text:
A Short Review of Jasmila Žbanić’s Blum | Balkan Diskurs
Adrian Feinberg
October 10th, 2022
There, behind the apartment blocks which once obscured the festival’s inaugural 1994 iteration from VRS snipers, we settled down for a special pre-screening of Jasmila Žbanić’s still unfinished documentary, Blum.
The night before Ruben Östlund’s glitzy, Palme D’Or winning Triangle of Sadness opened the 28th Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF), what felt like half of Sarajevo (myself included) gathered in the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema. There, behind the apartment blocks which once obscured the festival’s inaugural 1994 iteration from VRS snipers, we settled down for a special pre-screening of Jasmila Žbanić’s still unfinished documentary, Blum.
A film by BiH’s most talented contemporary filmmaker about Sarajevo’s preeminent Yugoslav-era businessman and mayor? The crowds were ready for a meeting between two Bosnian titans– the kind of momentary, caught-between-past-and-present meeting only cinema makes possible.
And in many ways, Blum delivered. Žbanić devotes the bulk of the documentary to the inner workings of Emerik Blum’s engineering company, Energoinvest. Despite examining Yugoslavia’s largest exporting enterprise – a business behemoth with 42,000 employees and international clientele – Blum manages to capture Energoinvest in small, family-like vignettes.
Energoinvest transcended a mere job for its employees: Yugoslav economic structures and Blum’s own initiative ensured that even factory workers lived in company-owned apartments, vacationed at company-owned timeshares on the Dalmatian coast, and competed in yearly company-sponsored sports competitions. In contemporary interviews interspersed with amberlike archival footage, Blum emerges as a paternal figure – a tyrant to some, but loved by all.
Žbanić’s interviews with McKinsey & Co.’s George Shaw and former Socialist party members, however, reveal Blum to be about more than one man or one company. American capitalists and Soviet zealots alike balked at Blum’s twinned passions for socialism and profit. Energoinvest, a business helmed by a hyper-wealthy executive and a workers’ council, encapsulated a “Third Way” in Yugoslavia–  a shade of pink, not of Communist red, to use an analogy from former Energoinvest employee Jakob Finci.
While Titoist principles drove Energoinvest, the company became an engine for the modernization of Sarajevo, erecting glassy office towers and apartment blocks. Žbanić doesn’t let us linger on the glory of Sarajevo’s transformation from “backwater” to industrial hub for too long, however. After about an hour’s meandering through the quirks of Energoinvest’s business enterprise, Blum progresses through the 1984 Olympics and the Siege of Sarajevo in quick succession. The golden glow and coordinated aesthetics of previous archival shots recede as images of bombed out façades and rusted machine parts come to the foreground.
But, whilst Blum cleverly ties Energoinvest’s arc to that of Sarajevo and Yugoslavia at large, the film’s Yugonostalgic excesses also represent its biggest failure. Žbanić breezes hastily through the “before” and “after” of Blum’s time at Energoinvest– his time in Nazi concentration camps, for instance, garners only a brief mention and a quick tie-in to his leadership acumen. As a whole, the documentary contains only one reference to Blum’s Jewishness, a minority status which set him apart from most other political leaders in Yugoslavia. Blum appears content to acknowledge that much of its eponymous figure’s private life remains, well, private.
While I simply cannot comment on the accessibility of information and footage on such personal matters, Blum squanders an opportunity to interrogate Yugoslav strictures on minority visibility in public life. Was Blum’s Jewishness effaced in the name of collective identity like so many other Yugoslav survivors of the Holocaust? Shifting more focus toward Blum’s life outside of Energoinvest– his family, his political career, his relationship with Tito, and, yes, his Jewish identity– could help Žbanić answer questions like this.
Blum remains a work in progress– its editing and contents at this year’s SFF screening both remain unfinished. While I hope its creative process evolves inwardly, examining the person behind Blum’s public reputation, I remain excited to see Jasmila Žbanić’s final product.

created: October 10th, 2022

author: Adrian Feinberg


text:
Dark tourism in post-war Sarajevo: A glimpse of the war | Balkan Diskurs
Ariela Rosenzweig
October 13th, 2022
Tourism agencies resumed operations in Sarajevo almost immediately after the end of the war. The first post-war tourists began arriving in the city in 1996, just months after the siege came to an end.
This influx of visitors to the historically rich and beautiful capital was not despite the recent destruction, but because of it.
After years of continuous media coverage chronicling the plight of Sarajevo’s residents, gawkers from western Europe were eager to see the ravaged city first-hand. In the years since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, war tourism, or “dark tourism,” has become a full-fledged economy in Sarajevo with a variety of attractions: from walking tours advertising “A Glimpse of the War” and “A Firsthand Experience of the Siege” to museum gift shops selling bullet necklaces, army fatigues, and rocks splattered with red paint as miniature “Sarajevo roses.”
The newest and most extreme dark-tourist attraction in Sarajevo sprung up in 2016 when tour guide Arijan Kurbasic opened the Sarajevo War Hostel. During his time as a guide, Mr. Kurbasic saw an unfilled niche in the war market when he realized that what tourists really wanted was an “authentic war experience.” For visitors to Sarajevo, it was no longer enough to learn about the siege; tourists wanted to live a commercialized version of it. Mr. Kurbasic rose to the challenge and met the demand by opening a war simulation hostel on the first floor of his family house near the former front line.
When guests arrive at the hostel, they are greeted by Mr. Kurbasic in military fatigues, who asks them to address him as “Zero One,” his father’s code name during the war. In the background, recordings of shelling and other war sounds play constantly. The floor is made of mud, the beds are mattress-less wooden platforms, and smoke from a fog machine is pumped into the rooms. There are no lights or windows in the hostel; guests are given old flashlights with a low battery to ensure that they will spend most of their stay in the dark.
Mr. Kurbasic says his aim in opening the hostel was to educate young tourists on the dangers of war. Most of his visitors are Europeans, Americans, and Australians who are too young to remember the televised catastrophe of the siege of Sarajevo. However, they are still looking to live a reproduced version of the media frenzy in Mr. Kurbasic’s veritable Disneyland of destruction.
Although temporarily closed, the War Hostel was reasonably successful during its pre-Covid operation, and Mr. Kurbasic is still making his living as a tourism professional, offering war tours that differ from the typical “mainstream, touristy” war experience.
The mainstream war experiences referenced by Mr. Kurbasic abound in Sarajevo, with war-themed tours and attractions consistently raking in the highest profits and number of visitors. Despite the apparent tourist industry bend towards memory and dark tourism, the Canton of Sarajevo’s board of tourism has counterintuitively steered away from endorsing war-themed attractions.
While tourists come to Sarajevo to revel in war-time memories, government officials prefer to move away from the city’s reputation for destruction by promoting natural and cultural attractions.
The notable exception in this policy is the Tunnel of Hope, a previously privately owned museum and tourist attraction that came under government ownership in 2012.  The tunnel was built on the property of the Kolar family near the Sarajevo airport and during the siege, it was the route to territories under Bosnian control. After the end of the war, the Kolar family preserved what remained of the tunnel and transformed their property into a museum and tourist attraction.
When the Sarajevo Canton government bought the museum and tunnel, they expanded into a “memorial complex” and began educational programming for local middle schoolers. Simultaneously, the Tunnel of Hope became “the most popular tourist attraction in Sarajevo,” welcoming over 160,000 tourists in pre-covid years and projections of an increase in visitors with the post-covid resurgence of tourism.
The line between tourist attraction and educational/memorial site is thin at the Tunnel of Hope. The tensions between balancing the work of education and memorial with marketing the war-time experience are evident at the site: images of the men who worked to construct the tunnel and detailed maps of the former frontline hang on the walls while meters away, tourists obliviously pose in a camouflage photo set and purchase faux bullets at the gift shop.
As the only war tourism site under the control of the Sarajevo government, the Tunnel of Hope marks a departure from the longstanding policy of deemphasizing the new heritage of war and promoting the older and less contested heritage of Sarajevo.
When asked if more wartime tourist attractions should come under government ownership, Tunnel of Hope Curator Jasminka Bavčić said that she hopes that more war-related sites do transition into public ownership and that the organizational dream of the Tunnel of Hope Memorial Complex is for children from nearby Republika Srpska to also visit the Tunnel on school trips.
Nearly 30 years after the end of the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina, the war tourism market in Sarajevo continues to grow as private actors (such as Mr. Kurbasic of the Sarajevo War Hostel) capitalize on increasingly sensationalist tourist desires, while government initiatives attempt to balance domestically focused education initiatives with appeals to foreign visitors.
Any seller ultimately has to cater to their customer base, which in the context of the Sarajevo war market, is a group of tourists who will continue to demand increasingly outrageous war-related “experiences” which ultimately obscure the real stories of suffering. Whether more “authentic war experiences” will be forthcoming as the violence of the 1990s fades further into the past remains to be seen.

source: news-balkandiskurs

created: October 13th, 2022

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

author: Ariela Rosenzweig


text:
A Heroic Fight Against Death | Balkan Diskurs
Dennis Miskić
October 17th, 2022
On July 14th, 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers shot Mevludin Orić at the Orahovac execution site in Zvornik Municipality – one of several locations where mass executions were carried out during the genocide in and around Srebrenica.
The body of a slain relative fell on top of Orić, who was unconscious at the time. When he regained consciousness, he wandered through the forests for days, hungry, thirsty, and afraid. He eventually managed to reach the free territory under the control of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH). After 27 years, he is still willing to talk about what he survived to ensure that the Srebrenica genocide is never forgotten or repeated. His story teaches a valuable lesson.
As the Srebrenica enclave was falling to the Bosnian Serb Army, a column of 15,000 Bosniaks set out on a journey of hundreds of kilometers through the woods to Tuzla, the nearest free territory. As mostly able-bodied men, they knew that staying in the UN headquarters would be equivalent to suicide. They grasped onto the last straw of hope, which was to march through the forest. Archival footage from July 1995 shows the men and boys setting off into the woods. Some are waving to the camera, while others appear to be staring into a void. Living for more than three years under siege in deplorable humanitarian conditions had taken a visible toll on them. Yet, the will to survive is written all over their faces.
A mere 3,000 of those who embarked on the journey came out of the woods alive, some only after months of living in caves, evading Serb patrols. The majority of the men were either killed in ambushes or captured by Serb soldiers and taken to execution sites. Only a handful survived the mass executions that followed. Mevludin Orić was one of them.
Orić was born in Lehovići, a small village near Srebrenica. His family owned some land and earned the majority of their money from growing tobacco. He recalls having had a normal childhood. When asked whether there were any problems with the local Serbs, he is quick to say no. In his own words, “We didn’t even know what nationalism was back then. We were like one people.”
Although he has positive memories of the past, the ghosts of the genocide still haunt him. Talking about his childhood, he struggles not to mention the impact the genocide has had on his family. “Of the 33 men who were killed from our village, 25 were my relatives.”
After moving to Zagreb briefly at the start of the 1990s, he returned to Bosnia in June of 1992 when his daughter was born. After arriving in Tuzla, he set off to Srebrenica on foot. “I will see my daughter or die trying,” was his only thought. Two months later, he reached Srebrenica.
“Nobody believed I was still alive,” he recalls. “They all thought I’d died in the woods.” Upon his arrival, he didn’t have much time to rest as the local war hospital was in dire need of medical supplies and a surgeon. Somebody had to go to Tuzla to pick up the surgeon and the medications and bring them back to Srebrenica safely. Since Orić knew his way around that territory, he agreed to go. Leading the way, he set off for Tuzla along with three other men. They collected the surgeon and the supplies and returned to the besieged enclave safely. This heroic deed surely saved countless lives.
Orić and his family lived on the outskirts of Srebrenica which meant that they were able to live off of the food they grew. By the spring of 1993, however, wheat, corn, rye, and oats were depleted. There was hunger on a massive scale, and people began to starve. Still, he always tried to help when people came knocking on his door, asking for food. “You give what you have. I could never turn someone away. I just couldn’t,” he says.
This and many other problems should have been solved with the arrival of UN protection forces. On April 16th, 1993, the Security Council passed Resolution 819 which declared the Srebrenica enclave a “safe zone.” Notably, it was not designated a “protected zone” – a distinction that would be shown to have massive consequences in 1995. “The shelling stopped, and some humanitarian aid started coming in. But I never trusted them. They sent too few troops to really defend the enclave. I never believed in them.”
Orić was right. Not only did the UN fail to deploy a sufficient force to the enclave, they also never intended to protect it. The key sentence was that the safe zone “should” be free from any armed attack. This vague definition of the safe zone left room for different interpretations based on political convenience. “After all, everywhere in the world ‘should’ remain safe,” war correspondent Adam LeBor wrote in his book Complicity with Evil.
When it became clear that the UN troops would not stop the Serbian soldiers led by Ratko Mladić, thousands of refugees gathered in front of the UN base in Potočari. Those who did not trust the UN decided to go through the forest. The column formed in Šušnjari, a few kilometers from Srebrenica. “When I saw the mass of people, instantly knew that at least half was not going to survive. I knew the way. I knew how dangerous it was“, remembers Orić.
The first ambush in Kamenica was the last time he saw his father. Close to 500 people died during that ambush, showing to the men and boys that this was not going to be an easy march to Tuzla.
On July 13th, Orić was captured. He was first taken to the Vuk Karadžić school in Bratunac, where he and others had to spend the night sleeping in a bus. The next day they were blindfolded and brought to Orahovac, a village near Zvornik.
Orahovac was one of the largest mass execution sites of the Srebrenica genocide. The judicial verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Court of BiH have established that members of the Army of Republika Srpska, including soldiers of the Zvornik Brigade, participated in the shooting of men on July 14th, 1995, near the school in Orahovac. The Zvornik Brigade assisted with the executions as well as the transportation and burial of corpses in mass graves. Later, they would also exhume and move the bodies to secondary and even tertiary mass graves.
“I was standing next to my cousin Hariz. He was sure that they would kill us. Before I could contradict him, they started shooting at us,” recalls Orić with tears in his eyes, remembering the most horrifying moment of his life.
“He was shot right away and fell on top of me. I felt the life go out of his body as he shivered for a couple of seconds and then died.”
According to Orić’s testimony, while he was lying among the dead, he heard Bosnian Serb soldiers insulting the dead, cursing their “Turkish mothers” and saying that they were “best dead.” One prisoner managed to escape, and he heard a soldier complain that the operation wasn’t done properly because there were survivors. The soldier then shot one man in the head and shot Orić’s cousin once more.
Orić was unconscious under the body of his cousin, and Serb troops didn’t notice that he had survived. He stayed like that all night. “I was so hungry, thirsty, and tired. At this point it wouldn’t have made any difference if they killed me. I didn’t care,” he remembers.
He was woken up late at night by rain. When he looked around, he saw a meadow full of dead bodies. Together with another man who had survived, he ran into the woods. It was not until July 21st that they arrived in Nezuk, free territory under ARBiH control.
“I felt joy and sorrow at the same time. Joy because I had survived, I had made it out. But sorrow because I kept thinking about my family. The days went by, and I was thinking that they would show up. But they didn’t. At one point you just have to realize that they won’t come back.”
Seven bones from the body of Orić’s father were found in three different mass graves. His brother’s body was found and buried at the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potočari.
Today, Mevludin lives in Iljaš, a town on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Although he tries to lead a normal life, his trauma follows him at every step. Memories of the mass execution remain with him constantly. He suffers from debilitating anxiety and struggles to find work.
Nevertheless, he is still determined to tell his story, even though he must relive his trauma every time. In this way, he contributes to ensuring that the crimes committed during the Srebrenica genocide are never forgotten.
The exhibition “In the Footsteps of Those Who Did (Not) Cross,” which is on permanent display at the Srebrenica Memorial Center, thoroughly thematizes the Death March during the Srebrenica genocide through video testimonies, court documents, and authentic artefacts recovered from the woods by the research team of the Memorial Center.

created: October 17th, 2022

author: Dennis Miskić


text:
The Tradition of Sicanje - an Enduring Trace of Catholicism in Bosnia and Herzegovina | Balkan Diskurs
Matija Krivošić
October 21st, 2022
Places that you visit spontaneously for the first time really have a special aura and soul. Just like that, with these emotions, my first trip to Rama was to study the traditional custom of tattooing among Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Maybe there are two or three women left who have crosses in Rumboci village,” said Mare Vuročić, a grandmother from the village of Rumboci in Rama municipality. Mare was one of the people I interviewed during a visit to this village in northern Herzegovina, or southern Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), for research on traditional Catholic tattoos, sicanje.
Places that you visit spontaneously for the first time really have a special aura and soul. Just like that, with these emotions, my first trip to Rama was to study the traditional custom of tattooing among Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It goes by different names in different parts of BiH, such as bocanje or križićanje. For a long time, I was looking for the best possible example of traditional tattooing and tattoos, which are above all, the living history of a time and a dying tradition.
The idyllic landscape of the village of Šarci near Rumbok was illuminated by the colorful palette of the suns rays that day, when I spoke with Mare, Marta Šarčević, and Biljana Glibo. Mare was born in 1944 and Marta was born in 1938. They are relatives who are also tattooed in the traditional way. Biljana is an ethnomusicologist and leader of the ethnic heritage group ‘Čuvarice’ and she tattoos traditional designs, but with the help of modern tattoo studio equipment.
Sicanje tattoos were used by Catholic women to identify themselves as Catholics and thus save themselves from forced marriages, abduction into the harem, and rape during the Ottoman period. This method of tattooing in our country arose during the Ottoman occupation of medieval Bosnia and continued to be practiced extensively until the end of the Second World War. After the end of the Second World War, sicanje slowly disappeared into oblivion, but in certain areas, it can still be found.
During Ottoman times, anyone who was marked in this way would be prevented from converting to another religion, that is, to Islam. However, this was not always the case. According to the traditions collected by Croatian ethnologist Ćiro Truhelka, there is evidence that some Catholic women who were tattooed, but who still converted to Islam so they could marry the man they loved. A few months ago, I spoke with Toni Petković, a mythology researcher from Vareš. He also confirmed that in the Vareš area, there were also cases when tattooed women were abducted by the Ottomans or changed their religion.
According to one of the articles in the Glasnik magazine, published by the BiH National Museum, Truhelka and Dr. Leopold Glück were the first to talk about “common” tattooing, as it was called then. Marking religious, ethnic, or any other affiliation with tattoos was common at that time, but much more so among Catholics than any other peoples.
“When we were little girls, Mare’s aunt used to do it. That’s how it was in the old days, that’s what our people did to show that they were Croats during the Turkish occupation,” explained Marta, also a resident of Rumbok.
The girls who decided to get sicanje tattoos mostly did so between the ages of 10 and 15. Those I spoke to told me that they had done it at the age of 15.
“When I was little, this [tattoo] was done by your late relative,” Marta tells Mare, laughing.
A question that really intrigued me was whether men also tattooed each other. The answer I received was “rarely,” to which Mare added, “It was so nice for us and us women wanted to do it.”
They confirmed that while “almost every girl had tattoos,” it was rare for men. Later in the conversation, Marta mentioned that her late brother had tattoos similar to hers.
Truhelka’s sources confirm that tattooing was more frequent among women. Both hands were tattooed, but according to Truhelka, the left hand was slightly more tattooed. Sometimes women had so many tattoos on their hands that the color of the hand wasn’t visible. Women tattooed their arms, above and below the elbow, as well as their hands. Chests were also tattooed along the sternum. Sometimes you could also see some simple design on the forehead. Truhelka says that in that period, it was mostly women from Central Bosnia who were tattooed, especially in the cities of Sarajevo, Visoko, Travnik, Fojnica, Prozor/Rama, Bugojno, and the Banja Luka area. The custom was slightly less common in Olovo, Vareš, Vijaci, and in the Neretvica river valley.
When men decided to get tattooed, they would get a simple design above their right elbow or a cross on their index finger. Towards the end of my trip in northern Herzegovina – or southern BiH, if you prefer – I had an informal conversation with Zdena, a priest from Guča Gora and a lover of traditional tattoos. He told me that men also used to get tattoos under their armpits or behind their ears. They even got designs from stećaks or traditional tombstones.
Sicanje began with a family gathering at the home of a female relative who was skilled in tattooing. According to Truhelka’s sources, tattooing usually began on holidays such as Midsummer Day or the Feast of St John (June 24th), the Annunciation (March 25th), St. Josip Day (March 19th), Palm Sunday (April 2nd), or any other day during Holy Week (the week before Easter, the most scared Catholic holiday). However, the grandmothers from Rumbok said that there was no specific date when it was done. The only thing that was certain was that it was done more often in the summer. About how many women would be tattooed in a day, Marta said, “however many you would like to receive, two or three. They would mostly come on Sundays when everyone was at home.”
From her sources, Truhelka states that women tattooed themselves, but the grandmothers from Rumbok refuted this, because when tattooing, the skin of the hand had to be held taught with the other hand.
“We were glad to do it. But it was hard, you know. Take honey, black ink, and mix. First, you draw what you want and then with a needle proceed to tattoo it,” said Mare. Marta elaborated, “from coal or crushed coal, honey, you would make the mixture. Take a needle, the one we used to sew with, and draw.”
Before the actual injection of this mixture, the design would first be painted with some black ink. Then, with a sewing needle, as Marta specified, one would tattoo into the skin until the design was finished.
“This is how [the skin] was tightened, you had to endure the pain. We would be covered in blood. It surprises me, but thanks to dear God, we never pierced any veins,” Marta said with a laugh.
After the tattoo was done, the hand would be wrapped in a bandage which would be worn for a whole day. The next day it would be washed with very cold water.
Crosses were the most commonly tattooed design, but not the only one. Certain sets of designs also developed that were characteristic of a particular place and had their own names. Crosses were usually placed on the finger, forehead, hands, or in the middle of some larger designs. The crosses numbered 4 to 7 in the photos below are called Fir crosses, because the ornaments at the ends of the crosses represent fir buds. In the area of Kraljeva Sutjeska, there were somewhat more ornate designs.
Then follows a series of secular symbols formed by dots or a circle, which were generally placed on the upper side of the arm, under the elbow, and on the chest. The circle usually had a cross inside, but more often it was empty, or with a single star (photo 18). The circles were usually concentric, with a smaller one inside a larger one. On men, the circle was placed above the elbow, while on a woman, it was on the upper arm.
The crescent shaped fence opens at the bend of the elbow. The other side facing the fingers is decorated with lines, berries, and fir trees. The inside contains a cross or a star with several lines, and the middle of the fence has a cross or some other design.
There is often a design below the fence, circling the wrist, such as a branch (photo 43). The more ornate designs in photos 44, 45, 46 are called fir trees. There are also variants where these designs adorn a wheel, as in photos 47 and 48.
The most common design in the Bila area is an ear of corn (photos 49 to 53), consisting of a vertical line, crosses, and twigs. It was often placed on the lower arm, below the elbow. The stars have shapes with eight lines (photo 57) or a circle bounded by lines (photo 58). The stars mostly served to fill the space between the main designs. The star composed of an oblong ellipse with lines on it was formerly called an ornament (photo 56). The sun is surrounded by a similar design and closed by a line on the upper side (photo 54). A sickle-shaped design with a wheel at both ends is called a moon (photo 55). Photo 60 shows the layout of the ornaments.
My travels through Rama ended with a conversation with Biljana, the ethnomusicologist and leader of the Čuvarice ethnic heritage group. She tattoos these designs because it’s her profession, but also because it’s a tradition that she loves and wholeheartedly wants to preserve. As she stated for Balkan Diskurs, today people react really well to these kinds of tattoos and she got a couple of questions from her former students who were looking for advice on what to do when they get a traditional tattoo.
Young people are still interested in traditions and this one from long ago still lives on, Biljana concludes.
Sicanje, although a long-forgotten tradition, is quietly returning to new generations.

created: October 21st, 2022

author: Matija Krivošić


text:
ADOPT Srebrenica: The Future Rests on the Foundations of the Past | Balkan Diskurs
Danica Novaković
October 24th, 2022
First as an informal group of citizens and later as an association, members of ADOPT Srebrenica created a neutral space where they can freely talk about the past, the events of the war, its consequences, and current affairs. Their aim is to foster sustainable coexistence, a more promising future, and mutual reconciliation.
In 2005, ten years after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ADOPT Srebrenica offered Srebrenica residents, especially young people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, the opportunity to contribute to reconciliation and the creation of a more promising shared future.
Bekir Halilović from ADOPT Srebrenica said that through their work so far, they have organized numerous activities and projects, some of which have become long term and are continued on a daily or annual basis. In 2007, together with the Alexander Langer Foundation, they organized the first International Remembrance Week in Srebrenica – a multi-day program that offered visitors various content from the spheres of science, art, and culture.
Halilović explained that the idea behind the International Week of Remembrance was to establish constructive dialogue, but also to return the focus to Srebrenica as a community.
“This is a traditional program of the association, the 14th edition of which was held this year in Srebrenica. As in previous years, there was a rich and varied program that included promotions, exhibitions, performances, and other events from the world of science and culture. Along with that, some of the association’s work over the previous is always presented,” said Halilović.
In addition to the International Week of Remembrance, the Documentation Center is another one of their major projects. Established in 2014 as an archival platform, it was designed to preserve materials such as photos, documents, video content, and other artefacts that testify to life in pre-war Srebrenica and its inhabitants. The archiving process itself is systematized and includes the collection of materials, data processing, and publication on the ADOPT Srebrenica website.
According to Halilović, they try to collect as much information as possible about every item they receive.
“This is especially significant when it comes to photographs of people from Srebrenica. These photos bear witness to the youth of the person in them, and often to the existence of a person who was killed or was declared missing after the genocide. In this way, we contribute to nurturing the culture of memory, especially of those who are no longer among the living,” said Halilović.
In addition to these projects, which represent part of the association’s tradition, there is also a significant focus on work with young people from Srebrenica and neighboring communities through various programs such as educational workshops. Youth-centric projects are especially important as young people are the pillar of future society. As such, they must be able to reconcile and accept the events of the past in order to build a brighter future.
“As a society, we have not completed the process of dealing with the past. In fact, the terminology and narratives we have from the past are different and conflicting depending on which side they come from. In order for our society, especially the young people, to be able to build better opportunities, the process of facing the past is inevitable. We can only accept the truth together, and then start working for what is in the common interest of all of us,” explains Halilović.
Proof that we are still making progress can be seen in the fact that while there will always be those who resent the work of organizations like ADOPT Srebrenica, there are also many who support them. According to Halilović, their biggest supporters are the residents of Srebrenica, especially young people who follow their work and respond to the activities they organize.
“Society plays an important role when it comes to forming opinions and attitudes among young people. The media and politicians consciously manipulate young people to ensure a safe electorate in the future through spreading hatred and fear. In doing so, they divert attention from important topics such as the economy, healthcare, and the social system. That’s why it’s very important that organizations like ours exist to provide a space for young people and what was not necessarily created as a result of the narrative they are constantly exposed to,” said Halilović.
To prevent all this from continuing, Halilović believes that, above all, we need to communicate. “We know very little about each other, or we don’t know each other at all. We must learn to respect others and to treat all those who are victims of crimes with understanding,” Halilović pointed out. He added that communication will bring us closer together, and then we will learn to respect each other.
Only when we learn to respect one another, as he said, will we be able to face the past in the best possible way and stop those who have been making our lives difficult and destroying our country for all these years.

created: October 24th, 2022

author: Danica Novaković


text:
“The Colorless:” A Film that Captures the Possibility of Not Belonging | Balkan Diskurs
Amina Sejfić
October 28th, 2022
Aida Gavrić’s debut film “The Colorless” was shown on October 14th as part of the Post-Conflict Research Center’s project and photo exhibition “The Love Tales.” The film is about children from ethnically mixed marriages who, stigmatized as ‘half-breeds,’ are consigned to a liminal space, in between world’s, given the ethno-nationalist character of Bosnian and Herzegovinian society.
The film is about children from ethnically mixed marriages who, stigmatized as ‘half-breeds,’ are consigned to a liminal space, in between world’s, given the ethno-nationalist character of Bosnian and Herzegovinian society.
The film showcases different perspectives on hybrid identities and the position of not belonging, reflecting on the idea that belonging is not essential, and not-belonging is in fact an option.
“The Colorless” follows those born from a time of love between different peoples who, with the collapse of brotherhood and unity, found themselves stuck in an “in between.” In this way, the film focuses on those who defy classification in a country where ethno-nationalist categories color the social landscape. These people are often labeled a kind of excess or “other,” Gavrić said.
She explained that the idea for the film sprung from her scientific fascination and research on hybrid identity and identity in general. The root of this fascination lies in personal experience. As a child, she came to the realization that she cannot be classified according to popular confessional and ethnic categories in a society in which such classifications are not just important, but central to nearly every aspect of life.
Gavrić earned her master’s degree at the Department of Comparative Literature and Librarianship in Sarajevo. She recently defended her doctoral dissertation on cosmopolitanism and world literature in the magazine Nada between 1895 and 1903.
The entire film is embedded with her personal story, as she herself is a child from a mixed marriage. For this reason, she says it’s difficult for her to choose any one scene from the film as the most poignant. However, she ultimately singles out the narrative of two girls, Nora Gutić and Arven Gavrić Memić, whose spirit, reflection, and even visual representation embody the essence of what the film depicts.
“Every aspect is extremely important to me and forms an indispensable part of the puzzle of what my goal was to convey to the audience. But if I really had to choose, I would say that it’s the perspective of the two six-year-old girls, which is the most intelligent,” explains Gavrić.
It is extremely important to discuss these topics, especially in a society as divided and distrustful as Bosnia and Herzegovina. The easiest way approach to the subject is certainly through art, because in the case of engaging art, silence is not golden.
“I don’t want to be silent. Artists must not remain silent. Otherwise, who else will point out the reality and what is wrong and bizarre in it? Who will uncover it?” Gavrić said. She noted that she has always wanted to change the world and believes that this is the primary drive of most of those who work with art – or at least should be.
Velma Šarić, the president and founder of the Post-Conflict Research Center, has demonstrated the potential of art to change established narratives. Her work is based on the use of innovative multimedia content for the promotion of peace narratives, including documentaries, photography, and art.
“Art has proven to be an excellent medium for promoting true values and topics that are still somewhat taboo in our society. Art is the easiest way to change current entrenched narratives,” said Šarić.
The “Love Tales” exhibition was set up at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which organized the screening of “The Colorless” together with the Post-Conflict Research Center. The exhibition focuses on ten ethnically mixed couples from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both the exhibition and the film challenge the existing narrative that relations between people of different ethnicities are non-existent and unsustainable.
Gavrić witnessed the power of art, including documentary film, when her film premiered at the AJB DOC Film Festival, in the category of films recorded with a smartphone.
“It’s especially interesting that an audience that is not directly affected by the central theme reacted strongly to the film. People often cried and laughed at the same time watching it. As someone who has spent her whole life writing, that is, a medium that has a very limited reach, this experience is totally extraordinary,” explained Gavrić. She added that this film actually represents a significant turning point in her work – the transition from text to moving picture.
The inspiration for the title “The Colorless” came from the work of Džemaludin Latić, a professor and writer who published a text in 1994 in the wartime magazine Ljiljan and in the collected volume Mješoviti brakovi. In the text, he talked about mixed marriages as “a kind of misunderstanding of common life is present,” as well as “mostly failed marriages in which severe conflicts arise.” He also said that children from these marriages are “frustrated by default,” and thus, the author recommended at the time that “such marriages end once and for all.”
“In the film, he was given the space to explain his current view of the text he wrote almost 30 years ago, and to express his views on the subject today,” Gavrić said. At one point in the film, Professor Latić apologizes for, as he says, “the clumsy and careless expression” he used in the 1994 text.
The author of “The Colorless” believes that we should embrace diversity in identity among people.
“Don’t allow yourself to be divided, diminished, or categorized. The lowest acceptable collective identity determinant for a human being is that of belonging to earth. This is the only way to the Kantian utopia of eternal peace,” Gavrić concluded.

created: October 28th, 2022

author: Amina Sejfić


text:
Finding the “CURE” to Gender Inequality in Bosnia and Herzegovina | Balkan Diskurs
Mia Baxley
October 31st, 2022
The fight for women’s rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been one of the most difficult human rights issues to overcome in recent years.
This is largely due to the destruction and consequences of the war, which affected everyone, but saw women and girls who were subjected to rape and sexual abuse.
The generally accepted estimate is that there are 20,000 to 50,000 female survivors of rape in BiH, and approximately 2,000 to 4,000 children born out of rape. The stigma of their conception has followed them and their mothers for decades after the end of the war.
Despite numerous challenges, non-governmental organizations in BiH dealing with sexual and gender-based violence and women’s rights continue to work tirelessly to create a better, more equal society for all. One of those organizations is the Sarajevo-based feminist CURE Foundation, which promotes gender equality and positive social change through educational, artistic, cultural, and research programs. CURE relies on a wide range of diverse and unique projects to share its message with broader society and empower women and girls across BiH.
Founded in 2006 and formally registered as an NGO in 2009, CURE Foundation holds the distinction of being the only formally registered feminist NGO in BiH.
Project assistant Sabina Lizde shared this fact when she recently spoke to Balkan Diskurs about the importance of the organization’s position in BiH society.
Sabina has been working at CURE for three years, but her involvement goes back to her time as a volunteer. Her activism in feminist affairs grew out of her own past experience with domestic violence and the voice that CURE gave her to empower other women like her. At an educational camp for young women organized by CURE several years ago, she was able to learn more about her experience in a judgment-free space created to bring women together.
“I started volunteering for CURE Foundation where I actually discovered that I was a victim of domestic relationship violence,” she said. “That motivated me to get more engaged in these activities. That led to my volunteering here, which led to my work after one year of volunteering.” She added that as a volunteer, she dealt with gender-based violence and that was the main reason why she wanted to become part of the team.
CURE was founded with a simple goal in mind: to create a space for women in BiH to gather and speak on the issues that directly affect them. CURE stepped up to fill in the gaps in a postwar BiH society which was plagued by gender-based and sexual violence both during and after the war. The founding of the organization was also humble: a small group of just six women with a vision, working to build a truly grassroots foundation.
“They said, ‘Okay, we need some place where women can hang out, where women can talk, where women can build something to fight against the norms we have today,’” Sabina recalled.
But this was not intended to be a support group; it was just a place for women to be themselves with other women, find respect for their voices and ideas, and talk freely about the issues that matter most to them.
The gaps filled by CURE, according to Sabina, were both societal and administrative. “There was only one political party for women after the war, and that one does not exist anymore. There was nothing informal or non-governmental like this, so […] little by little, that small group of women turned into 20 women, 50 women, 60 women, and now we are part of Zenska Mreza [Women’s Network].” Sabina described Zenska Mreza as a larger network of almost all the women’s organizations in BiH supporting each other’s missions and visions.
Although CURE comes from humble roots, it was not alone in its early history. Women in Black, a Serbian feminist and antiwar organization founded in 1991, also worked in BiH and elsewhere across the Balkans to uncover the devastating truth about rape and forced pregnancies during the Bosnian War.
“In fact, one of the co-creators of CURE was, and still is, a member of [Women in Black], so they played a crucial role in the creation of CURE,” Sabina said.
Women in Black worked to help Bosnian women find their own voice and take back their personal agency in spite of the history of violence against them. Their investigative work became one of the primary sources of information for Bosnian women to learn about what happened to them and to other women across the country.
Sabina emphasized that CURE does not want to cast the survivors of domestic violence and rape as perpetual victims. Rather, their main objectives are to share women’s stories of survival during the war, as well as to create new hope for Bosnian women today to survive and thrive after victimization. In the last three decades, Bosnian women have taken a stand for their own destiny and, thanks to the work of CURE and other women’s organizations in the region, they have decided to rewrite their narrative.
“We do not want to be remembered by the crimes that were done in the war,” she proclaimed. “We want to create another picture of women from Bosnia… we do not want to let those crimes define us.”
CURE’s mission is highly localized to address the needs of Bosnian women, and so Sabina was unable to share much about the organization’s stance on the reversal of Roe v. Wade in the United States. Likewise, CURE was not directly affected by the reinstatement of the global gag rule in 2017 to limit the open discussion of abortion as a reproductive healthcare option in nations receiving US financial support (BiH has been a major beneficiary of US financial aid since the Dayton Agreement ended the Bosnian War in 1995).
Sabina said, “We were not that familiar [with the gag order], especially younger generations. We generally aren’t affected that much by any decisions made in the US because we have our own set of rules and beliefs.” She later added, “As a group, the work of CURE Foundation was not affected, because we have too many problems in our own country.”
Nevertheless, Sabina empathized with the connected struggles of feminist activists all across the world who face common challenges in their fight for rights to their own autonomy – whether it’s reclaiming their voice, fighting for access to reproductive healthcare, or healing after rape or relationship violence. This is one of the many social issues that knows no international borders, even in 2022. “We are always sending messages of support for everyone, to every kind of movement that we see happening on a global scale.”
Sabina ended the discussion with a powerful message of support: “We know how it is to struggle, especially against the government and especially for your own basic human rights, for your own rights in the healthcare system. This was the last straw that has to fall on the backs of women, and it really makes us sad that it’s like that. We know that there will be some changes because women will not be silent. We’re sad that we have to witness these things in 2022, but we’re sure that women in the US will not stop fighting, no matter how many times the fight gets hard. At one point, you ask yourself, ‘Is this worth it? Fighting for this, for that – but then you know that when the moment comes, you will not give up fighting because you have to keep pushing and you have to keep fighting for what’s yours.”
“The strength is within us,” Sabina concluded. “We are very powerful creatures, and we can do anything we want to do.”

created: October 31st, 2022

author: Mia Baxley


text:
Church in Bugojno: A Symbol of Peace and Love | Balkan Diskurs
Kristina Gadže
November 4th, 2022
The small town of Vesela Straža near Bugojno has recently become the center of a historical treasury.
In 2014, Husein Smajlić, a resident of the town, was doing some construction work, when he happened upon the foundations of a medieval Roman Catholic church and the remains of the Bosnian queen Jelena Kotromanić Gruba from the 14th century. In the spirit of that period, he built the church of Gospa od Anđela [Our Lady of the Angels] on his land, which is open to believers and visitors.
“I call it the Church of peace, love, tolerance and respect among people. The Church is here to be respected,” said Smajlić. He explained that he mostly financed its construction himself, but he also received donations from many people, including Serbs and Bosniaks, as well as help from the Mayor of Bugojno, who issued the construction and urban planning permit.
He has already had a bust of Queen Jelena Kotromanić Gruba built and has plans to build a museum in the future. The gallery would contain the other things he found, including gold, jewelry, four gold Venetian coins, stone sculptures from the basement, and a baptismal font.
“The truth about history must be heard. It’s a known fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina existed at that time, so the existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina shouldn’t be denied. Certainly, our young people will come here, learn from these foundations, from their elders, and visit the bust of our only female to sit on the throne. She is the only queen to have a seal and a crown on her head that had been worn by her previous husband Stjepan Dabiša,” Smajlić explained.
The skeletal remains of the queen were excavated with the help of archeologists Ljuba Oreč, Kruna Oreč, and Stipan Dilber. They were then sent to Miami, Florida in the United States, where analysts determined that she had died 1,400 years ago.
“When we found her in the tomb, she was covered in gold and silk, up to the waist, and a man was lying next to her. We also found royal velvet,” said Smajlić. After that discovery, he began to learn more about that period. Queen Jelena Gruba is known to have ruled Bosnia for three years (1395-1398), and to have come to power after Bosnian King Stjepan Dabiša.
The skeletal remains of the queen as well as 12 other sets of remains also found in the foundations of the old church are kept in the basement, in wooden coffins lined with white upholstery which Smajlić made himself.
In 2015, Smajlić was awarded the Večernjak Seal which was presented to him by the President of the Republic of Croatia. Smajlić said, “On my land in Bugojno are the foundations of the oldest Roman Catholic church. I want that church to be restored, to build it as it was, with the blessing of our Cardinal Vinko Puljić.”
Half a year later, Cardinal Puljić visited the site in Vesela Straža and said that while it wouldn’t be practical to build a church on destroyed foundations, a memorial chapel should be built elsewhere.
“Then it was time to build the new memorial chapel. The cardinal came on August 2nd and then we blessed and consecrated the church. Every year on that date, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels,” said Smajlić.
He inherited the historically rich land from his parents, who purchased it in 1953. Today, the church is his property and the cadaster, as well as the remains of the queen. Next to the foundations of the medieval church, there is a bust of Queen Jelena Gruba, which was sculpted by Ante Braovac from Tomislavgrad. Beside the bust, there is an oil canvas painting of Jesus Christ, four and a half meters high and 2.26 meters wide, which was a gift from the municipality of Kupres in 2015.
“I decided to put a painting there and have written proof that it’s my painting, so I can say that Jesus is mine because I have the paper,” joked Smajlić. He explained that there was a painting of Jesus Christ in the same place in 1463.
Commenting on the image of Jesus Christ, he said, “I can’t look him in the eyes for even a minute, it’s like his gaze mesmerizes you.”
Smajlić didn’t want to move the historical treasure to another location because he believes that it belongs in Bugojno. Remarking on the common trope of ethnic and religious divisions, he concluded, “I see no reason why people can’t live with others, alongside one another […] it’s important whether a person is honest and good, a man’s name is the least important thing.”

created: November 4th, 2022

author: Kristina Gadže


text:
International Documentary Film Festival in Tuzla is Reborn | Balkan Diskurs
Ramo Tučić
November 6th, 2022
After 32 years, a historical gem was reborn. The International Documentary Film Festival in Tuzla was restarted this year under its traditional symbolism of the Miner and the color red, which pays tribute to the blood spilled by the working class in the building of the country.
In reawakening the festival, the organizers endeavored to pull it from oblivion for the benefit of new generations of young people.
The 24th iteration of the Tuzla International Documentary Film Festival was held from the 22nd to 24th of October this year. This was the first time the Festival was held since 1990, after which it was interrupted by the war. It has always attracted big names from the film world. Five films were screened in this year’s Festival, of which “Lights of Sarajevo” [BCS: Svjetla Sarajeva], directed by Srđan Perkić, was chosen as the best documentary film.
“To get an award in a freedom-loving, multi-ethnic, multicultural city like Tuzla actually carries a special charm. To continue this tradition, where big names used to appear, is a special experience for me and a wonderful feeling that I will always carry with me,” said Srđan Perkić, winner of the Miner Award for the best documentary film.
The Miner Award is a symbol of the pre-war festival. The defiant red poster, like the miner himself, symbolizes the Festival.
“The color red represents the tradition of the Festival, as the color of the blood spilled for the country that was built by the working class. The color also represents the miners. These are definitely symbols of this city,” said Boris Balta, director of the Tuzla Film Festival.
This year, the International Documentary Film Festival was held as part of the Tuzla Film Festival, and this will continue until the former is able to “stand on its own feet.” The organizers believe that until it reaches the heights of its former glory, it can’t be held as a separate event. The Vila Award, which has been part of the Tuzla Film Festival for 11 years, was also awarded at this year’s Festival.
The International Documentary Film Festival was organized for the first time in 1968 as the Workers’ Festival, and no one guessed that 1990 would be the last year they would see its colors. At that time, as Balta explained, the disintegration of Yugoslavia was already suspected. Tuzla was on the margins of political events, and the city didn’t know what awaited them.
Tuzla and its citizens were put under a blockade. Although Tuzla has been working on its own cultural trait, Balta believes that they were also marginalized because of their “local patriotism,” which is reflected in the fact that they did not have a functional cinema hall until 2012.
With the establishment of the festival culture, and above all the film culture, the idea was born to start the Tuzla Film Festival, which celebrated its 11th edition this year. In fact, the Tuzla Film Festival served was the basis for the re-establishment of the iconic Documentary Film Festival.
Balta explained that the idea to start a Documentary Film Festival existed before the Tuzla Film Festival, but at the time, there wasn’t believed to be a wide enough audience interested in the documentary film as a concrete art form. However, documentary film is among the several categories within the Tuzla Film Festival, and when Balta noticed increasing attendance at these screenings, he saw it was the right moment to restart the Documentary Film Festival.
The fact that the Documentary Film Festival was never completely forgotten is an indication of the initiative to create a unique exhibition of newspaper articles or any media as a testimony of the existence of the Festival. There was skepticism that the idea could be realized, because at that time, there was much greater investment in theater and other art forms, as opposed to film.
Sabina Babajić, head of the Native Collection of the National and the Derviš Sušić University Library of Tuzla, said that she was skeptical about the idea of creating a unique exhibition of newspaper articles or any other media, but she nevertheless started collecting texts.
“What particularly surprised me was that the Festival was not only written about in daily periodicals from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in newspapers from the wider region,” said Babajić.
The archive exhibition is a reminder of the International Documentary Film Festival in was once held in Tuzla. It contains various writings, film notebooks, clippings from newspaper articles, and special monographs dedicated important directors who at that time contributed to the development and significance of the Festival itself.

created: November 6th, 2022

author: Ramo Tučić


text:
Restoring Dignity to Victims: “850 Women for 850 Women” | Balkan Diskurs
Anja Zulić
November 12th, 2022
Goli Otok, “Barren Island,” is most renowned as a camp for male political prisoners in former Yugoslavia, but little is known about the island’s history as a prison camp for women.
To learn more about this lesser known part of the camp’s history and the transgenerational transmission of trauma, anthropologist Renata Jambrešić-Kirin, together with artist Andreja Kulunčić and psychotherapist Dubravka Stijačić, launched the project “You Betrayed the Party Just When You Should Have Helped It,” The project is named after the words with which Marija Zelić, the first warden of the women’s camp, welcomed its prisoners.
“Years of collaboration with the artist Andreja Kulunčić and the psychotherapist Dubravka Stijačić taught me that with the help of the tools of contemporary art, society can be sensitized to historical problems in a contemporary context and made aware of the fact that we are constantly on the verge of repeating violent history,” said Jambrešić-Kirin.
As she explained, the project focuses on the problem of state violence as an important factor in the (dis)continuity of women’s history, understood as the history of constantly starting and thwarting the fight for women’s rights.
Analyzing the oral and written testimonies of former political prisoners, Jambrešić-Kirin found that the Yugoslav state security archives provide an incomplete picture of the period in which ideological control and surveillance of citizens were ubiquitous.
“The personal files in the State Security Administration’s collection – which were scattered between state and republic institutions – were censored, removed, and destroyed. Precisely because of the nature of secret service activities, including blackmail and the manipulation of both people and bureaucratic shortcomings, official data is not completely accurate, reliable, or comprehensive,” Kirin-Jambrešić explained.
After counting the women’s names listed in the logs of Goli Otok and St. Gregory prisons as well as those recorded in written memoirs, Jambrešić-Kirin concluded that the number of women arrested was greater than 862.
Penitentiary for Women’s Cultural Re-Education
Goli Otok functioned on a unique system of prison self-governance where female prisoners investigated, policed, snitched, punished, and humiliated each other with special degradation “ceremonies.” Research also shows that female partisans, pre-war communists, and Jewish women who survived the Nazi camps were the most dominant of the female prisoners.
“On the one hand, it has to do with the Bolshevik mentality that suspects the ‘moral corruption’ of all those who survived the Nazi camps, and on the other hand, it has to do with a fear of powerful women, intellectuals, and political competitors,” Jambrešić-Kirin points out.
Prisoners on Goli Otok were exposed to different types of torture, a number of forms of which were later used during the Chinese Cultural Revolution or in Latin American anti-communist prisons.
“In addition to rewriting their backgrounds, daily brainwashing and forcing them to compile records of their own guilt, there were also forms of ‘cultural re-education’ such as watching movies, listening to the radio, singing, chanting, acting, and dancing. These helped the communist regime in their efforts to shape and unify the internal life, beliefs, and feelings of its citizens. The physical integrity and reproductive capacity of female prisoners was destroyed by senseless and hard physical work, just like men,” says Jambrešić-Kirin.
She explained that women returning to the new society had a harder time than men bearing the consequences of their imposed isolation, destroyed careers, and humiliating jobs. In most cases, women weren’t able to continue with any intellectual and cultural work and were usually forced to work simpler jobs than those they held before their imprisonment. These women would then often retreat into silence and devote themselves to the family.
The written testimonies of women from Goli Otok, as well as interviews with them and their successors, clearly demonstrate that the main targets of the repressive system were educated, ambitious, and talented women who, after 1945, were competitors in the function and the distribution of power.
“The most numerous male detainees were workers, officials, and peasants, while among the women, according to official statistics, we find a large number of intellectuals, students, journalists, Russian translators, and even officials with high school diplomas. I’m convinced that this is not coincidental,” said Jambrešić-Kirin.
She believes that there is a correlation between the five to seven percent of female prisoners in Goli Otok and the fact that the number of women in the Yugoslav executive and party leadership never exceeded five to seven percent.
Marking the Women’s Camp
When they started the project “You Betrayed the Party Just When You Should Have Helped It” in 2017, information boards were placed at the locations of the women’s political camp, which until then hadn’t been marked on Goli Otok and St. Gregory. Today, if you visit the island, you can see a board with the following inscription:
“Alternating between this bay and the neighboring island of Sveti Grgur from 1950 to 1956 there was a camp for political prisoners through which passed more than 850 women accused of having Cominform connections. With an exceptionally cruel punishment system, in which the women inmates were forced to assume the role of torturer, the camp was a place of suffering and humiliation. The harassment and police surveillance of the accused women continued even after they had been let out of the camp.”
After setting up the information board, they started marking the memorial points in these locations. As the artist Andreja Kulunčić tells us, the words of Vera Winter, one of the detainees, as written by her granddaughter Nina Winter, were carved into the rock on Goli Otok, by the sculptor Silvestro Ninić: “We carried the rocks from the sea to the top of the hill. When the pile on the hill was big enough, we carried the rocks back to the sea.”
The words of another detainee, Ženi Lebl, as written by her niece Ana Lebl, were engraved on a plaque St. Gregory:
“Heavy on your shoulders, Saint Gregory,
the classic question ‘To be or not to be?’ began.
If you beat, you will be.
If you don’t, you will be beaten.”
The project continued with onsite research into the possibility of relating the Goli Otok experience through the mediums of dance, sound, and voice. So far, it has been presented in the format of an exhibition in the Historical and Maritime Museum of Istria in Pula in 2021, and then in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka in early 2022.
The first presentation of the project and the exhibition in Pula started the conversation about women’s suffering in Goli Otok and St. Gregory by writing the topic into the dominant historical narrative from which it was previously excluded. The exhibition included a three-channel audiovisual installation with recordings of the performances of three artists – contemporary dancer Zinka Užbinec, instrumentalist Jasna Jovićević, and vocalist Annette Giesriegl.
Curator Irena Bekić said that they tried to better understand the daily life of the former prisoners, which today can no longer be depicted on the remains of the island locations, so the performances depict the working and living conditions through the movements and sounds of the body as well as nature.
“We have to remember that most of the prisoners, tortured and isolated inside the camp, did not have the strength for physical labor. Along with the video installation, the exhibition also featured plaques with the memories of female prisoners. The whole exhibition actually represented a strong affective place,” explained Bekić.
The second exhibition which was in Rijeka united all previous segments – interventions on the islands, data generated through research and reactivating them in the exhibition, not only in terms of the gallery situation but as a moment of activation for visitors.
“People are invited to take posters with photos of the testimonies carved into the rocks, to participate in writing the names of female prisoners to build a unique monument, and also to participate in the workshop of 850 women for 850 women,” Bekić explained. She added that the third part of the presentation is a website that includes all segments of the project, literature, statements, exhibitions, performances and so on.
The first exhibition was intended to open up a public discourse on the suffering of former female inmates and introduce the topic into history, while the second aimed to build on this by enshrining the topic within a museum.
“The exhibition was well produced following the best exhibition and museum standards. Such decisions are a characteristic part of the artist Andreja Kulunčić’s strategy where each step in the realization of the project also represents a certain resource for its further development or consolidation of the social intervention she implements. Both exhibitions provoked a strong emotional response from visitors, for which we are very grateful,” said Bekić.
Construction of an Anti-Monument
The next step in the project was the creation of clay sculptures, which Kulunčić started making at the site of the women’s camp in memory of the violence that was committed there. She continued at the exhibition in Rijeka. The process of building the anti-monument “850 Women for 850 Women” was conceived as a series of actions to create sculptures in which a total of 850 women will participate over the course of two years and about 30 workshops.
Kulunčić said that the specific and very minimalistic living conditions on the island modified women’s bodies, their health, and their psyches, while at the same time, these women altered the structure of the island, taking away from it and changing its configuration.
“This project of mine speaks of the futility of most of the forced labor during imprisonment, the fragility of the body, and the struggle for survival in the camp. On the other hand, by making the sculptures emerge or ‘grow’ from the stone, I wanted to emphasize the fact that working with stones shaped the prisoners and left traces on their bodies for the rest of their lives. Sculptures, made of clay on the site itself, dry up, fall apart, and disappear,” Kulunčić points out.
The construction of the sculptures continued at the workshops in Karlovac, Zagreb, Tenja, and Korenica, where the women made a sculpture out of clay and symbolically dedicated one sculpture to each of the prisoners of the camp. In this way, the participants of the workshops constructed a new memory of a disturbing episode from history as well as a moving monument of 850 terracotta sculptures that will be exhibited as a complete work at the exhibitions to come.
“It’s an anti-monument as a form of contemporary memorial practices of a violent legacy around which modern societies have not established a consensus, which leads to the denial of history and the neglect of the victim. The concept of the anti-monument actively involves the audience in the process of transmitting memory, where everyone individually, depending on their own interest, searches for information and answers, and by building their own memory, they become a transmitter of memory. In a way, they themselves become a monument,” explains Kulunčić.
Giving Back Dignity to All Victims
The project “You Betrayed the Party Just When You Should Have Helped It” is important because it talks about the experiences and history of political violence from a female and minority perspective, Jambrešić-Kirin notes. She adds that the fight against the invisibility of women in history and society also includes the fight against their one-sided labeling as victims of violence or symbols of the nation and requires a joint civil, humanistic, and artistic effort to imagine a better future.
“One of the tasks of the democratic culture of memory is to restore individuality, dignity, and voice to all victims, in the name of fostering empathy and civil responsibility rather than the guilt and shame that forever marked the lives of former political prisoners from Goli Otok and Saint Gregory,” says Kirin-Jambrešić.

created: November 12th, 2022

author: Anja Zulić


text:
Giving Children Strength to Continue their Fight against Cancer | Balkan Diskurs
Almedina Mehić
November 14th, 2022
Fuad Halilović won the battle against one type of cancer 13 years ago, but he has not forgotten those who still have to fight for their lives – above all, children with cancer, many of whom have lost their hair in the course of long and arduous treatment. Together with his colleagues from the association …
Fuad Halilović won the battle against one type of cancer 13 years ago, but he has not forgotten those who still have to fight for their lives – above all, children with cancer, many of whom have lost their hair in the course of long and arduous treatment. Together with his colleagues from the association A Heart for Kids with Cancer, Halilović makes wigs from natural hair. He believes this is a very particular kind of assistance, because it gives strength and support, and shows the cancer patients they are not alone as they fight for their lives.
“If you don’t have support, you can’t even fight,” said Halilović. He recalled that from 2006 to 2009, when he was being treated for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), he received the most support from his parents and his brother. During his treatment in several hospitals, Halilović also learned a lot about other types of cancer, which were rarely discussed at the time as they were somehow considered a taboo topic in Bosnian society.
When he managed to recover, Halilović became a member of Heart for Kids with Cancer, which was founded in April 2003. What started as an informal group of parents and friends of children with cancer grew into a serious organization with more than 400 members. The Association has since become synonymous with the fight against children’s cancer in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
Halilović actively volunteered for the Association for ten years. After graduating from the High School of Economics, he began taking on administrative duties at the Association. To address the shortage of wig makers in the country, the Association started a program to train ten people from BiH, including Halilović, in wig making, so that they can help those in need.
They also launched the project “My Hair, Your Hair,” which is considered one of the most humane projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It collects donations of hair to make wigs, free of charge, to children suffering temporary or permanent hair loss as a result of cancer treatment. Donated hair must be completely natural, without dye or other chemical treatments, clean, dry, and at least 30 centimeters in length.
Halilović works as an assistant on this project, which is supported by the government of Switzerland. After two weeks of training as a hairdresser, he wanted to try his hand at what he had learned at the training.
“From my first attempt, it was already clear that I have a talent for making wigs. At the urging of my colleagues, I started taking more courses and finished a ten-month training,” said Halilović.
He explained the process of making a wig, which begins with washing the donated hair and classifying it by length and color, after which it is stored.
“When we receive a request for a wig, we measure the head of the person who needs the wig. After that, we make a cap according to those dimensions, and then we make a wig based on pictures of the person that were taken before they lost their hair. We make sure that the wig is as close as possible to the person’s previous hairstyle. When we make the cap, we make bangs halfway up the head that are sewn onto the cap, then we weave the hair into that cap,” said Halilović.
The project receives all its funding from donations and grants. At the very beginning, Halilović recounted, the wigs were made completely by hand, and one wig took around twenty days to complete. Today, it only takes ten days to make a wig. In the future, he hopes to be able to shorten this period by another three to four days, after he undergoes training on new machines they received from China.
Along with reducing the time it takes to make the wigs, Halilović hopes that the state will start financing the project as a type of special assistance, given its tremendous importance as means of supporting people and children who are undergoing cancer treatment.

created: November 14th, 2022

author: Almedina Mehić


text:
The Mostar Association Rezon: A Platform which Values the Artists | Balkan Diskurs
Emilio Jarak
November 18th, 2022
For the last 11 years, a team of seven young people from the association Rezon have been creating an urban platform to strengthen the art scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The platform provides space for the education and affirmation of artists and young people, as well as for the greater involvement of women and …
For the last 11 years, a team of seven young people from the association Rezon have been creating an urban platform to strengthen the art scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The platform provides space for the education and affirmation of artists and young people, as well as for the greater involvement of women and marginalized groups in society. It is also the official platform of the Street Art Festival (SAF) Mostar.
Marina Đapić from Rezon, one of the organizers of SAF Mostar, said that they rented a space in Mostar with the help of The Kvinna till Kvinna foundation where they hold educational workshops to empower youth. The desire of these young people to learn and create shines through in the Graffiti workshop. Đapić noted that there are a couple muralists in the city who are still learning. One of them from their team is Karla Ćosić, who started as a volunteer and now works on her own murals.
Rezon managed to save one of the sculptures by American artist Mark Jenkins, one of the biggest names in street art. His sculptures were placed on a dilapidated building in Mostar but were removed, thus bringing the issue of dilapidated buildings back into public focus, which dates back to the last war.
Rezon’s Maja Rubinić, a co-organizer of SAF Mostar, said that Jenkins’ sculpture is potentially disturbing, but that this is exactly the point of the artist’s work – to draw attention to things that are unhealthy, and abnormal.
Rubinić clarified that the sculpture was used to highlight the importance of art, but also as an indication that we don’t see the bigger picture. “His entire work was a criticism of the ignorance and lack of culture in society. It wasn’t directed against anyone in particular, even though we usually interpret it as such. It was really an extremely benevolent and neutral comment on something that is an immediate reality, something that surrounds us,” Rubinić pointed out.
The removal of the Jenkins’ sculpture, as Đapić added, upset them a lot because of the way it was done. She believes that someone could have contacted them beforehand. “We saved one, but we don’t know where the other is,” said Đapić. She also pointed out that they were an activist movement from the very beginning.
Saira Gilić, member of the Rezon team and co-organizer of SAF Mostar, recalled that they had an online meeting with Jenkins and that he liked their honesty in what they were doing, which is why he agreed to come to Mostar and work with the artists.
“Ruins should not be a political, let alone a nationalist tool, but rather the concern of all citizens,” Gilić asserted.
Rezon confronts the issue of ruins through the project Kvinna till Kvinna “Urban renaissance,” where, as they pointed out, they did artist residencies on the theme of ruins. At the same time, they are also engaged in researching the issue of ownership, because many among the younger generations don’t know what was there before.
“We don’t think it’s acceptable that, 27 years after the war, the city still looks like this, for instance, Tito’s Street, which used to be the most beautiful street. I hope that in the future we’ll draw more attention to this and that we’ll see some progress,” said Đapić.
In Rezon, they don’t talk about politics or nationalism. Everything happens spontaneously.
“There is no division in our mission or our vision. We bring together different people. Art can be a tool for encourage young people to reflect and think artistically, it doesn’t have to literally be put on a wall or in the form of an exhibition or performance,” Gilić explained.
The citizens of Mostar are generally known to preserve artwork, but sometimes different citizen groups paint over some of their works and create their own. They tried to point it out to them, however, according to Đapić, there isn’t much room for communication.
“We’re aware that when it comes to art in public space, you never know what will end up happening. Sometimes, it’s temporary. This is a social experiment to see how it will all work,” Đapić said.
The difference between street art and other types of art, according to Rubinić, is that for the first time, art is moving out of the galleries. Thus, street art became present, noticeable. This visibility is used to send important messages, even though it is often interpreted as primitive, and for some, maybe even aggressive and vulgar.
SAF Mostar, as she clarified, provided a new spectrum of things and a small social phenomenon that proves that it is possible to attract attention and gain visibility because “it is not without reason that so many artists recognize us without asking for anything in return”. She believes that providing society with needed tools as an attempt to improve reality is extremely important for everyone, including our society.
In addition to artists from around the world, the Rezon association also cooperates with other festivals. They collaborated with Jana Danilović, who organized the “Reconstruction” festival in Belgrade, Benjamin Čengić, who organizes the festival in Sarajevo, and this year they also connected with a group of artists from Čačak who organize the DUK festival.
By the end of the year, the Rezon team plans to hold a premiere of documentary film about the process of organizing SAF Mostar, as well as to possibly create a monograph. In addition, they are working to empower and educate their team, create exhibitions, and prepare the groundwork for a street art academy and other educational initiatives for young people. Their goal is to make a useful and beautiful communal space where others can organize activities.
Overall, Rezon’s vision is to become a leading cultural and artistic organization in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

created: November 18th, 2022

author: Emilio Jarak


text:
Robert Dacešin: Award-Winning Promoter of Bosnia and Herzegovina | Balkan Diskurs
Danica Novaković
November 21st, 2022
The short video entitled “Why Bosnia and Herzegovina Can Be the Number One Tourist Destination in the World,” created by Robert Dacešin, won the award for the world’s best tourist film which will be presented on November 24th in Valencia by the International Committee of Tourism Film Festivals (CIFFT). This is just one of the …
The short video entitled “Why Bosnia and Herzegovina Can Be the Number One Tourist Destination in the World,” created by Robert Dacešin, won the award for the world’s best tourist film which will be presented on November 24th in Valencia by the International Committee of Tourism Film Festivals (CIFFT).
This is just one of the awards that this young man from Banja Luka has received for his videos promoting the natural and cultural beauty of his country.
The idea for Dacešin’s most recent short film arose from the desire to promote his country on social media. Among the many people who watched the video after it went viral was Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ambassador to Japan, Siniša Berjan. Delighted with the video, Ambassador Berjan encouraged Dacešin to apply to the Japan World Tourism Film Festival, where he won first place in the category for the best film in March of this year.
After that award, he decided to apply for some more festivals and that’s how the idea of participating in the competition organized by the International Committee of Tourism Film Festivals was born. “It’s a great honor and pleasure for me to have won an award at a competition like this, because everyone who works in the field of tourist videography knows how well recognized CIFFT is in the world of tourist film,” said Dacešin.
His video received 56,914 votes from 74 countries, which is the highest number of votes from the most countries a CIFFT film has received so far.
Dacešin didn’t receive any financial support even though he sought it in many places. He explained that he mostly received praise for his work and moral support, but that he personally financed everything from the camera, editing, to logistical things such as travel expenses, tickets, and accommodation.
Many months of work and filming across Bosnia and Herzegovina went into this multi-award-winning film. It was done gradually, and the recording process itself wasn’t easy at all. Each shot required a detailed script, narration, and meticulous preparation. The locations, the time of filming, and the period of the year were chosen carefully, and in the end, all of this effort yielded excellent results.
“The goal was to present our country to the world and reach as many people as possible who would see the film and eventually come to Bosnia. This country, which is so beautiful and full of amazing places, offers something for everyone, but you can’t even fit everything into one film,” said Dacešin. He noted that they visited over 50 locations during the filming.
Among the locations they visited, he highlighted Livno, which is home to wild horses, the Kravice (Ljubuški) waterfall, as well as his hometown of Banja Luka.
Dacešin believes that Bosnia can become the most desirable tourist destination, but not without effort and investment. The country is known to have a lot of untapped potential, so it would only take a little hard work and dedication to improve the situation.
“Small things like informing tourists at airports and bus stations – places that are usually tourists’ first contact with the country – would be great. Easier transportation from and to the airport, buying tickets online for attractions and simply a little more logistics would certainly help Bosnia become a more visited country,” Dacešin added.
A country with this kind of culture, history, enchanting nature, and excellent cuisine definitely has something to offer tourists, Dacešin believes.
He says that “Why BiH Can Be the Number One Tourist Attraction in the World” is dedicated to all the people in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all those who love and believe in this country.
This young artist is honored by the recognition and awards he has received, which for him, is a reward for all of us. He gives special thanks to his collaborators Milan Banjec and Milan Bajić who were with him throughout the filming and editing process, as well as to his other friends, family, and everyone else who has given him support.

created: November 21st, 2022


text:
Bosnian Medieval Tombstones of Pride and Defiance | Balkan Diskurs
Andrea Aleksić
November 25th, 2022
Thousands of documents, photographs, manuscripts and books, which testify to the centuries-old existence of Bosnian-Herzegovinian medieval tombstones (stećak), are part of the cultural wealth preserved by the ‘Stećak’ Foundation. Although its founder Senad Šabović has been dealing with Bosnian tombstones, as a national treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for ten years, the Foundation started working …
Thousands of documents, photographs, manuscripts and books, which testify to the centuries-old existence of Bosnian-Herzegovinian medieval tombstones (stećak), are part of the cultural wealth preserved by the ‘Stećak’ Foundation.
Although its founder Senad Šabović has been dealing with Bosnian tombstones, as a national treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for ten years, the Foundation started working in March 2017.
“I have been working on medieval tombstones for 10 years and through all these years the focus has been on education. My first solo exhibition is actually the result of my efforts to make children better acquainted with stećci. Something remarkable happened on the opening of the exhibition which positively changed my life. We invited the daughter of our greatest researcher of medieval tombstones Šefik Bešlagić, Mrs. Atija Imamović Bešlagić, as a guest. On that occasion, she gave me a black and white photograph of the necropolis of tombstones from the vicinity of Kalinovik, taken in 1957. This opened a new dimension to my work in the field,” recalls Šabović.
Research shows that there are 60,000 medieval tombstones in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). These are medieval tombstones that differ from other tombstones in their typology and decorations. They appeared in the second half of the 12th century, peaked in the 14th and 15th centuries, and ceased to be produced by the mid-16th century. The earliest known records of stećci are found in the travelogue of Benedikt Kuripešić from 1530, a Slovene interpreter in the mission of the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg. He traveled to Bosnia on his way to Constantinople, and his travelogue describes stećak tombstones from the village of Lađavine, near Rogatica.
Over time, Šabović collected more and more archival material about these tombstones, and today his collection numbers about nine thousand archival units.
“Professor Besim Spahić gave me 700 slides of the most representative Bosnian medieval tombstones, and all this was done for the exhibition Narodne i borbene igre na stećcima (Eng.: Folk Dances and Medieval Tournaments on Stećci) from 1986, organized by the Museum of the XIV Olympic Games in Sarajevo. Unfortunately, we all know what happened to that museum, so this is the only preserved material from that exhibition,” he explains.
The material is organized by funds. The largest fund is the ‘Šefik Bešlagić’ fund and it has about seven thousand units, followed by the ‘Nada Miletić’, ‘Ranko Rosić’, ‘Tošo Dabac’, ‘Hidajet Delić’ and ‘Ćiro Truhelka’ funds. Šabović says that there is no person who dealt with the tombstones without cooperating with him. He believes the stećak is a symbol of Bosnian resistance. For him, they are representative of Bosnian pride.
“The thought of tombstones evokes a sense of belonging to a country that has a long and glorious past. Few countries in the world can boast of so many preserved monuments from the Middle Ages. The tombstones were made by the people, as folk art, and they are preserved in such numbers because people were proud of their past and looked at them with great empathy, and that continues to this day,” he adds.
The primary activity of the Foundation is the digitization of the archive collection, which is a long and expensive process. The plan is to digitize the original pencil list of tombstones, which was written between 1960 and 1970. Given the immeasurable value of this list, digitization has already begun.
“In the three years of the Foundation’s existence, three exhibitions have been organized, and this year we planned to open a memorial room dedicated to Šefik Bešlagić. We already have enough archival material, and the Bešlagić family has agreed for us to take some home and work furniture. In that way, recognition will be given to Šefik Bešlagić and we hope to open a new chapter in the work of our Foundation, which will probably be included in the tourist offer of Sarajevo,” says Senad Šabović.
Stećak tombstones are the most numerous of the cultural heritage of BiH, and this places it among the countries with a high number of cultural and historical monuments.
“Although special attention is currently being paid to these tombstones, sometimes I think that we are not aware of the potential they offer us. By their very appearance in the Middle Ages, the stećak speaks volumes about us as a spiritually, culturally and materially rich society. In my opinion, the biggest phenomenon is how many of them are perserved to this day,” explains Šabović.
Through the existing BiH institutions, and with suggestions and proposals of non-governmental organizations and other individuals, we try to do everything to preserve and protect these monuments. The Commission to Preserve the National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina issues decisions declaring certain sites national monuments, and prescribes protection and preservation measures.
“This should be the case in practice and there are such examples, but I think that the state strategy is crucial here, from the highest level to the local community. We are witnessing negligence and incompetence, and unfortunately this sometimes results in the partial or permanent destruction of a monument, even a stećak. Even more attention and energy must be invested in the preservation of these medieval tombstones, and the punishments for damage must be rigorous and without exceptions,” warns Šabović.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has three tangible assets included in the UNESCO list, namely the Old Bridge in Mostar, the Mehmed-pasha Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad and, since 2016, the Medieval Tombstones. At the UNESCO summit in Istanbul in 2016, a decision was made to add stećci to the World Heritage List. The list includes a total of 28 necropolises, of which 20 are located in BiH, three in Serbia, three in Montenegro, and two in Croatia. The first initiative for the nomination of the tombstones to the World Cultural Heritage List was initiated by Šefik Bešlagić.
“By including the tombstones on the UNESCO list, not only are the sites protected, but so is the phenomenon of the stećak, which is of exceptional importance. In this way, all tombstones enjoy at least some legislative protection. Citizens are certainly helpful in their further preservation; they can submit a petition to the Commission to Preserve National Monuments. Also, individuals and any other interested parties can, through local communities, religious communities, and non-governmental organizations, define certain program and project goals for the protection and preservation of stećak tombstones,” says Šabović.
The promotion of cultural heritage is very diverse. The most common are professional promotions, which, through symposia or conferences, inform the world academic community about Bosnian medieval tombstones. Then there are tourist promotions and, finally, the activities of non-governmental organizations which, by organizing lectures, exhibitions or similar activities, introduce the general public to the stećak phenomenon.
“I am afraid that the activities so far are not enough. Although there is cooperation of official institutions with non-governmental organizations, that is not enough. I am aware of it because I am a participant and organizer of certain activities and I believe that it must be on a much higher level,” said Šabović.
In 2013, he conducted questionnaires for primary and secondary school students in Sarajevo Canton. In cooperation with Education Builds BiH, the Ministry of Education and Science of Sarajevo Canton, and the Educational and Pedagogical Institute of KS, he surveyed about a thousand participants. Unfortunately, the results showed a gap in knowledge regarding stećci.
He believes that it is principally up to the pedagogues themselves to decide whether and how they will deal with Bosnian tombstones, and that this must not be a sporadic phenomenon but a systemically regulated practice.
The technique of making the souvenirs is reminiscent of making real Bosnian tombstones, but of course in miniature.
“Everything which can make the craft easier or to get the desired shape is used. A mold is then made. Plaster with certain additives is poured into the molds, then it is dried and painted,” explains Šabović, and he adds that his tombstones have reached all parts of the world.
Mostly people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian diaspora decide to buy these souvenirs. There are far fewer foreigners, because, as he says, it is difficult to explain to them what it is about.
However, this is not always the case. One of his crafted tombstones is in the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul.
“During Orhan Pamuk’s visit to Sarajevo, the then Minister of Culture of the Sarajevo Canton presented him with a stećak. It was quite surprising for him, he didn’t know what it was about. After it was explained to him, he said that he would exhibit it in the museum,” says Šabović.
When it comes to the representation of souvenirs, he faces the issue of great competition and cheap and mass production of souvenirs. “Those who are guided only by profit ‘drown’ those who make authentic souvenirs,” concludes Senad Šabović.
The most famous necropolis of Bosnian medieval tombstones is in Radimlja near Stolac. Grčka glavica near Konjic, Dugo polje on Blidinje near Jablanica, Boljuni near Stolac and Ravanjska vrata on Kupres are also well-known. The most famous individual stećak tombstone is the Zgošćanski stećak, found in the vicinity of Kakanj, and today it is in the National Museum in Sarajevo.
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This article was initially published within the first edition of MIR Magazine. MIR, which means ‘peace’ in Bosnian is an annual publication and platform for young inventive people developed by the Post-Conflict Research Center and Balkan Diskurs. It is dedicated to individuals and organizations that left us a legacy of strongly built foundations to continue our fight for peace and justice.

created: November 25th, 2022

author: Andrea Aleksić