had lost his father in the July 1995 genocide in Srebrenica and that he had returned to his birthplace where he was planning to stay “until the end.”
Somehow I knew that I would be visiting Senad regularly in the years to come, and, after we met, I would often take a 20-minute bike ride to go and sit with Senad on his terrace where we shared stories of war, love, and so on.
I found out that he returned to his native Potočari because: “there is nothing more beautiful than to see the loving hills of Srebrenica every morning.” One unavoidable topic of conversation that always arises involves various varieties of raspberries, pesticides and irrigation methods. This is because Senad and his colleague Radenko started a now booming business growing raspberries in the region. He is now regarded as a positive example to farmers, politicians and even advocates of ethno-national division.
He describes himself as a great fighter for life. When asked what he means by this, he adds, “I’m a fighter for interpersonal and peer relations.”
When I first visited Senad, I noticed a picture hanging on the wall. He explained: “This is my father and Radenko’s father. We all grew up together, here in this village, and they hung out together.”
“All our neighbors and the people in the surrounding areas, we grew up together our entire lives. This is the only way of life that I know. This whole area – from those Serbian houses to these hills – it was an integral part of our lives. We knew everything about each other. We played together, guarded livestock together, went to school together. There were marriages and funerals. We welcomed newborns and celebrated everything with each other… We always helped each other out,” Senad recalls.
Despite the fact that he has had to endure the loss of his father and many other family members, and despite his struggle with the physical disabilities he incurred while escaping from all the death and shooting, Senad still believes in the inherent moral and human values of mankind.
He recalled how he was beaten several times throughout the conflict and, in our last conversation, recounted the final encounter with his father in Srebrenica.
“The commotion started and people were confused, so we decided to go down to the battery factory [A designated UN “safe zone” that fell to Bosnian Serb Army under General Ratko Mladić]. We had not even packed, we just took one bag. My mother put some of our family photos and a little bread in it. She was already exhausted and it had become hard for her to move. “We were halfway to the factory when she said: ‘You go and I will meet you,’” Senad recalls. He explained that they had gone to find a place where they could wait together to see what would happen next.
When they reached the bridge, Senad’s father told him: “Go and get your mother and we will sit here and wait for further developments.”
“He walked into the crowd to try and find out what was happening and to figure out what the best plan of action would be. There, we smoked a cigarette, and that was the last time I saw him alive,” says Senad.
Senad believes that his father was most likely executed after he accidentally found himself among a group of people who broke through the fence to enter into the factory. He says that the events that followed in Srebrenica, and which led to his rescue, changed his life and made him believe that miracles are possible.
Senad managed to get onto a bus carrying women and children that was headed for Kladanj. This is where he met the Serbian soldier who would save his life.
“I crossed several barricades on the road to Kladanj and when I reached the third or the fourth, I just could not cross it. It was so big that I could only get halfway up before I fell off and into branches of a tree. One of the guards managed to pull me down. I fell onto the asphalt, and he pointed his gun right in my face. In that moment, a soldier from the other side came and pushed the gun away from my head and said: ‘Do not touch him. I know him.’ And so, the other soldier retreated,” Senad explains.
The soldier then lifted him up from the ground and said, “Do not be afraid of me, I know you.”
“Still to this day, I do not know who the man was. I was looking at the ground the entire time, not to the left, not to the right. He took out a cigarette and said: ‘You can’t smoke a cigarette if you keep shaking in fear that way.’ He lit the cigarette and placed it on a stone for me to sit down. He then said: ‘Do not be afraid, everything will be fine. I will take you this way,’” Senad recalls, noting that the soldier knew everything about him; who his father was, and where he and his brother and sister worked.
According to Senad, the soldier gave him another cigarette and cleared a path for him, removing some wires, cables, and ropes out of the way. He then lifted Senad from the stone he was sitting on and led him through the path.
“He told me: ‘Go down this road, do not look back, do not respond to anyone… Just keep walking until you get to your people. You don’t have much further to go,’” Senad recalls.
Senad said he cannot remember the face of the man who rescued him, but the man’s moral sense of responsibility remains unmistakable and it prevented the other man from doing him harm. In the many conversations that followed, I asked Senad if there were any other reasons he had returned to his native Potočari. Senad said that he often still dreams about the day he was rescued and that he would like to find the soldier or his family so that he could somehow repay him.
“Maybe it is not time for that yet, but one day, I am sure that time will come,” he says, adding that he now feels obligated to foster that sense of unity that existed before the war in order to nurture and preserve friendship among people of different backgrounds.
Senad believes that the type of person that you are is more important than which group you belong to. “I’m a human being, you’re a human being, I don’t see what the problem is,” he says. He believes that though we cannot change the past, we should remember it so it that history does not repeat itself and we should use that knowledge to influence what our future will be.

author: Nevena Medić


text:
Reflections on the Marš Mira | Balkan Diskurs
Laura Feehs
July 11th, 2017
On the morning of 7 July, Srebrenica felt like a ghost town. I departed Sarajevo earlier that morning with a group of fellow graduate students from the University of Denver. We were preparing to participate in the Marš Mira, the annual peace march that commemorates the Srebrenica genocide.
On the morning of 7 July, Srebrenica felt like a ghost town. I departed Sarajevo earlier that morning with a group of fellow graduate students from the University of Denver (DU). The eight of us filed off of the bus in Srebrenica, unsure of what to anticipate for the subsequent few days. We were preparing to participate in the Marš Mira, the annual peace march that commemorates the Srebrenica genocide. The trek retraces over 60 miles of mountainous terrain where 10,000 Muslim men, boys, and some women attempted to escape from Srebrenica in 1995. Only 2,000 people survived the death march and arrived at the village of Nezuk before searching for their families at the refugee camp in Tuzla.
In Srebrenica, the silence stunned me. Not a soul was in sight. The air even seemed to hold its breath. A cat scampered across the street, making haste, not wanting to be seen moving about. Curtains were drawn. Windows were latched. We walked up the street in hushed murmurs.
Early the following morning – 8 July – my group departed Srebrenica with a number of other people, mostly men, heading for Nezuk. The sun slowly rose and warmed the chill that had paralyzed me throughout the previous day. My mind raced in anticipation of what this march would entail. A few students from my DU program participated in the Peace March last year, but their stories could never have sufficiently prepared me for the experience of those three days retracing the steps where thousands of people fled and thousands were brutally murdered.
Some of the most striking parts of the walk came when listening to the stories of other marchers. While walking for miles and miles, I heard a number of incredible stories, heartbreaking stories, stories of resilience, and stories of hopelessness. I met people from my own country whose parents fled the war and resettled in the States. I met numerous Bosnians, all of whom were personally affected by the war and, specifically, by the genocide.
Many young adults, around my age, were curious about my story. What flag are you carrying? The Colorado flag. It’s a state in America. Why would you carry a state flag? Good question. (Pause) I love being from Colorado, and we are quite proud of our state. Why are you in Bosnia? Why are you coming on this march? What are you studying? The questions continued on, and I mostly received a warm appreciation that I, a young woman from America, would choose to join this commemorative march.
When I reciprocated the questions, however, I began to understand the frustration and, often, the hopelessness towards the current state of affairs in Bosnia.
One man, in particular, age 28, had completed two master’s degrees. Rusmir is his name. “Like Russia,” he said, trying to help us Americans understand his pronunciation. As we tiptoed down the steep hills of the Bosnian countryside, he explained that he finished his first degree in criminal law, but could not find a job. He decided to return to school and to complete another master’s. Yet, this highly educated, accomplished, deeply thoughtful and inquisitive man still could not find employment.
After deciding to look abroad for opportunities, he disclosed that he recently received an offer from a McDonalds in Germany. Holding back my shock, I asked if he planned to take it.
“Yes. I do.”
I was silenced. Until speaking with this man, I could not grasp the desperation unemployment has created in this country. He wanted to stay. He desperately wanted to live and work in his homeland, but there was nothing for him.
Rusmir’s story was told over and over again, but by different people. I heard such similar stories – highly educated, brilliant young people, unable to find a job in Bosnia, desperate to find any work regardless of their over-qualification. I asked what these young adults identified as barriers to change in this country, and they frequently discussed the Dayton Peace Accords, the failures of the constitution, and the stagnation of government and public institutions. Some people have resorted to emigrating. Some people claim it will take a revolution to affect change. Some shrug their shoulders and respond with a blank stare.
As an outsider, particularly an American outsider, it is difficult to make any statement or overarching suggestion for Bosnia. Trying to maintain the role of the observer, I am starting to see tremendously divisive components of the current culture that perpetuate misunderstanding and obstruct healing. As long as division proliferates, opposition that elicits change to stagnant and corrupt government systems is likely to remain futile. Reflecting on the Peace March, for instance, proved to be one such example. Allow me to explain.
The final day, our third day of the Marš Mira, we woke up in a mist. It felt appropriate. Somber. Quiet.
Many hours and 21 miles later, we tip-toed down the steepest grade of the hike into the cemetery and memorial site. People lined the streets with quiet tears streaming down their faces. We kept walking through the crowd into the memorial. The families of victims lined the marble slabs engraved with the names of those massacred. They were sobbing. We were sobbing. I felt crushed.
This place, this memorial encapsulates thousands of peoples’ realities. This is where families were separated, loved ones massacred, lives destroyed. The Marš Mira is tremendously important. Remembering and commemorating the survivors and the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide is imperative. However, this is the only cluster of days in the entire year that the atrocity is corporately recognized. And yet, these survivors, these families live every day with the burden of memory, loss, and grief – many of whom do not have a community of support to help bear the weight.
Moreover, there is the denial of genocide. The reality that Srebrenica was a ghost town before the memorial weekend suggests an outright resistance towards acknowledging the lived experiences of thousands. The Bosnian Serbs living in the municipality disappeared. This division presents a painful stalemate.
As I listened to the stories of survivors as well as to the stories of young adults unable to find work, a common thread seemed to link these narratives – no one is listening.
For instance, the trail of the Marš Mira is walked once a year. The memorialization of the genocide occurs once a year. The non-Muslim residents of Srebrenica can shut out the commemoration once a year. With this structure, a space to foster dialogue, recognition, and understanding remains nonexistent. And this resistance to recognizing narratives echoes throughout Bosnia; it is not simply confined to Srebrenica or to a certain ethnic group or to one generation.
After the Peace March, I met with Amir Kulaglić, a survivor of the genocide who currently works as an advisor to the mayor of Srebrenica and has committed his life to making transitional justice a realization in Bosnia. He, too, acknowledged the division such a singular memorialization creates and is working on building the infrastructure of the trail, so that people may freely walk it throughout the year to grieve and process when needed rather than be restricted to a few days in July.
I have heard a few locals talk about just wanting to move on from the war. They want people to stop dwelling on what happened over twenty years ago. However, the narratives of the war continue to be denied or downplayed, at best. Without the establishment of truth, without the ability to share their stories and their experiences, the survivors suffer protracted trauma from blatant denial. Amir encapsulated this experience stating, “I thought that men could die just once, but after a genocide, you can die again. First, when your life is taken away. Again when your bones are transferred, but denial of victims is the last phase of genocide. Every day we spend in silence. It is a denial that you have existed as a human being.”
The Marš Mira, then, seems to serve as an outcry, not just against what happened there, but against what has not yet happened; of the proliferation of injustice, of the outright denial of genocide. While this turmoil is justifiable, the perpetuation of such a polarizing event without more frequent opportunities for processing the past enables a divisive atmosphere throughout Bosnia.
In consideration of transitional justice, it is imperative that survivors are given a platform to tell their stories. Many thought that protected witness trials would provide this. This is not the case. The witnesses were asked questions, asked about certain pieces of their stories, what the prosecution teams deemed important for the trial. These dynamics return survivors to an inferior position. Empowerment is imperative for addressing trauma, and the environment of the courts does not offer such a space.
While truth commissions are structured as a means for testimonials, the impersonal environment lacks the support often needed for survivors to feel safe sharing their stories and to be supported by a community. Some benefit is gained from these forums, but often survivors are re-traumatized by recalling their stories – an unsurprising psychological response.
Amir was able to heal largely through his involvement with other survivors and their shared purpose in advocacy. Through their collective healing, Amir has been able to communicate his story to wider audiences. However, as long as political structures and institutions deny, downplay and disregard the truth, many survivors will remain disenfranchised and unable to heal.
Transitional justice is a complicated concept – one that involves macro-level institutional reform to micro level individual considerations. I am humbled and astounded by the resilience of people like Amir to continue living, to continue advocating for holistic justice that has yet to be realized.
I feel as though I hold part of the responsibility to now act. To write. To listen. To share. To do something. The question I’ve been asking since I arrived in Bosnia continues to reverberate and crescendo: What is my obligation, and how am I going to respond?
This question continues to echo, over a month after the march. I constantly think about the survivors, but I also think about the next generation of the young adults my age who are suffering both the trauma of the war and the negligence and stagnation of a country unable to heal, reconcile, and progress onward. Devoid of employment opportunities and surrounded by a divided, silently hostile environment, young adults perhaps unsurprisingly choose to leave – even if leaving entails working at a McDonalds. How long will this continue?
I believe Bosnia is craving a new identity. When I told people at home I would be here for the summer, most people simply associated this place with the war. This incredibly beautiful country needs to be recognized for more than the atrocities of the 1990s. However, as long as the narratives of war remain unheard and negated, a generation of survivors must cling to these experiences and the younger generations will predominantly move away, unable to break down the barriers solidified over the past two decades.

author: Laura Feehs


text:
Balkan Countries Continue to Cash in on Arms Trade Despite Concerns of Diversion | Balkan Diskurs
Lidia Kurasińska
July 17th, 2017
Despite widely documented diversion of weapons to the battlefields of Syria and Yemen, Balkan exporters continue to reap profits from the lucrative trade.
Despite widely documented diversion of weapons to the battlefields of Syria and Yemen, Balkan exporters continue to reap profits from the lucrative trade.
In January 2017, a joint delegation of trade officials from Bosnia and Serbia visited Saudi Arabia to form a trilateral committee dedicated to promoting trade between the countries. Alongside tourism and investment, Balkan officials discussed bolstering the increasingly lucrative sale of weapons and military equipment to the Gulf country.
Barely two weeks before the meeting took place, Saudi-led warplanes targeted an elementary school near the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, killing at least eight school children. A few days earlier, another coalition airstrike on the outskirts of the city killed 12 people.
However, Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military campaign in Yemen and questions of complicity in war crimes did not make the top of agenda during Bosnia and Serbia’s meeting in Riyadh. Instead, Balkan officials focused on negotiating an uninterrupted cash flow from their sale of weapons, some of which are believed to be illegally diverted to the Middle Eastern battlefields, including Yemen and Syria.
The extent of the Balkan arms trade and the suspected diversion of the equipment were uncovered in 2016, following an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). It was revealed that, since 2012, eight eastern European and Balkan countries (Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia) approved the shipment of weapons and ammunition worth at least €1.2billion to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Turkey. The biggest chunk, worth €806million, was received by Saudi Arabia.
While the sale of weapons to the above countries is not illegal, there is evidence that some of the equipment ends up being diverted to Syria and Yemen by the purchasing countries, where it is used to fuel the ongoing conflicts. Under the UN Arms Trade Treaty, signed by the Balkan countries, such transfers are illegal.
Although exporting countries are obliged to conduct due diligence to minimize the risk of arms diversion, there is little evidence to suggest that Balkan authorities carry out comprehensive assessments beyond relying on end user certificates and other basic checks. Turning a blind eye to potential abuses contravenes a host of European Union and other international regulations, and it could hamper Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro’s EU accession efforts.
In addition to being diverted from state-brokered deals, Balkan-made weapons have also found their way to the Middle East after being smuggled out of the region by criminal networks.
Following the Yugoslav wars, Balkan governments have struggled to manage the high numbers of illegal weapons held by private citizens. Although there are no official statistics, it is estimated that 750,000 unregistered firearms remain in Bosnia, a country that has a population of 4 million. The leftover weapons not only pose an internal security risk; they have also been smuggled out of the country and used in terrorist attacks in Europe, or transferred to the Middle East by criminal syndicates.
According to Amnesty International, some of the Yugoslav-era munitions have also ended up in the hands of ISIS after the militant group invaded Iraqi army barracks and confiscated their contents. The arms had been exported to the UK in 2005 and 2006 and then re-exported to Iraq. A report by Armament Research Services in 2015 found that 17% of ammunition used by ISIS in Iraq came from the Balkans.
Although Balkan authorities might have limited control of the illicit trade in arms smuggled out of the region by criminal networks, they have a significant role to play in minimizing the risk of their military equipment being used to fuel foreign conflicts.
In February 2015, Bosnia banned the sale of arms and ammunition to Ukraine, claiming it was not in Bosnia’s “foreign policy interest at this moment”. The Bosnian Presidency noted in its statement that the arms exports “do not contribute to regional security, stability and ongoing international diplomatic efforts to broker a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine”. Following the ban, Unis Group, a Bosnian arms producer that secured a €5 million deal to supply military equipment to the war-ravaged eastern European country, filed a lawsuit against the Bosnian government for interfering with their business.
The ban followed the resignation of Boris Tucic, a minister of external trade and economic relations, who claimed Bosnia should not supply arms to Ukraine. The decision by the central government to halt the exports came after pressure from Bosnian Serbs, who traditionally maintain links with Russia, a party to the conflict in Ukraine. Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, remarked at the time that “”Russia has said clearly what it thinks about those deliveries, and that it would not be good for Bosnia, that is, the RS, to take part in it.”
At the same time as it banned exports to Ukraine, Bosnia stepped up the sale of arms to other countries. According to Bosnian Foreign Trade Chamber, local arms producers registered a 15-20% increase in profits in 2016 compared to the year before, with the total value of exports rising from €70 million to €87.4 million. The main recipients of Bosnian weapons in 2016 were Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
By continuing to supply arms to countries accused of diverting them to war zones while blocking others based on current geopolitical interests, the Balkan countries expose themselves to charges of double standards and overlooking human rights violations in pursuit of profit. Turning a blind eye to potential abuses also poses a moral dilemma for states that came out of bloody civil conflicts only two decades ago and still struggle with their own state-building efforts.

author: Lidia Kurasińska


text:
The Future of Justice: ICTY Legacy Dialogues | Balkan Diskurs
Madeleine Crean
July 19th, 2017
The ICTY is getting ready to close its doors permanently in 2017. During their 24 arduous years, the ICTY prosecuted over 160 of those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is getting ready to close its doors permanently in 2017. During their 24 arduous years, the ICTY prosecuted over 160 of those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
The Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) attended the ‘ICTY Legacy Dialogues Conference’ from 22 to 24 June in Sarajevo to hear perspectives on the legacy the ICTY will leave behind, and recap the pioneering work the ICTY has done in international humanitarian and criminal law. PCRC also had the chance to present its own work on restoring a culture of peace in the Western Balkans.
In the article that follows, PCRC staff present highlights from the three days of conference programming.
Marko Milanović (University of Nottingham) – Discussion on Non-Judicial Legacy
Milanović boldly stated that despite the hard work of the ICTY, there is an ethnic bias against acceptance of crimes; communities tend to believe certain facts when they suit them. Facts do not help convince people; they “feel” the truth instead of knowing it. Denial remains rampant across the region and Bosniak, Serb, and Croat populations, respectively, are living in parallel realities. Some communities acknowledge the worst crimes committed during the war, while other crimes fail to exist in their collective memory. For example, Milanović presented a survey of opinion on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, finding that 90% of Serbs engage in some kind of denial of crimes in Srebrenica, whether it is a total denial of all crimes or the belief that the number of casualties was exaggerated.
Denial, however, is not often a deliberate distortion of the truth; people reconstruct history to retain the belief that their ethno-religious identity is still the ‘right’ one with a moral high ground. People engage in “confirmation bias,” meaning that once they start believing in something, subsequent information is used to reaffirm their beliefs. He claims there is a strong relationship between one’s ethnicity and their perception of the ICTY’s findings regarding war crimes. Such findings strongly challenge mainstream Serbian narratives about the war, many Serbs distrust their work. Milanović claims that while the work of the ICTY proves the atrocities of the Yugoslav war indeed happened, the facts they present hardly combat the mainstream denial rampant among ethnic groups in the region. Even a perfect ICTY would still result in the denial we see in the region today.
Discussion on Participatory Legacy: “Witness Experience”
The heavy impact of bearing witness before the ICTY has led to the creation of the Victims and Witnesses section to provide support during and after the testifying process. In order to examine the effects of testifying, data was presented from a published pilot study from the University of North Texas, including 300 ICTY witnesses titled, “Echoes of Testimonies.” The data presented by Dr. Kimi L. King illustrates the challenges to both men and women in the testimonial process. These challenges include anxiety, language barrier, physical challenges, and being away from home. In addition, Helena Vranov-Schoorl from the Victims and Witnesses Support section (ICTY) discussed logistical issues such as childcare services for mothers, reimbursement for accommodation at The Hague, and logistics coordination upon arrival to a new country. Jasna Zečević, President of Viva Žene, Center for Therapy and Rehabilitation, acknowledges that assistance has been provided through the 14 regional institutions dedicated to helping witnesses. Along with the need for support from NGOs, Alma Taso-Deljković, Head of Witness Support at the Court of BiH, also emphasized the need for social, economic, and emotional support. In order to provide continual support, there is a need for collaboration between government and non-government networks to which to refer witnesses after they have appeared in court. Of special importance in any testimonial and/or victims’ support process is reducing re-traumatization while also limiting logistical obstacles to testifying. To conclude, the panelists advocated for long-term support and recommended building a framework from which national jurisdictions can adapt and build upon the lessons learned from this witness-centered approach.
Discussion on “Outreach Legacy”: Saranda Bogujevci
On the 28 March 1999, Saranda Bogujevci and her family were rounded up by the “Scorpions”, a Serbian paramilitary organization, in their hometown of Podujevo, Kosovo. At the age of 13, Bogujevci then witnessed 14 people, among them her mother, grandmother, two brothers, aunt, cousin, extended family, and neighbors, massacred. She was later medically evacuated to Manchester, England with her surviving family. Years later, the Bogujevci family was confronted with the opportunity to testify. Saranda Bogujevci first testified in Belgrade in 2003 against one of the perpetrators of the 1999 murder of her family and neighbors. Although it was a difficult decision, ultimately Bogujevci is glad that she gathered the strength to stand up to the perpetrators.
Since her arrival in Manchester, Bogujevci and her family have been working with a child psychiatrist who has been with them every step of the way. Testifying both in Belgrade and at the ICTY in the Hague, Bogujevci claims that the extensive witness support in place made it possible. She also emphasized that, for witnesses, little things are important, such as something as simple as being told where to get coffee. Bogujevci also notes that living in England made a big difference in terms of the level of support she received, as families in Kosovo have not had the same networks of support available to them.
In 2011, the Bogujevci family opened an exhibition in Pristina displaying their old living room, the hospital they recovered in after the massacre, and the courtroom in which they testified. The exhibition later traveled to Tirana and Belgrade. In each city, visitors were able to spend time in the living room as if it was their own, bridging the physical and experiential gaps between populations.
Discussion on Operational Legacy: Kweku Vanderpuya (Senior trial lawyer, Office of the Prosecutor, International Crime Cort (ICC), and former Trial Attorney, Office of the Prosecutor, ICTY)
Former ICTY trial attorney Kewku Vanderpuye discussed the groundbreaking use of DNA evidence in the prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Vanderpuye asserted DNA profiling is a key component in proving and establishing the past commission of war crimes. The Karadžić trial marked the beginning of DNA evidence as a central part of ICTY prosecutions. The genocide in Srebrenica, the focus of many high profile ICTY prosecutions, was extremely difficult to collect DNA evidence for, as many bodies were moved from primary mass graves to secondary graves in an effort by the Bosnian Serb Army to cover up evidence of the genocide. Bodies were deeply fragmented and degraded through this process. DNA profiling was used to identify and link human remains to the locations where crimes occurred. Plants and soil that had been moved from one location to another were analyzed to provide reliable proof of primary burial locations. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) played an important role in the collection of DNA evidence, carrying out DNA identification for the tribunal and for families. The project not only confirmed the crimes in Srebrenica but also provided definitive answers to surviving family members.
Gathering and analyzing the evidence was merely the first part of the process. Prosecutors had to determine the most effective way of presenting the evidence. No standard operating procedures for mass DNA testing existed at the time this was becoming common practice for the ICTY. One key conclusion reached during the development of standard operating practices was of the paramount importance of preserving evidence, as not all evidence could be used immediately. Prosecutors also found that proper presentation of DNA evidence required a balance of well-founded science and the specifics of the actual testing that took place. As a result of the court’s pioneering work, the collection, analysis, and presentation of DNA evidence at the ICTY now serve as the basis for best practice throughout international courts.
Historical Legacy Panel
A comparison of character between the judge and the historian was developed throughout the historical legacy panel, mainly by Thijs B. Bouwknegt. As these commonalities and differences emerged, we got a sense of the relationship between law and history. Thus, the following parallels could be drawn:
After delineating the contrast between these positions, the panel considered how they might complement the other in the quest for the truth. In practical terms, we can appreciate the benefits of judicial access. Important judicial resources come from the seizure of documents collated in vast archives, accompanying audio-visual material, and even physical artifacts. All of these resources make historians grateful, because oral histories typically only allow for regional perspectives on conflict, while tangible legal documents serve as primary sources. However, this access is finite and historians must work around the necessary confidentiality of courts, including ‘backstage activity’ behind closed doors.”Nevertheless, Dr. Andy Aydin-Aitchison gave us a clear example of the reliance on international courts: of the 315 footnotes in the work ‘Genocide on the Drina River’ by Edina Becirevic, 110 mentioned ICTY operations.”
Another strength of the legal-historical relationship is the ability to disseminate conclusions. Given the assumption that few people will read a full court ruling, other agents could ease the frustrating task of communication. This reason proves central to the importance of socio-historical projects of ICTY’s outreach strategy. Other creative approaches can be utilized when considering how academic ‘products’ can be applied to a wider audience, such as arts-based initiatives that function on a more engaging level.
Iva Vukusic gave a poignant message of thanks to the ICTY in which she not only expressed her scholarly gratitude but, also, as a former Yugoslav, commended the ICTY’s transparency in making a great deal of evidence available online. Iva is from Zagreb and was certain that no Balkan government would have shared such information. This openness translates as a socially responsible descriptive endeavor which can help us understand and, eventually, accept what happened in the former Yugoslavia, rather than simply attributing blame.

author: Madeleine Crean


text:
Syria’s Disappeared: The Case Against Assad – A Film by Sara Afshar | Balkan Diskurs
Madeleine Crean
July 21st, 2017
In 2011, peaceful protests started in Daraa, Syria following a wave of large-scale protests across the Arab world. Bashar al-Assad’s regime brutally cracked down on all opposition to his rule and met protests with violent repression.
In 2011, peaceful protests started in Daraa, Syria following a wave of large-scale protests across the Arab world. Bashar al-Assad’s regime brutally cracked down on all opposition to his rule and met protests with violent repression. While repression and detention are by no means a new phenomenon in the reign of Bashar al-Assad or his father, Hafez, it has been seen on an unprecedented scale throughout the Syrian war. Six years on, a recorded 470,000 people have died and more than 117,000 have been detained or have disappeared, largely at the hands of regime forces.
In the last five years, the Islamic State (ISIS) has stolen the Western headlines with regard to the Syrian war and regime detainees have been put on the sideline. This year during the annual War Art Reporting and Memory (WARM) Festival in Sarajevo, attendees had the chance to view Sara Afshar’s documentary Syria’s Disappeared: The Case Against Assad. The film brings attention to the 117,000 detained or disappeared, including 2,000 children and the 300 a month who die in clandestine detention. It offers unprecedented access to survivors of detention, families of detainees and the dead, regime defectors and international war crimes investigators fighting to bring their cases against the Assad regime to justice and to have their stories heard.
Afshar’s film exposes the viewer to the terrifying reality of life inside the Assad regime’s detention centers, and the impact these centers have on the families of the detained. Images smuggled out of Syria by a regime defector, known as the Caesar photos, reveal the unimaginable conditions suffered by detainees: eyes gouged out, rows upon rows of skeletal remains; bodies covered with the dark blue bruises and bloodied scars of torture. Families of the disappeared search through the images, wondering if they will discover the fate of their loved ones. Not knowing what has happened to family members, if they are alive or dead, is a torture all its own for detainee’s families who remain on the outside. Many of the detainees in the photos have suffered dramatic weight loss or disfiguring facial injuries, making it a horrific and uncertain task for families to identify them. From the 53,000 smuggled images, Mariam Hallak identified the corpse of her son, Ayham, a young aspiring dentist. She keeps a photo of his bloodied corpse on her phone. Despite not knowing the whereabouts of his body, the photo provides her with closure, something so many the detainees’ families are yet to receive.
Mansour al-Omari, a journalist and human rights activist, was released from forced detainment in May 2012. He explains the lengths he went to in order to share the fate of those he left behind with their families. Upon his release, he bravely smuggled out the names of detainees, scribed in blood and rust on scraps of cloth stitched into his shirt.
Despite the horrors exposed by the Caesar photos, not been much recognition has been achieved for detainees. Mazen Alhummada, a left-wing activist and employee of an oil company who was detained for 18 months, is dedicated to changing this reality. After relocating to Europe, he promised those he left behind that he would expose the scale of the regime’s crimes.
Pursuing legal action against the Assad regime has been difficult to achieve. The UN Security Council draft resolution to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was vetoed by Assad allies China and Russia. The first criminal case accepted by a European court against President Assad’s security forces is being pursued in Madrid, Spain by the victim’s sister, a dual Syrian-Spanish national, living. Her brother disappeared in Damascus in 2013 and, through the Caesar photos, she later discovered that he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered while being illegally detained by the Assad regime. Lawyers acting on her behalf argue that she is the victim of her brother’s forced disappearance, torture, and execution, and, because the plaintiff holds Spanish citizenship, the Spanish courts have the jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the case.
Since the uprisings against the rule of Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, it has been not only difficult but also extremely dangerous for foreign journalists to venture inside of Syria’s borders. We have heard many competing narratives from the regime, citizen journalists, and jihadists alike. Syria’s Disappeared: The Case Against Assad provides an opportunity for the stories of those who have suffered behind regime bars to be officially entered into the long and twisting narrative of the Syrian war, and this can, perhaps, offer one more avenue along the road to justice for the victims and their loved ones.
allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox">
—
The Balkan premiere of “Syria’s Disappeared: The Case Against Assad” took place during the 4th annual War Art Reporting and Memory (WARM) Festival in Sarajevo from 28 June to 2 July 2017. Organized by the WARM Foundation in collaboration with the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC), the WARM Festival brings together artists, reporters, academics and activists around the topic of contemporary conflict.


text:
The Taboo of Abortion | Balkan Diskurs
Mladen Lakić
July 24th, 2017
“I feel that it was a mistake, but it was a mistake I had to make,” 25-year-old M.R. says about her abortion.
“I feel that it was a mistake, but it was a mistake I had to make,” 25-year-old M.R. says about her abortion. She thinks that most people consider her a murderer, a child killer – cold-blooded and calculating – for making the decision to terminate her pregnancy.
“I was almost 19. One night I made an impulsive decision, which then led to a positive pregnancy test a few weeks later. I had no job and no chance of getting one, and I had parents who wouldn’t have been able to take it. Everything was against me and my chances to be a normal mother. Here, it seems as though a woman is forever marked by abortion. Just listen to what they are saying about us. Like we are worth less because we had no other option,” says M.R. “Not even those closest to me know and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them. Knowing what the usual reactions to this sort of thing are, I’m not even sure whether I would admit it to my future husband. It is something I have to deal with every day. I am always reminded of it by comments from people who don’t know I’ve had an abortion,” she explains.
She says that she doesn’t need people to understand her choice; she only wants them to respect the decisions of women who have had abortions. “In hindsight, I was stupid and naive, but I would have made an even bigger mistake by giving birth. I still don’t have a permanent job today. How was I supposed to raise a child?” M.R. asks.
M.R.’s story is not unique. Countless women in BiH share a similar experience, and there is no precise data on the number of abortions performed in the country. It is estimated that there are around 60,000 abortions performed every year, but there is no comprehensive data on the state level as entities, cantons, municipalities, and private clinics all collect their own data.
“Unfortunately, most abortion requests stem from unplanned pregnancies that could have been prevented by contraceptives,” says gynecologist Slobodan Đerić. Due to doctor-patient confidentiality, he declined to reveal the number of abortions performed at his clinic.
“In the media we often see headlines speculating on the number of abortions, but the focus should instead be on prevention,” he says. “If women are having abortions because the pregnancy was unplanned, they don’t have a job, or they don’t think they will make good mothers, there are many means for prevention. Abortion must not be a method of contraception and such a practice has to stop,” says Đerić.
He states that the legal framework on abortion is clear. “Termination is legal until week 10 of the pregnancy, and there is no argument about that. For a termination in the later stages of pregnancy, you need the consent of an ethics committee, but those are difficult and complicated cases. The law is clear and women enjoy that right, but it is still far from being socially acceptable,” explains Đerić.
According to him, the doctor’s duty is completely clear although they might have their own ethical dilemmas and personal views on abortion. “That, of course, doesn’t mean that my colleagues or I have the right to interfere with someone’s decision. It is up to us, though, to point out all the possible consequences of such a procedure so that the patient is fully informed,” he explains.
M.R. recalls her experience with the gynecologist: “the most difficult thing for me to hear was that there was a possibility I could become sterile afterward. I couldn’t bear the thought of not ever being a mother because of that one night. That is why I tell others to be careful because once something like this happens, you are left alone with your problem.”
Biljana Milošević Šošo, professor of sociology at the Pale Faculty of Philosophy, feels that the issue of abortion, regardless of the legal solutions, is always subject to debate. “Religious communities have clear views and when you look at how many religious people you have in a society, it is only logical to consider their views,” she says.
“The problem is that sexuality and everything related to it is viewed as taboo. When you add to that that one of the primary roles of women in our society is motherhood, the topic of abortion becomes one that is either not discussed, or is discussed with a sentiment of disgust,” professor Milošević Šošo explains.
The professor notes the recent UN decision that newly defines abortion as a woman’s human right that cannot be disputed. “It is important to find a compromise between the law and the general sentiments within a society. If abortion is going to put a woman’s health at risk or prevent her from having healthy relationships with her friends or spouse, then sooner or later her decision will lead to serious problems,” she says.
Aleksandra Petrić, a publically-engaged feminist in BiH, draws attention to the strengthening of center-right parties in various European countries, which is a trend that could significantly change access to the right to abortion. “Some women view it as if it is their duty to reproduce and further our species — basically as if women have no say, in the matter and it is simply their duty,” Petrić says.
With regard to the situation in BiH, Aleksandra stresses that “the legal solution is favorable for now, but that can easily change. The bigger problem lies in what is happening at home, in the streets, and in the media when it comes to a woman’s right to an abortion.”
Petrić explains that women must constantly remind society that their bodies belong to them and them alone. “A country cannot find the tools for social prosperity in a woman’s body and we have to clearly stress that so that we don’t lose our hard-earned legal progress,” she concludes.

author: Mladen Lakić


text:
Peacebuilding Takes Many Shapes: Using the Arts to Foster Intercultural Dialogue in Brčko District | Balkan Diskurs
Monica Reeves
July 26th, 2017
The work of peace building organisations varies widely throughout BiH. Omladinska Organizacija Svitac provides an example of the power of nontraditional peace building efforts; successfully bringing youth of all ethnicities together through the arts.
The work of peacebuilding organizations varies widely throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. Omladinska Organizacija Svitac, based in Brčko District, provides an example of the power of nontraditional peacebuilding efforts; successfully bringing youth of all ethnicities together through the arts.
To an outsider, trying to gain an objective understanding of the history and current political climate of the Western Balkans is a challenging task. The varying narratives and perspectives make it difficult to decipher a clear account of the conflicts from recent history, as well as the political and cultural developments since the end of the violence. Post-conflict and peacebuilding organizations in this region vary widely in their approach to addressing the complex issues that have arisen after the conflicts of the 1990s. However, there is some contention with the term ‘peacebuilding,’ rooted in its vagueness and abstract nature. It is important to look at individual organizations and their working environments as well as how they approach nurturing ‘peace’ to gain a greater insight into what peacebuilding looks like in day-to-day practice.
Broad terms such as ‘peace’ and ‘conflict’ are open to interpretation and definitions of both vary between individuals and groups. However, if we agree that peace is more than the absence of conflict, it bodes the question: What creates sustainable, functional and inclusive societies in a post-conflict setting? Whilst high-level, international peace agreements, such as the Dayton Accords in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, may be the first step in creating stability, the elements of sustainability and tolerance undoubtedly need to originate from a local source, supported by the commitment of the community.
Brčko District provides a unique context within which we can examine peacebuilding efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It holds a special status of operating on a self-governing basis and functions as the only officially recognized multi-ethnic community in BiH. This has resulted in an environment completely different from others in the country; Republika Srpska possesses a majority Serb population while the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is mostly Bosniak and Croat. Brčko has a more diverse demographic with greater institutional integration (e.g. mixed schools). This level of integration tasks peacebuilders with fostering a truly intercultural community, rather than a community that is multicultural and cooperative, yet still segregated.
Facing the challenges that arise due to the diversity of the Brčko district is the focus of Omladinska Organizacija Svitac, a multi-ethnic youth arts and education organization based in Omladinski Center situated in the heart of Brčko. The organization’s aim is to provide a neutral space where youth from all backgrounds can work together in a creative environment. It facilitates daily workshops in the arts, languages, music, and sports and regularly hosts events such as future shorts film festivals, intercultural evenings and dialogue events on issues such as anti-racism and anti-fascism. A recent addition to the work of Svitac is the opening of a research branch, with its first pilot study entitled ‘A study of tolerance.’ The study aims to assess both the levels of tolerance of Svitac participants and to what extent the organization plays a role in shaping attitudes towards cultural diversity.
At the core of Svitac’s work is the belief that creative and artistic expression in a neutral space can play a key role in dismantling intergroup tensions. The potential of the arts to further the peacebuilding process is a factor that has been widely acknowledged and appreciated. Art has a unique duality in its ability to bring people together while also providing an outlet for those who have experienced trauma. This idea is highlighted by Michael Shank and Lisa Schirch in an article discussing strategic arts-based peacebuilding:
“Since the peacebuilding field requires tools that are as diverse and complicated as the human spirit, the arts emerge as a logical ally.”[1]
Svitac displays various elements of neutrality by both having its working space as a local community center and adopting a non-partisan position. Whether it is the geographical location of peace negotiations or the neutrality of mediators, this concept of neutrality is common practice in the literature and professional practice of peacebuilding. Neutrality is fundamental to making all parties feel acknowledged equally with no perception of a power imbalance. Svitac accomplishes this by working in a neutral space with a team of multi-ethnic. local staff and international volunteers.
Perhaps as a result of this exposure to diversity, one common attribute of Svitac participants is their nonchalance about different backgrounds and ethnicities. This may largely be due to the fact that half of Svitac’s team is comprised of international volunteers, who stay from one month up to one year. Regular Svitac participants are comfortable with people of all ages, nationalities, and languages. The chief demographic of Svitac participants are young people between the ages of 3 to 30. Consequently, Svitac’s foremost act of peacebuilding is to bring young people of all nationalities and religions to one place, to share the same materials, work on the same projects, and ultimately build intercultural relationships that exist within, and outside, the center. In most of the workshops run by Svitac, the complex issues that peacebuilding programs aim to address, such as segregation or prejudice, are not faced head-on. Rather, Svitac tackles these issues by facilitating a space where people of all backgrounds can interact and build relationships. This, in and of itself, encourages inclusion and challenges pre-existing stereotypes.
Svitac is just one example of peacebuilding efforts in BiH promoting interculturalism and diversity through the arts. For peacebuilders, it is critical to build a wider and stronger contextual knowledge of other organizations and their approaches in order to develop a better understanding of their relative successes. This includes appreciating that peacebuilding projects will span different disciplines, address different contexts, and take different shapes.
As the world is increasingly faced with an ever-changing myriad of complex conflicts and crises, it is imperative to recognize the positive impact that organizations like Svitac have on their communities. Additionally, an increased focus on understanding and evaluating the work of various peacebuilding initiatives can strengthen efforts to replicate them in and adapt them to different post-conflict contexts.
—
[1]Michael Shank and Lisa Schirch. (2008). Strategic Arts-Based Peacebuilding. Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research. 33 (2)

author: Monica Reeves


text:
‘Confronting Histories’: A Jean-Gabriel Périot Retrospective | Balkan Diskurs
Struan Kennedy
July 28th, 2017
Balkan Diskurs correspondent Struan Kennedy provides a review of three films that were recently shown at Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo as part of a retrospective of the work of French filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot.
Balkan Diskurs correspondent Struan Kennedy provides a review of three films that were recently shown at Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo as part of a retrospective of the work of French filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot.
Jean-Gabriel Périot was born in 1974 in Bellac in western France. His enthusiasm for archives (both visuals and sound), as well as an interest in history, started when working at the Pompidou Centre after his studies. Here, he discovered how to play with the potential of archival footage as rich materials allowing him to develop new stories. Before beginning a career in cinema, he had predominantly worked with lighting installations. His films are research driven and take a historical look at the nature of various types of violence. Often, films will be edited at a very fast pace, these ‘supercuts’ create strange, almost abstract interpretations of real events.
There are several additional techniques that relate to key themes in his practice also merit exploration. Firstly let’s consider a fundamentally important choice in most film-making: music. Périot makes effective use of a wide range of music appropriated for his creative means, often dramatically representing the sound in a startling context. In ‘200,000 Phantoms’ (2007) the plaintive piano in ‘Larkspur and Lazarus’ by Current 93, is fittingly subdued given the solemn subject matter – the Hiroshima bombing. This minimalist score is later joined, not so much by conventionally sung lyrics, but rather softly spoken word. Since the film focuses on a fixed subject matter – the Genbaku Dome, the only building to withstand the devastating blast – the words could be heard as a survivor’s testimony. Through personification, Périot literally gives the dome a voice, full of world-weary recollections and resigned isolation:
‘The empty streets
The songs of twilight
The clouds at rest…
The faded pictures
Of faded lives…
The endless rain
In haunted airs…
I waited years for you’
At this intersection between architecture and memory, we receive an important lesson about legacy. Whenever these structures appear, the survivors tell us their story: we should listen. The film’s final words, though still melancholic, don’t look back in utter forlorn but rather look forward to an imagined future:
‘If I could have one wish
As in the fairy tales
I would unmake my past
And rise like Lazarus
And stand in sunlight
And banish all the dark
That locked my face away’
Elsewhere, Périot constructs an anarchic music video when bringing an effective combination of post-punk music and riot scenes in ‘L’Art délicat de la matraque’ / ’The Delicate Art of the Bludgeon’ (2009). By doing so he taps into a frenzied mixture of the fear, excitement and danger of such an event. Through music Périot also questions his homeland’s sense of pride and patriotism and even the national anthem, ‘La Marseillaise’, is not immune to scrutiny in ‘Eût-elle été criminelle…’ / ‘Even if She Had Been a Criminal…’ (2006). Throughout the World War II portion of the film, which interrupts the previous scenes of imperial glory and decadence, the anthem fades and the notes are drawn out, suggesting both the suspension of reality and the relentless futility of military campaigns. Only when victory is declared does the anthem resume but by then, as we will later see, Périot has significantly altered our perceptions of this music.
Another interesting editorial technique Périot makes use of is time-shifting. Whether this is a long series of gradual layering, as in the many still images of the dome in ‘200,000 Phantoms’ conveying a slow passing of time or rapid shifts in quick cuts synchronized to a thrashing soundtrack. The latter is featured in ‘L’Art délicat…’ and here Périot seems to describe and examine a certain police sensibility. With repeated close-ups, the act of bludgeoning morphs into some brutal ‘dance’: just another movement within the wider bodily orchestration of a riot. These mass groupings of both demonstrators and police give shape to some choreographic relationship played out across major social issues. In an oddly literal definition of ‘the movement’, the film demonstrates that it takes two to tango: the powerful and the powerless. As we watch history flicker back and forth, the time-shifting makes one thing abundantly clear, these two collective ‘dancers’ – the powerful and the powerless – have been locked into this dance for a very long time.
Another power relationship is explored when Périot turns the critical lens on his own country. The entirety of ‘Eût-elle été criminelle…’ could be aptly summarized as a before-and-after exercise. Those victory scenes mentioned earlier induced in me a relief, joy, even pride in our Allied success. When watching those smiling faces, waving flags and dancing in the street I returned a smile; my foot tapped along to the melody of ‘La Marseillaise’. But then comes the change. Women are paraded in front of us, heads held up to the camera, slapped repeatedly and their whole body is speaking a very different language. Yes their arms are up in the air, but not in celebration – in the unmistakable gesture of surrender. My heart sank when the revelation hit me; though I had seen these faces before, Périot had cropped them so I only saw the reaction, not the action that caused their happiness. This partial representation lured me to the assumption that their joy was produced by the war coming to an end. Upon second viewing, the correctly enlarged frame now told the complete story – the crowds were cheering because of what they were doing to these women.
As news of victory swept through France there was an inevitable delay in civil order being restored, but until official law could be brought back there existed a vacuum of accountability: a vacuum quickly filled by some people in France with their notion of ‘justice’. This is what the film presents to us, it documents the treatment of women suspected of conspiring with Nazi soldiers, which included public humiliation, physical abuse and ritualesque shaving of hair.
How the content had been morally transformed – only a few minutes earlier I related to the jubilant crowds, now they were strangers and their actions strange to me. I even heard the anthem differently, no longer did the famous clarion call of ‘Aux armes, citoyens!’ sound like a legitimate revolutionary demand for justice; it seemed an invitation to partake in dispensing this warped ‘justice’.
By simply considering these three works we can appreciate how Périot employs the editing techniques of soundtrack, personification, time-shifting and cropping to interrogate our understanding of the past. But any discussion of the past shadows our views on our present and our projections for our future. One salient point that we can draw out from Périot’s work is just how easy it is to doctor images and, correspondingly, how susceptible we are to believe what we are given. Now, more than ever is this the case with increasingly convincing methods of technology available. This has very real implications for all of us, from international peacebuilding to cornershop conversations. We have recently seen a slew of troubling phrases enter our media vernacular: ‘fake news’, ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’. These cannot be met with passive acceptance. A conclusion from these films is that we must all be vigilant against the deception and distractions of misinformation. In exercising a journalistic scrutiny we must thirst for the truth – the full frame of it and not some cunningly cropped approximation. This should be the revised rallying call that, like ‘La Marseillaise’, thunders out to all citizens.
—
More works from Jean-Gabriel Périot are available here.


text:
Becoming Critical Media Consumers in the Era of “Fake News” | Balkan Diskurs
Madeleine Crean
July 31st, 2017
Control over mass media narratives gives media producers the capacity to influence what the public believes about what is happening in their localities and across the world.
In an era when “fake news” is at the forefront of discussion and constant Internet access is providing us with an unprecedented flow of information, news media confronts us with many different depictions of reality. Control over mass media narratives gives media producers the capacity to influence what the public believes about what is happening in their localities and across the world.
Media has the power to shape how the public understands a story. In addition, how a story is told is greatly influenced by the person telling the story, their individual experiences, what internalized beliefs they hold and who they are writing for. Each person observes a situation through his or her own unique lens. There are many subtle biases that make their way into how a story is presented by the media. Outlined below are some important things media consumers should keep in mind while reading the news.
What is Included and What is Not?
News can easily be distorted by excluding or obscuring certain elements of the story. For example, a right-leaning newspaper may omit some policy objectives of a left-wing politician in order to highlight the negatives. This was directly evident in media coverage of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s (United Kingdom) political views. A [1] found that “three-quarters of newspaper stories about Jeremy Corbyn in the first months of his leadership either distorted or failed to represent his actual views on subjects.” Corbyn’s views were presented without alteration in just 11 per cent of news stories. They were otherwise taken out of context or distorted. As a critical reader, it is important to check multiple sources when reading a story and to keep in mind what some papers are including and excluding. By reading multiple sources, you can weave together your own understanding of the story and why different media actors are presenting the narrative the way they are. Competing parties have a vested interest in monopolizing public opinion and making sure that people are sympathetic to their version of events and that their actions are seen as legitimate and right. Today, power relations are increasingly played out in the realm of communication as a struggle to monopolize public opinion.
How are Actors Framed?
Different people can be depicted as relatable or not, good or bad, with a few simple tactics. What language is used to describe them? Which actions are they focusing on? How are they being framed? Are they using photos that make the subject look aggressive or friendly and relatable? Frames are used to narrate events in a way that can encourage a specific reaction or interpretation from its given audience. Without necessarily completely obscuring historical events, news producers may select elements that will contribute to a certain reaction and that will fit their version of right and wrong. Narratives may highlight the wrongdoing of some over others, obscuring the wrongdoer’s own failures and exaggerating the importance of certain events to create a story that makes sense to the audience. For example, before the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, the Obama administration was interested in improving ties with the Syrian regime. Bashar and Asma al-Assad are quite westernized, educated and at ease in cosmopolitan European cities. These traits were emphasized during periods of positive Syrian-American relations. Asma al-Assad was seen as an elegant and stylish first lady. As soon as civil war broke out in 2011 and the US sided with the rebels, American media tended to depict Bashar and Asma as a greedy, bloodthirsty couple. Asma, once praised by fashion magazines, was then condemned for lavish spending on clothes and furniture with stolen Syrian money.[2]
What Kind of Language is Used to Sway Opinion?
The language used to describe people and events subtly (or not so subtly) skews how we interpret the news. Certain words can be used to tip off the reader as to whether they should interpret the story as good or bad, legitimate or illegitimate. For example, if the actors involved in a bombing are labeled “freedom fighters”, we are bound to think of the event much differently than if they are labeled “terrorists”. Consider the use of language by UK newspaper The Independent in their coverage of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto: “For the many, not the few”. The Independent claims: “Whatever you thought of Jeremy Corbyn before, you can’t deny the manifesto delivers.” “For the many, not the few” has turned out to be more than just a slogan, unlike Theresa May’s repetitious use of the phrase: “strong and stable”. Using language such as, “can’t deny” strongly props Corbyn up. In contrast, May is accused of “constant parroting”, which serves to delegitimize her message by implying she is repetitious and even annoying.[3]
How are Events Framed?
The media use culturally resonant frames to appeal to their target audience. When a historical event is transformed into a mediated narrative, it must carry a decodable message to have an effect on the audience, that is, something culturally and socially relatable to the audience. The narrative must be associated with a certain discourse that can be, in turn, realized and decoded by the consumer. Producers incorporate their knowledge of the social relations of the wider target society into the narratives they produce, which further reproduces a dominant ideology. Media, thus, creates a story that is in line with the power relations of the time as well as something that is digestible and unchallenging for its audience. Cultural norms, recognizable images, and language will add salience to a story. Robert Entman claims that a person’s cultural knowledge is part of their “schema”, which stores substantive beliefs, preferences, values, attitudes and rules for linking new ideas. These schemas guide the interpretation of messages. Linking frames with culturally embedded schema make them more effective.[4] For example, let’s imagine the coverage of a protest in the Middle East carried out by Western media. It would be more effective to highlight the democratic demands of protesters. In contrast, if the same protest were to be covered by a newspaper in the Gulf, it may be more effective to highlight religious elements.
Let’s revisit the example of the Assad family. Vogue published an article about the Assad family shortly before the conflict erupted, but in March 2011, when the civil uprising began, the article was quickly pulled from the shelves. In the article, Asma is portrayed as both a stylish, professional and dedicated family woman. The writer describes the Assad household as one that is familiar and relatable to an American reader: “there’s a decorated Christmas tree, seven-year-old Zein watches Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on the president’s iMac… the household is run on wildly democratic principles.”[5] As previously outlined, frames are most effective when they are culturally salient to the consumers. The reference to a Christmas tree, a Hollywood film, democracy, and an iMac computer contrasts the Assad family with an Orientalized idea of an Arab Muslim family that is hostile to and distant from Christian traditions and American culture. This evokes a feeling of closeness and familiarity to the American reader. Orientalism often portrays non-Western women as “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, deistic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.” and Western women as “educated, modern, having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and possessing the freedom to make their own decisions.”[6] Asma al-Assad is predominantly portrayed as the latter. This portrayal of Asma is effectively used so that she is more closely identified as one of “us” Westerners as opposed to one of “those” backward, hostile Arabs. Orientalism is applied through the lens of Western cultural hegemony, therefore, to make Asma appealing as a soft power capable of contributing to change in Syria, it is most effective to highlight her Western values.
Which Photos are Being Used to Represent People?
We can say something completely different about someone depending on what photo is used to represent them. The facial expressions that are captured can be used to soften or harden their image. Lighting, depth and exposure of the photo can drastically change the impression the image makes as well. The photo selected to represent the story gives us a visual element to what we are about to read and it can be very powerful. If the media narrative has something negative to say about an event, it is probable that the image will reflect that.
While everything we read may not be entirely objective, that does not mean it is wrong. What it does mean is that we need to remain critical readers. Being informed is more complex than simply reading the news. Whether you are reading something that aligns with your worldview or not, be aware that the way in which a story is told is influenced by the opinions, experiences and beliefs of its producer.
—
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-media-bias-attacks-75-per-cent-three-quarters-fail-to-accurately-report-a7140681.html?cmpid=facebook-post
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/asma-assad-eu-sanctions-blacklist_n_1366918.html
[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-labour-manifesto-announcement-whats-in-it-policies-it-delivers-a7738366.html, Liam Young, 16 May 2017
[4] Entman, R. (1989). How the Media Affect What People Think: An Information Processing Approach. The Journal of Politics, 51(02), p.347.
[5] http://gawker.com/asma-al-assad-a-rose-in-the-desert-1265002284
[6] Mohanty, C. (1984). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. boundary 2, 12(3), p, 333