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Funky Guerrilla: Socially Beneficial Entrepreneurship | Balkan Diskurs
Andrea Aleksić
February 18th, 2018
Young entrepreneurs from Bosanska Gradiška are showing that an original idea and tenacity pay off. Their creative team has embarked on quite a business adventure – to create and sell clothes – with the goal of developing their own product and placing it on the market.
Young entrepreneurs from Bosanska Gradiška are showing that an original idea and tenacity pay off. Their creative team has embarked on quite a business adventure – to create and sell clothes – with the goal of developing their own product and placing it on the market.
They came to this idea at the end of 2013, when the “Most” Association from Bosanska Gradiška decided to hire young residents, providing them with the funds to work their community. Their idea was realized in 2014 when the organization completed its plans of forming its own company named “FG Grupa Gradiška”. The brand “ Funky Guerrilla” was developed in its factory.
“The production takes place in a rural part of the Bosanska Gradiška municipality, in a place called Nova Topola. Over the past two years, we’ve made over 150 of our own products. Our brand has become most recognized through our men’s and women’s hoodies, and our women’s dresses, which have been our best-selling items. We use the highest quality natural materials: cotton, viscose, and modal. For the dresses, we also use three-component materials that are highly durable and long-lasting,“ explained Predrag Borojević, the executive director of FG Grupa Gradiška.
Considering that the company is 100% owned by the Most Association, which predominantly works with children and youth, Borojević says that their goal is not only to develop a high-quality local product in terms of design, making patterns, sewing, branding, and product placement but also to provide local talent with an opportunity to showcase their skills and abilities. An additional goal is to, of course, be successful in the market, which would allow them to invest their profits into community work and providing help for children and youth.
“These goals have been our motivation for the past two years and they have been pushing us forward because, at the end of the day, we have to know why we’re doing something, and not just how many products we are putting out into the market,” he added.
By founding this company, the opportunity to employ young creators has been established, and the Most Association was able to accomplish this through their collaboration with the Employment Bureau as well as through the various trainings they organize for those who are interested.
“We are committed to providing the training so that young people can master certain skills that make them more competitive in the job market and so that they can find employment more easily. In addition, we collaborate extensively with the Job Search Club, which operates within the Employment Bureau of the Republika Srpska. We do job interview simulations with Club trainees and try to give them advice on how to best to talk to potential employers,” explains Borojević.
It’s not at all easy to accomplish a project such as this. Nevertheless, even though it’s a demanding undertaking, anything is feasible with the will and dedication. The basis of every successful project is initiative and clear goals.
Predrag explains how Funky Guerrilla looked when it was first started: “When you have a good team of people who jointly push an idea and fight to make it a reality, then it’s easy to attract people who have the specific skills and competencies you need, which, in our case, were in the production of clothes. The initial funds can come from various sources: from credit lines, employment incentives, and grants to support from a number of different programs run by local foundations. However, people often think that funds are the biggest obstacle to accomplishing an idea, with which don’t agree. They are very important, but the team’s perseverance and dedication are the most crucial, especially in the first 18 months of operation.”
Like every start-up, FG Grupa Gradiška has had both positive and negative experiences. One of the challenges they often encounter is the procurement of high-quality materials that aren’t available in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It took the company more than a year to get in touch with the right suppliers and establish access to a continuous supply of quality material.
“Cooperating with more Bosnian artists is the direction we want to take in the near future. Our collaboration with Mark Feher was really successful and resulted in the “Funky Guerrilla x FEHER Black Edition“ collection, which was showcased at the 33 BH Nivea Fashion Week. We have plenty of plans and crazy ideas that would connect Bosnian artists with the Funky Guerrilla brand, but everything is still in the idea development phase and it’s going to take both time and money to make that happen,” adds Borojević.
At this time, you can buy Funky Guerrilla clothing in-store in Bosanska Gradiška or online via their website at www.funkyguerrilla.com. They have already worked with concept boutiques in Banja Luka and Mostar and now they are looking for future partners in all major BiH cities.
This publication has been selected as part of the 2018 Srđan Aleksić Youth Competition, a regional storytelling competition that challenges youth to actively engage with their own communities to discover, document, and share stories of moral courage, interethnic cooperation, and positive social change. The competition is a primary component of the Post-Conflict Research Center’s award-winning Ordinary Heroes Peacebuilding Program, which utilizes international stories of rescuer behavior and moral courage to promote interethnic understanding and peace among the citizens of the Western Balkans. The final winners of the 2018 competition will be announced in the coming months.
Support for this program has been graciously provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

created: February 18th, 2018


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Long Journey Home: The Story of Fata Orlovic | Balkan Diskurs
Amela Orlović
February 21st, 2018
After the horror of war and genocide in Bosnia, a widowed wife returned to her home in Konjevic Polje with her seven kids only to learn that a church had been built in her front yard. Her battle to have the church removed from her property is still ongoing more than 20 years later.
After the horror of war and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), a widowed wife returned to her home in Konjevic Polje with her seven kids only to learn that a church had been built in her front yard. Her battle to have the church removed from her property is still ongoing more than 20 years later.
Fata Orlovic was left a widow after her husband, Sacir Orlovic, was killed in the Srebrenica Genocide in 1995. Having thankfully escaped her home of Konjevic Polje with her seven children, Fatima, Saban, Hasan, Hurija, Zlatka, Senija and Ejub, Fata had hoped to one day return to her home and live in peace.
Five years after the war had ended, Fata went back to her home in the now Republika Srpska where she was met with a dilemma: her home had been completely demolished and, in her front yard, stood a newly constructed Serbian Orthodox church.
The building of the church served as a message to the refugees who were coming back to their homes. In places where people of various ethnic and religious backgrounds once lived together in harmony, houses of worship were now being used as a symbol to show which ethnicity or religion was now in control.
Fata does not oppose Christianity or the church itself. Rather, she opposes that her home has been taken from her. She just wants the church removed from her property because her land is HER land; the right to own property is a universal human right.
As a result, Fata has spent years in various legal battles with authorities to have the church removed. Even in the face of death threats and attacks, she refused to give up and, in 2007, the government of Republika Srpska finally agreed to relocate the church. The church now stands empty, awaiting relocation.
Nena Fata’s battle became a symbol for the restoration of the rule of law in post-war Bosnia and she is considered a national hero by people across the country. The US Embassy in Sarajevo even nominated her for the international “Woman of Courage” award, which is given to brave women who fight for their rights through nonviolent means.
Fata did not fight this battle alone, however. Her children were behind her and each honors their mother’s strength. Senija Orlovic, Fata’s youngest daughter explained, “All she wants is justice and to freely use her land. Many people call her a hero, but few really know the sacrifices that she has made. When my sisters and I were being evacuated from the Srebrenica safe area and loaded onto buses, she made a promise to my dad that she would protect us. She was brave in those difficult moments, and she is brave now. My mom is the most amazing individual. Her fight goes beyond her land or her front yard to that promise she made to my dad to always take care of us.”
Zlatka Basic comments on how upset she has been watching her mother endure this struggle, especially at her age. However, Zlatka is “so proud of the fact that she never gives up despite all the hurdles that are thrown her way”.
Fata’s grandchildren are also proud of this national hero. Fata’s granddaughter, Ismeta Orlovic, said, “Even though grandma has faced many struggles and hardships in her life, she still smiles and looks forward to every single day. As long as the church in Konjevic Polje is standing, grandma will try her hardest to stand alongside it, to petition for its removal and to reclaim what truly belongs to her: that land. I hope she will get to see that day. The day she realizes her fight was worth it. The day she can pass the land down to her children and say, ‘this is yours’.”
Even though millions consider her a hero, at the end of the day, Fata is just like any other ordinary Bosnian woman. She welcomes many people into her home, feeds them and shares stories over coffee.
She takes everyone to her most prized location—her garden—and shows them how she has grown everything by herself. Her blossoming garden, filled with large fruits and vegetables, further proves how much patience and determination Fata Orlovic really has.
Fata is an ordinary hero whose bravery and courage can be respected and applauded by people worldwide. Her decades-long battle seems to be far from over, but Fata has the support of loved ones who will stick by her side in order to ensure that justice is achieved.
This publication has been selected as part of the Srđan Aleksić Youth Competition, a regional storytelling competition that challenges youth to actively engage with their own communities to discover, document, and share stories of moral courage, interethnic cooperation, and positive social change. The competition is a primary component of the Post-Conflict Research Center’s award-winning Ordinary Heroes Peacebuilding Program, which utilizes international stories of rescuer behavior and moral courage to promote interethnic understanding and peace among the citizens of the Western Balkans.
Support for this program has been graciously provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

source: news-balkandiskurs

created: February 21st, 2018

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

author: Amela Orlović


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Emir Kapetanović on Understanding the Peaceful Generation | Balkan Diskurs
Louis Monroy Santander
March 1st, 2018
Balkan Diskurs correspondent Louis Monroy Santander talked to Emir Kapetanović, director of “Djeca Mira” (Children of Peace) – a documentary that takes a look at the post-Dayton generation in Bosnia, their concerns, their realities and perhaps more importantly their dreams.
Balkan Diskurs correspondent Louis Monroy Santander talked to Emir Kapetanović, director of “Djeca Mira” (Children of Peace) – a documentary that takes a look at the post-Dayton generation in Bosnia, their concerns, their realities and perhaps more importantly their dreams.
Louis Monroy Santander (LMS): How did the idea for Children of Peace come about?
Emir Kapetanović (EK): I started doing documentaries at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo and the focus was on the National Anthem. We approached citizens in three major cities, asking them to give us a voice and lyrics to our National Anthem. After this project, I started organizing the Magacin Kabare, a space where we could talk and deal with complex social issues via a satirical approach that allowed us to open dialogues with our audience. This project led to the creation of the Mali Magacin Kabare, a space for young people where we approached social activism through art. We just wanted to have a dialogue on the things that were most important to kids, to hear their views and to support them in presenting their work. We also taught them how to present to different audiences and create films.
During the 20 anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords, we came up with the idea of ‘resemblance,’ of those things that are common to all people. What we understood was that we needed to avoid putting people into the usual ethnic categories and to instead find just one thing that was common for all of us. We came to this realization that we have different words for war in our local languages, but we have the same word for peace. This led to developing an understanding that there is no one better to talk about peace with than those who were born during times of peace, and this is how the idea for Djeca Mira started.
Kids are used to talking about the past, they learn about it from their relatives and often repeat what they are told. This particular challenge allowed me to develop the idea for Children of Peace: to visit six cities and ask kids about their views on their cities, the country and the future without necessarily talking about the past. You can see what their thoughts are and what are those of their parents when they express views about the past. We wanted to work on the future, on their situation today and to create an artistic performance via multimedia in order to spread this idea. We all hear the phrase “the children are our future” but then we never really ask kids about how they see their future. So we developed the methodology for this, to spread this idea.
LMS: What sort of challenges did you encounter when making Djeca Mira?
EK: Certain politicians in BiH do not want these types of projects around. The reality of the situation is that they do not want kids from different backgrounds to get together. For the older generations, it is possible to meet as we have an understanding of a united past. Children who didn’t grow up with that shared narrative, however, are more susceptible to divisive politics. In the case of the film, we made the children choose for themselves who would be the representatives of each of the six Bosnian towns that we would be filming in, and without asking anything about ethnicities or religious affiliations. Yet, when discussing the film and its methodology people constantly asked why there was no mention of the children’s ethnic identity or information about their ethno-religious background. For me, the movie is about them and their views, so why must people ask about ethnic backgrounds?
These types of projects can be successful simply by gathering two kids from one small town to meet with others across boundaries. It will be harder to divide them once they develop relationships with each other. In BiH, we don’t know enough about one another. When you know someone it becomes much harder to maintain hateful stereotypes and viewpoints about them. The methodology for Children of Peace allowed for these kids to come together. What we did was get every kid to write down what their assumptions were about each city and we used them to compare and contrast with their field visit findings. Through this process, it was easy to visualize how the media manipulates us and how little we really know about the different towns in BiH. I think we need to keep exploring, to maintain these cultural excursions, to go and visit different places and form our own opinions. NGOs need to work more and more on this, on making art that highlights different views and understandings of social and political issues.
LMS: Do you see your work as a form of political resistance?
EK: I think this form of art is oppositional in a way. We are doing what politicians should be doing, finding ways to live in harmony and contribute to the process of building a country together. Don’t get me wrong, we need politics, we should have politicians and political parties. They should, however, exist in a system where we are not simply just voters but active creators of a program. In my work as a producer it helps to have a political atmosphere that allows me to create and not worry about things outside of my reach, but in Bosnia what we need is for politics to work for us. Then again, through creative work you can have a strong cultural impact. I cannot work without combining politics and art. Culture and sports can make this country more united and work a whole lot better.
LMS: In your opinion, what is your contribution to the peacebuilding process in Bosnia?
EK: I think we are simply connecting different spots. This is what peacebuilding is about. You cannot build peace simply with your own bricks. All people, from different backgrounds and different viewpoints bring their own bricks and build together. What we need to do is help the people to work together, without necessarily rejecting or going against the beliefs that construct their identity.
LMS: What are your views on the process of dealing with the past, remembrance, and memorialization?
EK: I think that, as adults, we need to talk about the past, particularly to prevent future mistakes and learn from what happened. But with kids, they live in a new era; they do not need to be a constant part of that painful past. We need to be able to talk about the past without manipulating the kids. It’s not right, they had nothing to do with that, they were not part of that war and it’s not their responsibility. Perhaps we can get them to deal with the past by studying and looking at things from a completely different perspective.
In relation to the memorials about the past, I am more of a future-oriented person. Yet, if I tried to work on dealing with the past, I would make a film where we could combine different pasts. I would make a film that looks at the issues of war from the perspectives of three directors from different areas of Bosnia, combining their viewpoints to expose the nonsense behind the conflict. It is important to talk about Srebrenica and Auschwitz, but you need to see it as a tragedy of civilization. We should not dwell on political points for one side or another, but instead show humans and the evil we are capable of, in order to prevent future genocides.
Correspondent’s note:
After spending over an hour with Emir Kapetanović, I found his focus was primarily on his relationship with the youth and his concerns about the ethnic divisions that were put in place both by postwar Bosnian demographics as well as polarizing practices within the Bosnian education system. Despite these concerns, he has hope for the future. He believes that Bosnia’s youth can one day approach historical divisions from a different perspective and can help positively influence and transform Bosnia’s ongoing social reconstruction.

created: March 1st, 2018

author: Louis Monroy Santander


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Girls Coding Kosova: Empowering Women Programmers Code by Code | Balkan Diskurs
Eleonora Costa
March 5th, 2018
Girls Coding Kosova is proving that the technology sector is not just a man’s domain.
Girls Coding Kosova is proving that the technology sector is not just a man’s domain. The Pristina-based non-governmental organization is dedicated to increasing the number of women coders and programmers by providing them with opportunities for skill acquisition and development and encouraging them to get involved in exciting startups and to even launch their own companies.
As of 2015, Kosovo’s youth unemployment rate among people ages 15 to 24 was 57.6% with a more than 10% difference in the unemployment rate between low-skilled versus high-skilled female workers (28.1% vs. 39.3%, respectively).[1] It is within this context that Girls Coding Kosova (GCK) was established.
Founded in 2015 by Zana Idrizi and Blerta Thaci, the central mission of GCK is to encourage women to reach their full academic and professional potential in technical fields. The organization seeks to achieve their mission by exposing and educating women to software programming and coding. Balkan Diskurs had the opportunity to sit down with Zana in Pristina to learn more about GCK’s approach to education and the impact, challenges, and achievements GCK has experienced to date.
According to GCK’s founders, pursuing higher education in the field of technology and related disciplines would increase the potential for women to be successful in the IT industry. Zana herself received a degree in International Security from the University of Denver in the United States, but she emphasizes that higher education in and of itself does not guarantee employment.
“Many girls give up on potential careers because they are not afforded the proper encouragement or support from those around them. Families often question a young woman’s choice to attend a technical university and urge them to pursue something easier that will provide them with a job—one that is more fit for a woman,” Zana explains.
Another aspect of GCK’s work is to combat societal gender stereotypes and gender bias within the tech sector itself. A central component of their activities is to show women they are capable of doing whatever they have the desire to do. They can find a job, create an application, fight sexual harassment, and change their own lives for the better.
Such a message may seem idealistic when referring to a country with a youth unemployment rate of almost 60%, but Zana explains that Kosovo has a great market for coders and programmers and that employing women in the IT sector provides a concrete solution to the unemployment problem.
“Outsourcing opportunities make our work necessary. The availability of low-cost, skilled labor from Kosovo attracts many types of companies that want to outsource their work. Many people from Kosovo that acquire jobs in coding and programming find them in this way. There are also many start-ups that develop applications, websites and other products for the tech industry who are looking for young talent,” says Zana.
So, how does GCK find these “mythical” female programmers and coders? Through the best medium the 21 century has to offer: social media. GCK challenges the widespread stereotypical view that computer science is man’s field by sharing online content that counters these narratives and perspectives. Imagine being a young woman and recent graduate of Computer Sciences in Pristina. You are struggling to find a job and, then, you open Facebook and see that one of your classmates liked a post by GCK. You check their page, go to their website, apply to participate in one of their workshops, and end up developing a wildly successful app. Some foreign company, impressed with your skills and what you’ve created employs you. This is not just a dream, but a true scenario that has been realized through the great work that GCK is doing.
One of GCK’s most noted accomplishments has been the development of the “Walk Freely App”, an app developed to report sexual harassment and, as is implied by its name, will allow women to walk more freely. ‘Sexual Harassment in Kosovo’[2], a report released by the Kosovo Women’s Network in 2016, details a general lack of awareness regarding what constitutes sexual harassment. Opening up a dialogue about the problem is a crucial first step to encourage reflection and formulate solutions.
“One of the biggest challenges is where to draw the line between flirtation and harassment. It is especially difficult to do so in a society where we are not taught that sexual harassment is wrong – men are not taught that it is wrong! When you talk about sexual harassment, you have two different conversations: one with men and one with women. The main idea behind the app is not just to gather data, but also to also change societal behaviors in the community. Sexual harassment is wrong, and we have created a mobile app that allows you to report it,” explains Zana.
Thus, gathering data from real-life experiences and making that data publicly accessible via a user-friendly website is part of the solution. Allowing women to disclose their traumatic experiences provides an avenue for the acknowledgment of their struggles and raises consciousness about the widespread phenomenon of sexual harassment. Another inspiring aspect of the app’s development is that out of the 30 young women trainees who worked to create it, 16 were immediately employed. So, if the premise that ‘IT is a non-woman field’ were true, then you must acknowledge that this is a great result.
GCK is not only working towards gender equality in the IT sector and creating awareness about the issue of sexual harassment but is also using its coding trainings as an opportunity to foster positive inter-community interaction. Indeed, Zana is in the midst of implementing a project called “Code for Mitrovica” for 20 girls: 10 from north Mitrovica and 10 from south Mitrovica. In addition to providing participants with technical skills, the project gives young women from both Serbian and Albanian communities the same learning opportunities. Following a series of workshops, project participants will work together to develop a digital tool that aims to improve people’s lives in both communities. This new project shows that cooperating and working together to reach a common objective is possible and even desirable.
When asked about what motivates her to do this work, Zana’s answer was pure and simple: “I have always been very passionate about educating women and gender equality. I have myself received a number of scholarships that have allowed me to study in the United States, travel the world, and attend a variety of conferences and workshops. I know and appreciate the importance of education and I want to give others the same opportunities that I was given.”
Zana and Blerta’s dedication to this work makes GCK a truly unique organization. They are passionate, smart, and innovative and are taking concrete steps to change the reality in which they live for the better, step by step, code by code.
[1] “Western Balkans Labor Market Trends 2017” by World Bank Group, Report Number: 113922, April 2017. Accessed on 24/10/2017 at http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/336041491297229505/170403-Regional-Report-Western-Balkan-Labor-Market-Trends-2017-FINAL.pdf
[2] “Sexual Harassment in Kosovo” By Ariana Qosaj-Mustafa, Adelina Berisha, Nicole Farnsworth, and Iliriana Banjska Kosovo Women’s Network – Prishtina, Kosovo (2016). Accessed on 24/10/2017 at https://www.womensnetwork.org/documents/20160223185243349.pdf

created: March 5th, 2018

author: Eleonora Costa


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Esma Bandić: Learning to Soar | Balkan Diskurs
Jasmila Talić-Kujundžić
March 7th, 2018
Through love and spirituality, unencumbered by form, writer Esma Bandić is trying to bring together people of different religions. Her books call for peace, love, and interfaith dialogue.
Through love and spirituality, unencumbered by form, writer Esma Bandić is trying to bring together people of different religions. Her books call for peace, love, and interfaith dialogue.
Esma Bandić has written ten books – four novels, a pentalogy, and a poetry collection. “These books unite people of all religions, for love is in the heart of every person,” said Bandić, adding that even though her books might have different focuses, they all lead to enlightenment.
Bandić was awarded the Fra Grgo Matić literary prize and her novel “The Sultan’s Decree” was chosen as the best novel among more than 90 submitted manuscripts by the “Arte” publishing house in Belgrade.
Her books are full of Biblical and Qur’anic references and Bandić shared part of her writings and poetry, as well as her thoughts on interfaith dialogue, with Balkan Diskurs youth correspondent Jasmila Talić-Kujundžić.
Jasmila Talić-Kujundžić (JTK): In what way do your books unite people of different religions?
Esma Bandić (EB): I’ve spoken to my readers who are followers of different religions and who are spiritually open, and I realized that they all found the same thread throughout my work. That thread is the examination of the human essence and how to face it. Where did we come from and where are we going? What is it in our genes that makes us human and not devils or angels? What are the commonalities between us all, and why should love be emphasized as the highest principle of life? Božena, a lady I met, told her friend that she learned more from my books than from the things her friends were telling her over the years: “You always receive the messages ‘you should, you have to, you must’… but Esma doesn’t do that.” There is choice, there is desire, there is love. There is the story of a man and his possibilities, about flying, about rising above. About the “fall” which is never truly a fall once you soar because a bird remains a bird forever – alive, dead, trampled, murdered, with torn or broken wings – it will always be a bird, because it is tied to the Spirit. And that connection to the Spirit is why my books bring people of different religions together.
JTK: Are people understanding of your desire to spread love?
EB: Unfortunately, religious people are not, a priori, as spiritually open as one might think. This is because most of them, in my opinion, accept religion only formally, rather than with their hearts and souls, and that results in many problems. In my novel “Seeking an Explanation” I write about this and about the existence of religious people who are not believers or, even worse, who are heartless. For this, I have been attacked and beaten and my books have been desecrated. My desire to spread love has been interpreted by many as an attack on their dogma, which is actually primitive behavior upheld under the mantle of faith and religion. It has even gone as far as people consciously working to deter others from socializing with me and reading my books, to anathematize my name and my work.
Fortunately, my books have their own path and evil tongues cannot stop this. In addition to the awards and recognition I’ve received, is the enthusiasm of my readers who have discovered and transformed themselves. They were able to self reflect. They were inspired and happy. And they cried because my books were able to reveal to them truths about themselves. Isn’t that victory? A visitor at one of my book promotions publicly stated that I’ve become her spiritual leader through my writings. Isn’t she enough to claim victory? Not for myself, but for love in its highest form!
JTK: In August of last year you attended an interfaith meeting in Sinj, Croatia. How did that go, and how many opportunities are there for similar events in this region?
EB: My experience at the interfaith meeting in Sinj, which was held to mark the 300th anniversary of Sinjska Alka, was among the most beautiful I’ve ever had on this journey of mine. We were welcomed with the utmost respect and interest. During my introduction, the president of the Association for the Promotion of Contemporary Art, Božena Romac, read my poem about ašk [ašk, or aşk, is a word of Arabic origin meaning to love, or, in its Turkish form ‘aşık’, to be in love]:
Ašk
I must teach you a new word
I must, my soul is urging me from inside
I must, the heart obeys the soul
And trembles: Ašk… Ašk
You say: I don’t understand
But you do
It means: I love you
In all the languages of the world
Je t’aime, mon amour
Je t’aime
Friar Domagoj Runje, who received his doctorate at the Vatican and is a professor at the Catholic Faculty of Theology at the University of Split, spoke about the Battle of Sinj in a new light of interreligious harmony. He told the story of how both armies saw the Virgin Mary, or Maryam depending on their religion, at a key moment of the battle, moving both sides to opt for peace.
One can see the hill with the statue of Our Lady of Sinj from the spot where the presentations were held. But no one was bothered that I, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab, stood there reading excerpts from my books.
Professor Zlata Pestar, who teaches World Religions at the First Gymnasium of Zagreb, spoke about young people’s interest in different cultures and religions and showed slides of her students visiting various sacred buildings. We were so warmly welcomed in Sinj that I still feel the warmth and inspiring enthusiasm.
So, why is it that in our society, there are so few meetings like this one? The answer is clear –because individual consciousness is becoming more of a collective consciousness in our region!
JTK: In your last book, “Seeking an Explanation”, you write about converting from one religion to another and about the individual experience of religion. Do you think people are ready to move away from formalities and to devote themselves to spiritual essence?
EB: If a convert does not conform to the environment in which he lives, he experiences great problems and temptations. People forget that the person converts to a religion and not to the environment, and every environment carries different versions of a religion. It has been said that Islam alone has 73 factions. What does that mean for the Muslim convert? That he must convert to the faction that exists in the place in which he lives? Is that what converting to another religion is? If so, then it is not a path to God but a pathetic desire to fit into a community. Once a man converts, suddenly a hundred nets of formal principles are cast upon him and everyone tries to convince him of their correctness. If they fail to capture him, they wave their hands in frustration and declare him an unsuccessful convert.
In the last 12 years since I changed my name, and the few years since I’ve been in the public eye as a writer, my experience has shown me that it is very difficult to move people away from formalism no matter how much they are faced with irregularities or become aware of possible alternatives. There are many reasons for this, but the most important is probably that the dogma with which they were raised has been drilled into them like a spine. The process of rejecting imposed dogmatic principles is so difficult that many people simply give up. They give up because they would have to relinquish something, to sacrifice something, which is another reason many run away from spirituality – for spirituality is not the hunt for earthly, material, or tangible treasures, but for immaterial, spiritual, inner ones, which are, for them, abstract and uninteresting.
JTK: Do you still want to establish an association that focuses on interfaith dialogue?
EB: Definitely, God willing. I will not give up on that. The association “Visionaries” has already been registered. Now all that is left is to find a space so that after the holidays we can start working. Several stakeholders are looking forward the start of this initiative, and we’ve established the association’s assembly, chosen a president, secretary, advisor, and all the other necessary basics.
JTK: What is it like to fight utilizing art and the written word? Does it give you the opportunity to build peace and have a positive influence? Is literature a suitable “tool” for this goal?
EB: My answer to this question will be a poem from my book “The Descendants’ Spirit of Loving” (the poem is written by the character Arif for his love Milica, and was inspired by Jacques Prevert and his love Barbara):
Imprint
You tell me of Barbara, my friend
You say to me: “Remember”, because so says the poet’s translator
We talk about war and about Brest
And I beg you, tell me of snow even if you call it something different
Because I will understand
How could I not understand
When my soul has a translator
How could I not remember the war when Brest was destroyed
How could I not remember the peace when Brest was built
And the shipyard sends off ships like the sky sends off snowflakes
And we are like small boats that have just set sail with the snow first falls
We are crystals that don’t have the same imprint
But we can see our reflections in each other
Because we love the same arts and the same words
We love all languages and all the letters of love
So please, help me uncover the secret
The secret of the imprint
Left in my soul
By your soul
This publication has been selected as part of the Srđan Aleksić Youth Competition, a regional storytelling competition that challenges youth to actively engage with their own communities to discover, document, and share stories of moral courage, interethnic cooperation, and positive social change. The competition is a primary component of the Post-Conflict Research Center’s award-winning Ordinary Heroes Peacebuilding Program, which utilizes international stories of rescuer behavior and moral courage to promote interethnic understanding and peace among the citizens of the Western Balkans.
Support for this program has been graciously provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

created: March 7th, 2018

author: Jasmila Talić-Kujundžić


text:
Kirsten Johnson: The Person Behind the Camera | Balkan Diskurs
Louis Monroy Santander
March 8th, 2018
Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson is a highly personal take on her experiences of shooting various documentaries around the world.
Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson is a highly personal take on her experiences of shooting various documentaries around the world. The film takes its audiences on a journey across the feelings, dilemmas, joys, and concerns that accompany the filmmaker from the moment she picks up her camera and starts shooting.
After having had the opportunity to appreciate the intricacies of filming in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia or Guantanamo to the filming of beautiful and intimate family moments in her life, I kept wondering about the sort of critical reflections that go through Kirsten’s mind when shooting in such difficult contexts. It also made me reflect on the role filmmakers play in the processes that occur in sites of social conflict, the sort of ethical decisions that are made during shooting, and the way filmmakers connect with the communities and individuals they shoot.
Thanks to my internship at the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) in Sarajevo I had the chance to interview Kirsten Johnson and gain an insight into many of these issues. PCRC’s Founder and President Velma Šarić previously worked with Kirsten on the Bosnian portion of PBS’ Women, War & Peace documentary series. Among other topics, we spoke about how to gain the trust of the individuals and communities one works with, the role of film as a source of narrative and memory construction, and the ethical preoccupations that this type of work entails.
Since Cameraperson depicts the ways people being filmed connect with the person filming them, I asked Kirsten about the process of relationship-building that occurs in this type of work and how she was able to gain the trust of the people she was working with. She said:
“There is this idea that filming is relationships, whether you are trying to create relationships or acknowledge their existence. Once the camera is present and images are filmed, they go into the future in ways that you cannot know and they may be very meaningful for the person behind or in front of the camera, or even both. It may be that you are putting evidence of a moment in history, or maybe that you are given a chance to let someone speak who has never had a chance to speak, or simply documenting a person being alive who may not be alive forever. There is no question that I feel a connection in those moments when I film with people and I think that has value for me.”
As a researcher, I was quite intrigued by the process of interaction that occurs between different cultures, between the researcher and the researched, and, in Kirsten’s case, between the filmmaker and the person being filmed. Without a doubt, these interactions are often marked by power relations that affect both research and film products. In light of this concern, my second question was about the cultural negotiation that occurs during the filmmaking process, to which Kirsten stated:
“Cameras are objects of power that can create imbalances as certain people can win and twist narratives and misrepresent. Or sometimes our own unconscious bias or naiveté leads us to terrible mistakes in the representations of others. This is the struggle that we are in and none of us should be so arrogant to imagine that we will ever get it right, but also none of us should be so heuristic to imagine that we are so important.”
Cameraperson shows us a collage of different stories, portraying different social, political and economic issues. As such, it relies on narratives and stories constructed from different viewpoints that can help illustrate the magnitude and complexity of social phenomena. Bearing this in mind, I asked Kirsten about her role in the process of constructing narratives in sites of conflict. Her response:
“Someone just called me a memory worker, which is kind of fantastic. I call myself a filmmaker, that is what I do, I make films, but I love when they call me a memory worker because certainly with this film I am doing work which represents a form of memory which is fragmentary and incomplete. All of our own memories are incomplete and get re-imagined. But there were things that actually happened, and clarity around what those facts are and what happened is important, especially in places that have had wars, so I am all for uncovering facts that have been forgotten, buried and never spoken of. But part of what I want to show in this film is that stories are constructed, history gets constructed by different people and our identities impact the way we choose to construct this story.”
Kirsten further illustrated her point by referring to some footage that was shot in Bosnia-Herzegovina:
“The movie’s scene with the girls playing ping pong in what used to be a wartime rape center in Foča engages directly with the contestation of memory. The construction of this narrative and that place are contested memorial spaces. People came and tried to put a plaque on that building which said that women were systematically raped there. They were driven out of the town and came back to Sarajevo with the plaque in their hands. People using that facility have no idea of what happened there, it was used as a sports center. I tried to speak to this and give evidence of all the different things we do with memory, of spaces where atrocities happen where some have no memorials and some are used as public space without any idea of what happened there. Others have expensive memorials built on them. All of these are factors that show how contested the actual events are and of the powers behind them.”
Finally, one of the most intriguing themes had to do with the methodological risks that can occur when planning and making these types of films, particularly when they rely on people who have experienced trauma, who may be representing one side of a conflict or who are interested in promoting a specific view or narrative of conflict. With this in mind, I asked Kirsten what consideration she has given to the ethics of filmmaking in conflict zones. She said:
“We are trying to understand very complex situations and it may be that we misunderstand, misrepresent or are maybe even fooled at times, but I think if we continue to acknowledge the edges of the film, the relationships around things, we are being ethical. I am intrigued by these moments where you know other things are happening during filming, where someone you thought had one agenda has a completely different agenda and how it plays out during filming. It makes you think about the issues. We need to acknowledge that these issues are part of what humanity is, of the role of survival and how war and trauma affect people. Through this, you can learn how reliable a narrator someone can be of a traumatic event. It leads you to question the reliability of all of our narrations, question our own subconscious bias and realize that all these things shift in different moments in our life. Take my filming in Foča. This area is still a hostile territory and a scary place for those people who testified in The Hague Tribunal. I have always wanted to know what it would take for me to take my footage and show it in Foča, but I cannot do that as I do not live there, the family I filmed has to live there. It is easy for an international to have a conceptual idea about what would be important to show in the film, but a local person has to live with the consequences afterwards.”

created: March 8th, 2018


text:
Entrepreneur Avdo Halilović Inspires Hope for Bosnia’s Youth | Balkan Diskurs
Mladen Lakić
March 19th, 2018
More and more people, especially youth, are leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). According to World Bank estimates, approximately 1.6 million people who were born in BiH now live outside of the country.
More and more people, especially youth, are leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). According to World Bank estimates, approximately 1.6 million people who were born in BiH now live outside of the country, a number that represents 44.5% of BiH’s current population. In the Migration and Remittances Factbook 2016, published by the World Bank Group, BiH has the 16th highest emigration rate in the world. The most commonly cited reasons that people are choosing to leave include poverty, the inability to find permanent employment and the desire for a higher quality of life overall.
As commentators on social media networks like to put it: “Anyone that can leave here does. The only ones who stay behind are those who have no choice.” Avdo Halilovic (25) could leave but has instead chosen to stay. In a decision to live in either the UK or BiH, he chose his homeland. This is a story about an ordinary hero who came to Sarajevo as a student from his hometown of Kladanj. He started his own company, received a dream offer, which he refused without regret, and chose to live his dream here.
“My parents and my whole family have their own companies, so, in my mind, I always thought to create a job for myself rather than look for one. In college, I had a lot of contact with professors and experts in the field of entrepreneurship, which further awakened my desire to create. Our country, the way it is now, is actually our burden, and no matter what it’s like, it is the only one we have,” says Avdo.
Avdo patented a hygienic cover for headrests. He said the idea was born during a bus ride and he kept thinking about how unhygienic it is to put one’s head on the seat’s headrest. Today, Avdo owns the patent for the cover, which can be used for public transportation, child strollers, and many other types of seats. He believes that mass production will start this year. Avdo spent around 3,000 BAM to register his company “KIMBLY” and said he found the registration process burdensome. He believes that this process is something that most hinders young people from starting businesses.
“It was easiest when I happened to run into someone I knew who could help explain parts of the process to me but, essentially, there are no mitigating factors or anything of the sorts and it really is not easy to do. You even have to pay to notarize a copy of your ID card, which is the smallest but most pointless expense,“ he remembers.
Avdo recalls an incident during an encounter with one of the numerous clerks he came in contact with during the registration process: “I asked this lady why I had to pay for every copy, every notarization, and she told me, bluntly: ‘Well, you’re registering a company, so you obviously have money’”.
Avdo says he constantly meets other young people who have started companies and that they are doing great work. “When I talk with them, we realize that we have all experienced and currently face the same problems. We really understand each other,” he explains.
In addition to possessing an entrepreneurial spirit and the desire for something new, Avdo says that you also must believe in yourself and be optimistic. “I want to prove to myself that I can do it while also helping others in the process. The reason I turned down the offer to do this work in the UK was not just because of patriotism. It is nice here, we just have to put in a lot of effort,” he categorically stresses.
Many young people see this country as an obstacle and the cause of many of life’s problems and Avdo partially agrees with that notion. “It’s hard. Sometimes it seems that the system is rigged against you. While walking from clerk to clerk I used to get depressed and I wanted to give up. But then, you remember that you are doing this to make the system better.”
“What I currently see as a way to make things easier for the people I love is to create jobs and to ensure dignified working conditions and salaries that will allow my employees to live, not just merely survive. That why I’m in Bosnia and why I refused the offer to move to the UK in the first place,” stresses Avdo adding that he sees this as the best way to fight for one’s country.
The poor and unstable economy and the period of transition, which seems to be taking longer than anyone had expected, make young people like Avdo Halilovic stand out as true heroes. As he himself puts it: “I want to do something positive, I want to succeed and to show others that you can work without thievery, nepotism and party membership.”
This publication has been selected as part of the Srđan Aleksić Youth Competition, a regional storytelling competition that challenges youth to actively engage with their own communities to discover, document, and share stories of moral courage, interethnic cooperation, and positive social change. The competition is a primary component of the Post-Conflict Research Center’s award-winning Ordinary Heroes Peacebuilding Program, which utilizes international stories of rescuer behavior and moral courage to promote interethnic understanding and peace among the citizens of the Western Balkans.
Support for this program has been graciously provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

created: March 19th, 2018

author: Mladen Lakić


text:
Center for Nonviolent Action: Fighting a War of Memories | Balkan Diskurs
George Foden
March 23rd, 2018
Daily life in Sarajevo is vastly different today than it was in the midst of the siege but whilst the city and the region now operate in relative peace, there are still people that remain deeply affected by the conflicts of the 1990s.
It has now been more than twenty years since the Dayton Accords brought an end to the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. Daily life in Sarajevo is vastly different today than it was in the midst of the siege but whilst the city and the region now operate in relative peace, there are still people that remain deeply affected by the conflicts of the 1990s. For many, the Dayton Accords served to end the violence by freezing the underlying causes of conflict rather than dealing with them directly. With the ongoing division in the representation of the conflict via education and media channels, both young and old remain hostage to opposing narratives regarding the story of Yugoslavia’s collapse. It is this “war of memories” that poses one of the biggest threats to peace in the region, and that must be addressed if the former Yugoslav states are to ever move forward out of a fragile Dayton stability and into a wider-reaching, sustainable peace.
The day before the ICTY verdict on Ratko Mladić, the orchestrator of several of the most grizzly set-pieces of the conflict, including the Siege of Sarajevo and the genocidal massacre at Srebrenica, Balkan Diskurs had the opportunity to sit down with three members of the peacebuilding organization Center for Nonviolent Action (CNA), Adnan Hasanbegović, Amer Delić and Nedžad Novalić, to discuss their efforts at challenging the toxic ethnic narratives that remain in the region. It seemed a particularly pertinent time to do so, considering the vast historic revisionism that has occurred in the discussion around Mladić, dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia” in western media while still viewed as a hero in many parts of Serbia and the Republika Srpska (RS).
Following Mladic’s arrest in 2011, there were protests in Belgrade and the RS asserting his innocence. Less than 24 hours before his guilty verdict was handed down, current President of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik referred to Mladić as “a legend and a hero”. This case, and the response to it, demonstrates the dangerous revisionism that has occurred since the violence ceased 21 years ago.
These types of revisionist narratives, irresponsibly reinforced by politicians who use them for personal gain, form the basis for much of the continued animosity between groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond. It is unfortunate that the resilience of these narratives means that even the younger generations, who did not directly experience the war, retain some of the intergroup hostilities that caused the conflicts. As Nedžad Novalić points out, many of the young people in Bosnia today have veterans for fathers and the mainstream narrative, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation, is that these veterans are heroes.
The tragedy of this glorification of the conflict, Novalić suggests, is that “you do not hear about the everyday experience of war, how it feels to lose your friend or to get hit with bullets; what you hear in public spaces is that [this person] is a hero… he died for us”. Surviving veterans are similarly viewed as heroes on all sides, even if they do not themselves feel that way. Emphasizing this disconnect between the young and the old is the fear amongst the older generation that by discussing the conflict they are holding their children back, or keeping them stuck in the past. For that reason, the real horrors of the war are not discussed, and the youth today are not fully aware of the extent to which the violence stretched. The bloody and chaotic reality of war has been forced into digestible narrative boxes that reinforce the political ideologies of the powerful.
As Mr. Novalić explains, “[in BiH and the region] we still have three camps producing their own narrative about war and sending messages to the others. The other is still completely imagined: an imagined enemy.” Thus, in this context it becomes natural to think in terms of your own social group and to situate your group in opposition to the “imagined enemy”. This “us vs. them” mentality provides a perfect storm of conditions for the development of a revisionist history that tells the story of the conflict in strictly ethnic terms, with “us” playing the role of heroes and “them” as the perpetrators of unspeakable crimes against our people.
In an attempt to combat this thinking, CNA has begun to facilitate meetings between veterans from all sides of the conflict. It has been a long, hard process, explains Mr. Hasanbegović, but one that has recently proven effective at breaking down this way of thinking of their former enemies. Usually, veterans don’t have the opportunity to hear the stories of the other side and so getting these individuals to sit down in the same room and talk represents a massive step forward in terms of intergroup relations. Since their formation in 1997, CNA has been working towards facilitating the meeting of different groups so that stories can be shared. The thinking behind this process is simple; as Amer Delić puts it: “when you sit with people, drink coffee and talk about normal times, you can say that most of them are ordinary family men. After several meetings, it becomes a friendly situation, so we can discuss what we are going to do about peacebuilding and reconciliation. We are not enemies anymore.”
These veterans often have very similar experiences of the war, regardless of the side they fought for. They all lost comrades, friends and family members, they all spent months in the mud, they all risked their own lives and many of them are suffering the psychological consequences to this day. The ideology that once divided them soon becomes less important when they get to speak to each other on a human level. Mr. Hasanbegović and Mr. Delić, both veterans themselves, explained the importance of being able to challenge these stereotypes and preconceived notions of ‘the other’ through face-to-face meetings. Over time, many of the veterans have become friends. Now, they have turned their attention towards the younger generations as well.
Many young people living in the region today have grown up on the same narratives as their parents, taught how to think and feel about other ethnic groups and political ideologies from a very young age, and with few avenues that enable them to see other perspectives. The education system is still ethnically divided throughout much of BiH and children are exposed to the prejudices of their parents and teachers. That is why it could be particularly jarring to see three ex-enemies enter your classroom to talk about their experiences.
This is the latest step in CNA’s peace and reconciliation mission; bringing veterans from all sides of the conflict into schools to discuss their stories and reveal the value of putting your differences behind you in order to move forward. They run peace and reconciliation training programs for veterans and peace-builders alike with the hope that these skills can be used to change the attitudes of future generations. This step largely came about as a result of a fear that continued prejudice and intergroup animosity could lead to an eventual return to conflict. For CNA and the veterans that they work with the key to achieving a sustainable peace is challenging the dominant narratives of the “war of memories”.
According to Mr. Hasanbegović, 60 – 70% of the Bosnian population is now in favor of reconciliation and cooperation between ethnic groups, which is a positive number, but nevertheless means that there is still a very sizeable minority (30 – 40%) that remains ethnically divided. For CNA, veterans are a powerful tool to promote the idea of reconciliation to others because of their status in society and the fact that they have directly experienced conflict first-hand. If people who originally fought against each other can come together and put their differences aside there is hope for the region as a whole.
Reconciliation work like that undertaken by CNA is vital to the peace-building process in the region, but there is a long way to go. As Mr. Novalić puts it, the outbreak of conflict in 1992 was “a long process in which you completely dehumanize[d] the other side, in order to make an ordinary man ready to kill. It is therefore also a long process to come back from that, not just on a societal level but also an individual level”.
Right now CNA is a shining example of what progress can be made even within the elements of society that were most deeply affected by the conflict, but more work must be done before the wider population sees the full potential in leaving the past behind. It takes time to change a mindset, and it will require not just civil society actors like CNA, but also the government, media, schools and religious leaders. In CNA’s own words: “We hope that this process will gain some broader support from our societies, as we had a broad support for war in our societies.” It can be done, and the CNA’s veterans are leading the way.

created: March 23rd, 2018

author: George Foden


text:
Crossing Borders: An Introduction to Bosnian Migration to Germany (Part I) | Balkan Diskurs
Dženeta Karabegović
April 3rd, 2018
“Crossing Borders” is a multi-part series aims to explore various facets of Bosnian migration to Germany and to present the personal accounts of migrants and their children in an effort to not only reflect on the shared experiences of Bosnian migrants but to also consider the wider themes and implications of their stories.
“Crossing Borders” is a multi-part series that aims to explore various facets of Bosnian migration to Germany and to present the personal accounts of migrants and their children in an effort to not only reflect on the shared experiences of Bosnian migrants but to also consider the wider themes and implications of their stories.
From the late 1960’s to today, Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), once a republic of the former Yugoslavia, have maintained a stable and strong bilateral relationship. Immigration policies and agreements, including guest worker arrangements, significant refugee admission during the 1990s Bosnian conflict, student exchange programs, and multiple waves of labor migration are responsible for a substantial portion of this ongoing relationship. As a result, Germany now possesses one of the most vibrant and sizeable Bosnian diaspora populations in the world: approximately 248,000 individuals of Bosnian origin, of whom around 76,000 are second-generation Bosnians. While migrants have primarily flowed from BiH to Germany, this steady flow of migration has had deep cultural, political and economic implications for both countries.
The first marked inflow of migrants with non-German ancestry began during the second half of the 1950s when, as a result of the post-war economic boom, West Germany began recruiting foreign labor through a series of bilateral agreements. Low birthrates, both during and immediately after World War II, meant that the number of young Germans entering the workforce was in decline. Furthermore, the rise in the average education levels of West Germans influenced a shift in the labor force from blue-collar to white-collar work.[1] Add to these factors a growing market economy and the loss of labor from East Germany, and it becomes clear that West Germany was facing an impending labor shortage, particularly for manual and unskilled labor.[2]
In 1968, West Germany signed a bilateral guest worker agreement with Yugoslavia, marking the first historic wave of migration from the region. By that time, similar agreements with countries such as Spain, Turkey, and Greece had been underway for nearly a decade and were revealing marked success.[3] The 1968 agreement allowed for the recruitment of over a half million Yugoslav workers during the initial five-year period, benefitting both countries by increasing remittances to Yugoslavia and thus raising economic standards at home, while also resolving supply and demand for workers in both countries.[4] Many of the initial labor migrants had low levels of education and hailed primarily from economically depressed, rural areas of Yugoslavia.
Throughout the 1980s, Yugoslavs were Germany’s second largest migrant population, often assimilating and achieving higher social standing in comparison to other migrant groups.[5] Within both German and Yugoslav circles, members of these populations were referred to as Jugovići and Jugošvaben, respectively, connoting their combined identities. Jugovići typically denoted guest workers from Yugoslavia, while Jugošvabe implied a certain level of assimilation into Germany society. Second-generation Yugoslavs became Jugošvaben, combining the words Yugo and Schwabe, a colloquial Yugoslav term used for German peoples. Comparatively, in former Yugoslavia, they were often referred to as ‘Švabe‘ or ‘Gastarbajteri,’ playing on the same terms.[6] The fact that these terms made their way into the lexicon of both countries is further proof of just how prevalent these phenomena were. In particular, the words Jugošvabe and Jugošvaben illustrate how common it was for guest workers to remain and to establish families in Germany, despite Germany’s initial policy, which intended for workers to eventually return to their homelands.[7]
Germany received the highest number of Bosnian refugees during the 1992 – 1995 conflict: approximately 320,000.[8] While the majority of these refugees eventually returned to BiH or moved to third-destination countries, those who stayed continue to rebuild their lives, raise children, and, often, maintain strong community ties amongst each other. Like guest workers who migrated to Germany from Yugoslavia, Bosnians living in Germany today are key contributors to the country’s economy and are also one of the most integrated and civically-engaged migrant groups in the country, with a number of community members who have either run for or held political office. In addition, the number of second-generation Bosnians combined with the recent influx of economic migrants and exchange students brings the average age of the population to around 22.5.[9]
Today, the three Länder (German provinces) with the highest numbers of Bosnians are Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia (each around 63,000) and Baden-Württemberg (47,000). There are also sizeable populations in Berlin and Hesse (around 22,000 each), with smaller populations in Lower Saxony (8,000), Rhineland-Palatinate (7,000), and Hamburg (6,000).[10]
Approximately 28,000 people of Bosnian descent are official German citizens, but, until recently, it was necessary for immigrants acquiring German citizenship to give up their other nationality. As a result, around 13,000 individuals have given up their BiH citizenship since 2009. However, new legislation allows children born on or after 1 January 2000 to non-German parents the option to hold dual citizenship if certain requirements are met, including that the child has lived in Germany for at least eight years or attended school for six years before they reach the age of 21. Of the estimated 10,000 people who currently hold dual citizenship, approximately 80% were born in Germany.[11]
The policy changes related to dual citizenship can have potential political implications for both Germany and BiH. For example, the likelihood that the number of dual Bosnian-German citizens will increase as those born since 2000 reach the age of 18 may result in increased participation in activities such as external voting in Bosnian elections. The BiH state is in the process of creating a comprehensive diaspora outreach strategy as well as creating a representative diaspora body in Germany that would help to connect this population with Bosnian institutions and governments. Although it is in a nascent stage, it demonstrates an engagement that has previously not existed between the homeland and its population abroad.
Another recent change in policy was enacted due to the number of asylum requests from the Western Balkans. In response, Germany changed its law to permit an increase in the number of work permits allotted during the period from October 2015 to 2020 to individuals from the region. These conditions have made it easier for Bosnian citizens to obtain permission to work in Germany and have resulted in the issuance of 7,110 work permits in 2016. This reflects a significant increase from 2,022 in 2015 and a continued rise in the number of permits is expected.[12]
Also on the rise is the number of individuals that are changing their official residence from BiH to Germany. According to the BiH Migration Profile, an annual report issued by the BiH Ministry of Security’s Sector for Immigration, 1,196 Bosnian individuals changed their residence to Germany in 2016, which denotes a significant increase from 244 in 2012, 672 in 2013, 910 in 2014, and 998 in 2015.
Through these historical migration trends, cultural indicators, and statistics, we can see the breadth and depth of the Bosnian diaspora’s presence in Germany. In the forthcoming article series, we will be exploring the human faces behind these policies and numbers. By telling the stories of Bosnians who have made lives for themselves in Germany, we will trace the common struggles and successes that members of these migrant populations have experienced along their journeys. The series will also aim to uncover broader themes and lessons learned in order to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about how to improve migrant integration effort.
The “Crossing Borders” series has been produced as part of an Intercultural Innovation Award alumni partnership between the Post-Conflict Research Center and Give Something Back to Berlin. Support for this series has been provided by the United Nations Alliance of Civilization (UNAOC)  and the BMW Group.
[1] Horrocks, David and Kolinsky, Eva, 1996. Turkish Culture in German Society Today. Berghan Books, New York, NY: 80
[2] Mihajlovic, Steven. 1987. “The Yugoslav Gastarbeiter: The Guest Who Stayed for Dinner.” Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business 8(1): 181.
[3] Horrocks, David and Kolinsky, Eva, 1996. Turkish Culture in German Society Today. Berghan Books, New York, NY: 79
[4] Shonick, Kaja. 2009. “Politics, Culture, and Economics: Reassessing the West German Guest Worker Agreement with Yugoslavia.” Journal of Contemporary History 44 (4): 726.
[5] Doerschler, Peter. 2004. “Education and the Development of Turkish and Yugoslav Immigrants’ Political Attitudes in Germany.” German Politics 13 (3): 449–80.
[6] Rossig, Rüdiger. 2008. (Ex-)Jugos: Junge MigrantInnen Aus Jugoslawien Und Seinen Nachfolgestaaten in Deutschland. Berlin: Archiv der Jugendkulturen.
[7] Castles, Stephen. 1985. “The Guests Who Stayed – The Debate on ‘Foreigners Policy’ in the German Federal Republic.” International Migration Review 19 (3): 517-534.
[8] Valenta, Marko, and Sabrina P Ramet, eds. 2011. The Bosnian Diaspora: Integration in Transnational Communities. Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
[9] Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund – Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus, Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), 2016.
[10] Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund – Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus, Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), 2016.
[11] “Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit.” Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), 2017.
[12] “Statistik über die Arbeitsgenehmigungen-EU und Zustimmungen.“ Bundesagentur für Arbeit Statistik, 2016.

created: April 3rd, 2018

author: Dženeta Karabegović


text:
The Siege: Survival of a Besieged City | Balkan Diskurs
Gül Uret
April 5th, 2018
In the early ‘90s, no one believed that war would hit Sarajevo or that the Yugoslav National Army could turn into an enemy of the city’s people. For centuries, Sarajevo had been a multicultural city with its mosques, synagogues, and Catholic and Orthodox churches.
In the early ‘90s, no one believed that war would hit Sarajevo or that the Yugoslav National Army could turn into an enemy of the city’s people. For centuries, Sarajevo had been a multicultural city with its mosques, synagogues, and Catholic and Orthodox churches. Consequently, no one had imagined that someone could have the power to turn the Sarajevans, who had lived peacefully side-by-side, into each other’s enemies.
However, on 2 May 1992 when the Bosnian Serb forces established a total blockade of the city, it became clear that the ongoing war in Croatia had spread to Sarajevo. Access to the major roads was blocked, supplies of food and medicine were cut off, as were the city’s utilities, with water, electricity, and heating under the control of the Serb forces. Under the orders of Ratko Mladić, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serbs, neighborhoods with the largest Muslim populations were strategically targeted in an attempt “to drive them crazy.”
The Siege of Sarajevo lasted from April 1992 to March 1996 – the longest siege of a capital city in modern history. Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia followed suit and declared independence in 1992, while Serbia and Montenegro remained federal. The declarations of independence of the republics led to a series of wars in the Former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001, which, to a great extent, was characterized by ethnic conflicts.[1]
In Bosnia, the war broke out in connection with the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state by the European Economic Community on 6 April 1992, less than a month after the country declared independence. With the active assistance of the Yugoslav National Army and paramilitary groups from Serbia, the Army of Republika Srpska its campaign of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to expel all non-Serbian inhabitants from many parts of Bosnia.[2] The war in Bosnia resulted in the displacement of over half of Bosnia’s population of 4.4 million – 1.3 million internally displaced, 1.2 million refugees, 30,000 ‘missing persons’ and 100,000 dead.[3]
The Siege by Rémy Ourdan gives us a glimpse into the everyday survival of the people living in a besieged city, and how mental resistance and creativity became central in their efforts to continue on despite the daily shelling and sniper fire. During the long siege, the entire city became a frontline. Sarajevo was an easy target from the hills and, surrounded on all sides, people soon realized that there was no other solution than to fight the force that set out to destroy the belief that Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks could live together peacefully.
People formed fighting units, which then appeared in various districts across Sarajevo. Croats and Serbs stayed in the city and fought together with the Bosniaks despite their different backgrounds. Very few of them were soldiers or skillful fighters and most were ordinary people – some were doctors or engineers, others were students. Even children participated. What brought them all together was their will to defend their city. Before the onset of the conflict, Sarajevo was a tolerant, multicultural city. Despite holding different religious views, people respected and celebrated each other’s traditions and holidays together.
Gradually, as war became everyday life, a parallel world appeared. People went back to work, as they could not hide at home all the time, musicals and film screenings were organized in basements, and, according to the statements of the survivors, theater soon became as important as food and water. The creative resistance helped people stay sane—it offered a safe space, a kind of utopia, which was necessary during the war. Carrying on as normal, despite the circumstances, was also a powerful way of showing the world that there was much more to Sarajevo than death and destruction. Sarajevans stood up against the war, life went on, and people tried to live it by showing strength of a spirit. Moreover, Sarajevans drew the attention of the international community with a beauty pageant in 1993 when Inela Nogic, Miss Besieged Sarajevo, unfolded a banner that read, “Don’t let them kill us.”
During the four-year siege, Sarajevo became akin to a concentration camp. Leaving was impossible, food, water and electricity were in short supply, and surviving was pure luck. However, the city also became a close-knit community thanks to the solidarity and helpfulness of its inhabitants. People shared their food and utilities, if they had any, and helped each other regardless of their different backgrounds. The siege brought out the best in people and a spirit distinctive to Sarajevo appeared.
Eventually, the siege was lifted after the signing of the Dayton Agreement on 14 December 1995. The city survived, yet over 11,500 people, including some 1,600 children were killed, and many others had become disabled as a result of their injuries. During the film, one survivor states, “Had there not been a creative resistance, maybe there wouldn’t have been anything left worth defending.” This powerful statement shows that, even after two decades since siege has ended, people still remember the importance of art, music, and beauty to the resistance.
The Siege was directed by Rémy Ourdan, a French war correspondent, journalist, and filmmaker.
[1] Sabrina P. Ramet, Thinking About Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, New York 2005, p. 55.
[2] Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, “The Fall of Srebrenica and the Failure of UN Peacekeeping, Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Vol. 7, No 13, New York 1995, p. 6.
[3] Lisa DiCaprio, “The Betrayal of Srebrenica: The Ten-Year Commemoration,” The Public Historian, Vol. 31, No. 3, August 2009, p. 76.

created: April 5th, 2018

author: Gül Uret


text:
Local Media in BiH: Financial Dependence and Political Influence | Balkan Diskurs
Marija Arnautović
April 9th, 2018
The role of local media in each community is of paramount importance. They should serve as a link between the local community and the public and act as means of communication between municipalities or cantons and their citizens.
The role of local media in each community is of paramount importance. They should serve as a link between the local community and the public and act as means of communication between municipalities or cantons and their citizens. In addition, the media should also be a forum where citizens can express their views and issues that are important to them. But is this so in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is this possible in a situation where media are exposed to constant political and financial pressures?
The financial dependence on local governments and local political financial centers is the main obstacle faced by local media. All this, of course, has a direct impact on their financial sustainability.
Each canton and each municipality have a local radio or TV station, partly financed by local budgets. In addition to the public outlets, there are hundreds of private radio and TV stations at the local level in BiH. Most of them are politically and financially dependent either from the authorities or from the owners of the large companies that fund them. In addition, local media, primarily the public outlets, often do very little reporting on local topics of interest to the communities in which they operate.
“In the Sarajevo region (Sarajevo and East Sarajevo) there are four TV stations (TV Vogošća, TVSA, OSM TV and TV Alfa) and five radio stations (Radio Vogošća, Radio Istočno Sarajevo, Radio ASK, Radio Avaz and Radio BA) that could be classified as local. Two of those TV and radio stations are publically owned (TV Vogošča, TVSA, Radio Vogošča, Radio Istočno Sarajevo), while the other stations are private,” says Amer Džihana, executive director of the web platform analiziraj.ba.
Džihana believes that under today’s conditions there is almost no local media because the reach of “local” media via the cable and Internet platforms has spread to the whole of BiH. “Despite this shift, the local media, nevertheless, address the audience of a particular local area as they do not have the production capabilities to cover a larger area,” adds Džihana.
How this looks in practice is best shown, for example, in Sarajevo Canton by the numerous debates between cantonal parliamentary representatives regarding how Television Sarajevo does not report on how it should, or, more precisely, how they would like it to. Such public appearances by local politicians represent a direct violation of the freedom of the media.
“What is worrying about the government influence on the local is the general attitude of the public authorities. They feel that because they allocate certain financial and budgetary means to the media, that they have the right to influence the agenda, content, and approach in reporting made by these media. In other words, the media are expected to report on topics that the officials’ supporters consider important and in a way that’s in line with creating their good image,” explains Lejla Turčilo, a professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo.
She adds that changes in leadership positions within these local outlets—which is dependent upon their closeness to the political parties in power—does not contribute to the quality of local media reporting.
One picturesque example of political influence on local media is one that comes from the pre-election campaign for the 2008 local elections. At that time, whether by chance or not, TV Vogošča aired a series of videos containing candidate election promises for the Vogošča municipality that concerned future plans and investments for their TV station. Istinomjer published this information, as it was part of the election promises.
Amer Džihana agrees that there is no doubt local authorities hold a strong influence over the media outlets financed by local budgets.
“Unlike public service broadcasters at the national level, where there exists a legal framework that guarantees editorial independence and establishes a set of mechanisms that should ensure this principle in practice, there are no such protection mechanisms for public broadcasters at the local level. The appointment of local media leaders, as well as the allocation of budget funds, is in the hands of local authorities, who then use these mechanisms to ensure obedience,” he explains.
In addition to the overt interference of politics in the work and editorial policy of the local media, publically-owned outlets are not proactive in publishing documents on their business practices, even though they are required to do so in accordance with entity laws on public enterprises. This was also a central issue highlighted in a recent study conducted by Mediacentar Sarajevo.
The study states that entity public enterprise laws require that public companies, which include publically-owned media outlets, are obliged to make available to the public information about their organizational structure and financial operations, either on their websites or in some other accessible way. Of the twenty media outlets that Mediacenter sent questionnaires to, 19 have not published information related to their financial operations on their websites, and only one has published information about their organizational structure.
The Mediacentar research has also shown that public local media are only sending business reports to their founders and cantonal and local assemblies by way of simple form reporting, thus, reports are often lacking in information and detail.
There is an additional side to this coin, says professor Turčilo. In addition to receiving funds from local budgets and commercial advertising, some local media outlets are also involved in special media monitoring agreements for their municipalities, which often include reporting on municipal government activities.
“Thus, the commercial promotion of certain municipal authorities is presented to citizens as ‘pure’ information, and those municipalities that do not contract such agreements with local media are left out of media coverage, which is certainly contrary to the of citizens’ best interests as well as their right to receive information about local communities,” Turčilo said.
One problem, in particular, is the fact that local media often deal with issues that aren’t local. By analyzing the programming content of a television station that should be dealing primarily with local topics, such as TV Sarajevo or TV East Sarajevo, it becomes evident that the stations’ own programming interests prevail over the local issues.
“They will report on issues from amending the Constitution to global affairs and foreign policy, with little emphasis on fulfilling their social functions, such as the creation of a documentary, an educational program, or a children’s program. Some of the TV stations do have such programs, but the quality of the content is up for debate. When programming is based on selectivity and rather than public interest, it presents a big problem indeed,” adds Professor Turčilo.
On the other hand, Amer Džihana believes that local radio stations operating in the public domain do have programs that are relevant to the local population, and this often isn’t the case regarding private local radio stations who primarily broadcast music and advertising content.
“For example, the central news program that comes on TVSA at 18:30 is primarily focused on local content and provides information that cannot be found in reports done by the national news media. In addition to news programming, these media also report on other relevant local content, such as sports, culture, and the economy, however, it is still a fact that local media do not deal with all the issues that are relevant to their local populations,” he adds.
According to Džihana, even when it comes to reporting on specific topics, there is no access to investigative journalism. This is partly due to a lack of capacity, but much more so a result of editorial board efforts to avoid offending local authorities.
Financial dependence is one of the leading causes of the public media’s editorial dependence. Another survey conducted by Mediacentar Sarajevo reveals that editorial independence is really difficult to achieve for media outlets that are directly financed by municipal and cantonal government budgets.
Decisions on the election and dismissal of public media directors and editors are directly influenced by local and cantonal authorities, and these appointments are often instrumentalized in accordance with political interests.
“Political pressures are reflected in the selection of local media editors and managers, as well as in the readiness or unwillingness of local authorities to cooperate with local media if they do not report positively about them. The economic pressures for local media are the same as for other media and are often manifested through the withdrawal of advertising content when reports are released that aren’t in line with the advertiser’s interest. This causes censorship and self-censorship,” says Professor Turčilo.
Amer Džihana explains that the difficult economic situation in BiH, especially within a fragmented media sector that generally has modest financial means, puts almost all media in a difficult economic position.
“This is certainly the case with the local media. Media are generally not in a position to release reports that are critical of their advertisers or of topics tied to the interests of their major advertisers,” he adds.
In a similar fashion, as Džihana explains it, ensuring media obedience has become more difficult for BiH politicians, so all available mechanisms are being used to guarantee the obedience continues.
“The appointment of appropriate people and the provision of financial resources for the work of public media are the basic leverage for achieving these politically-motivated goals. In short, there is no reason to believe that local public media will function independently until institutional independence and transparent funding are ensured,” Džihana concludes.
This article has been published as part of the “Real Voice of Journalism’’ project. The project is funded by the European Union through the small grants programme “Protecting Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression in the Western Balkans” implemented by the Croatian Journalists’ Association as part of the regional project “Western Balkan’s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety”, which is carried out through the partnership of six regional journalists’ associations – Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS), Association of BH Journalists (BHJ), Croatian Journalists’ Association (CJA), Association of Journalists of Kosovo (AJK), Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM), and Trade Union of Media of Montenegro (TUMM).

created: April 9th, 2018

author: Marija Arnautović


text:
BiH Organizations are Making Progress in the Fight Against Animal Cruelty | Balkan Diskurs
Kristina Gadže
May 8th, 2018
Five years ago, the internationally recognized organization Dogs Trust BiH was established with an aim to help animals that have been abandoned or are living in the streets. The organization offers a variety of programs, including veterinary training, free spaying and neutering for dogs, and education for children.
Five years ago, the internationally recognized organization Dogs Trust BiH was established with an aim to help animals that have been abandoned or are living in the streets. The organization offers a variety of programs, including veterinary training, free spaying and neutering for dogs, and education for children.
“Our office is committed to resolving the problem of stray dogs legally, systematically, and humanely so that dogs are no longer forced to live on the streets because that’s not where they belong. Our public education and awareness-raising campaigns specifically address helping people understand the needs of dogs in order to minimize the safety risks involved in dog encounters,” public relations and marketing officer of Dogs Trust BiH, Sanja Bianculli, told Balkan Diskurs.
People’s approach to interacting with abandoned dogs is often negative as a result of their fear of possible aggression on the dog’s part, which Bianculli describes as the dog’s response to their circumstances, a particular situation, or the consequence of past traumatic experiences.
“Like humans, dogs have an individual character and react differently to good and bad situations. Dogs can display aggressive behavior, but when assessing the dog, it is necessary to take into account the circumstances of the event, health problems, injuries, trauma, and to separate these factors from the dog’s temperament,” says Bianculli, pointing out that the dog-catchers responsible for sterilizing stray dogs haven’t had any injuries because they’ve had the proper training and are using the proper equipment.
Adjusting a dog from a life on the streets to a life among humans is an important part of its recovery.
“Recovery depends on each individual dog, its nature, and its experiences. Given that we are often in contact with dog owners who’ve adopted straight from the streets, numerous experiences have shown us that the recovery time can be record-fast,” said Bianculli.
Bianculli explains that a foster care network will be set up in the near future to help adopt out stray dogs and dogs that have been abandoned by their owners. This network will consist of volunteers who will take care of the dogs while they’re in the adoption process.
Dogs Trust BiH is currently running a mass spaying and neutering program in the Sarajevo, Tuzla, Zvornik and other nearby areas for stray dogs. The organization is also providing free spaying and neutering for dogs with owners. Their latest program is a dog training school, which aims to prevent owners from abandoning their dogs due to unwanted behavior.
There are a number of additional organizations in BiH whose primary goal is to help find loving homes for as many dogs as possible. One such organization is the Animal Care Center in Mostar. “All animals under our care stay with us until they are adopted. If we are dealing with animals that have developmental problems, we try to help the animal adjust to a new lifestyle,” said president of the center, Tanja Turnbull, highlighting that, so far, they haven’t had to euthanize a single dog.
Turnbull explained that many owners have left puppies at the Animal Care Center’s front door, but the organization doesn’t have the capacity to properly shelter and take care of all of them.
“Unfortunately, there’s an opinion in our country that if a city or an association has an animal shelter that it’s okay to abandon the animals without any consequences. This often means that the owners don’t even consider sterilizing the abandoned pets, since they believe the shelter will just take care of everything, but it’s simply impossible to take care of all those animals,” said Turnbull.
The Facebook page “Udomljavanje zivotinja Mostar” (Adopting Animals Mostar) is using its online platform to help animals and prepare them for the adoption process. One person that adopted a dog through this platform is Lucija from Dubrovnik. “My husband and I adopted a dog from Mostar. In the beginning, we noticed that the dog was very calm, but very scared, and, during mealtime, he was anxious and distrustful, taking little pieces of food and hiding them until he was ready to eat. He was also cautious regarding pampering, but when our baby came, he was attached to her from the very first day. I have never worried that he might bite her, he’s very calm,” said Lucija.
The numbers show that organizations such as these have made significant strides in the fight against human cruelty towards animals. According to data from 2017, Dogs Trust BiH has made possible the sterilization of approximately 7,101 stray dogs and 1,179 dogs with permanent owners, while the Animal Care Center in Mostar had adopted out more than 200 animals.
The Balkan Diskurs Youth Correspondent Program is made possible by funding from the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

author: Kristina Gadže