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One of the family is in Novi Sad at the mo, at the Exit Festival – I’ve been listening to the livestream.
At the same time there’s been a steady trickle of tweets reminding me of the commemoration later today of the Srebrenica genocide. A friend from the East London Mosque is leading a delegation and will be taking part.
I’m told 613 men & boys whose bodies have been identified over the past year will be buried at Potocari later today. Over 8,000 unarmed Bosniacs were taken up to the hills around Srebrenica (a UN designated safe area for Muslims) in July 1995 and shot by Serbian forces. General Ratko Mladić, who was in command, is now on trial for genocide. Bodies are still being recovered and identified.
Huge crowd at the Exit Festival 2011.
The Exit Festival was started in 2000 (100 days of it!) by three Serbian students under the slogan, “Exit out of ten years of madness”, a reference to the Milošević regime. Milošević resigned later that year and spent his last years on trial for war crimes. It’s great that the festival (now just 4 days) has become one of the best festivals-with-a-message in Europe.
Here are some more photos from my 2009 visit.
A man who survived the killings (second from right) tells our group what happened during the hot summer of 1995.
Myself, a Srebrenica mother who lost all her male family members in the massacre and a friend from our group at Potocari, where the dead are buried.
A couple of young campaigners, one wearing an Exit t-shirt (which I didn't recognise at the time).
Never again - the Srebrenica prayer inscribed in English at the Potocari cemetery.
The beautiful scenery in Bosnia-Hertzegovina - often similar to my own country, Scotland. Much of the countryside cannot be used - it's too expensive to clear all the land-mines.
Maybe it’s just a summertime news spike, but there’s been increasing coverage of the plans to build an Islamic community centre near the site of the former World Trade Centre in New York City, which was destroyed by terrorists on 9/11.
I welcome a lively public conversation – how else should we work out, together, what sort of city or world we want? – although this one seems to have polarised rather quickly between those who think it triumphalist of Muslims to build something like this near the Ground Zero site (for views on how near is ‘near’, see a recent Salon post), and those who make a distinction between (American) Muslims in general and the 9/11 terrorists in particular, and who want to retain the religious freedom so precious to passengers on the Mayflower in 1620.
The last time I was in Manhattan I stayed in Battery Park City, which was created from the excavation material from the building of the twin towers. The Ground Zero site still looked, two and half years ago, very desolate.
Memorial to the Great Famine in New York City (photo: David Shankbone)
Between my hotel and the Hudson river there was something very different. Even in mid-winter, the memorial to the C19th Irish Gorta Mór or Great Hunger, which commemorates a famine that took a million lives and prompted another million Irish people to emigrate, is a beautiful, contemplative place to come across. It’s partly a patch of rural Ireland, with grasses, heather and stone walls, and partly a collection of quotations and thoughts on famine and on migration. When it was created (2002), the intention was to add more, as further hunger crises occurred.
Of course there is no public memorial to the dead of the Gorta Mór in London, so far as I know – we were part of the problem, not part of the solution.
New Yorkers, and US citizens generally, will have to decide how they want to live together. With the mid-term elections coming up, everyone seems to have an opinion, from Sarah Palin (“hallowed ground“) to the the President. If new mosques or Islamic centres or schools are banned in lower Manhattan, what effect would that have? Would anything else be banned? How would Muslims, and maybe other groups, feel about it? It seems that some of those who oppose the Islamic centre in Park Place think it runs counter to honouring those who died at the World Trade Centre – it’s an affront, it shows disrespect. So what is needed to remember those who died on 9/11? And what is needed to be able to reach some kind of consensus or acceptance of different views, in uncertain times, on the historical significance of the atrocities that day? How do we live well locally when our neighbourhood includes the site of a wider conflict? How do we carry that responsibility?
Northern Irish schools had difficulty agreeing a shared history syllabus and textbooks after the Good Friday agreement – but they’ve managed it. Bosnia is still struggling to agree what version of history should be taught to children in school. When I think back on conflicts I’ve been part of, I know my own re-telling of the story is very different from my antagonist’s – unless our differences have been worked through and acknowledged. Painful stuff.
Without some agreement on the past, it’s hard to find a shared future. It’s early days for New York City but I’m hoping it won’t want to be part of the problem, it’ll be part of the solution and show us how different kinds of people, even under difficult circumstances, can share our cities and our world.
Stef O’ Driscoll (award-winning theatre director) and Mark Griffin (St Mary’s University College, London), friends I’ve made through my thespian daughter, are off to Sarajevo on Friday. They want to dramatise some of the wonderful stories in Miljenko Jergovic’s Sarajevo Marlboro, a collection of short stories on how the young people of Sarajevo from the different communities – Croats, Serbs and Bosniacs – helped each other to survive during the siege. They plan to stage performances in London and in Bosnia.
They’ll spend much of their time listening, I suspect, and it will be hard.
Amila and Niko at Blackburn Cathedral
We had a wonderful time in London this evening with some of the Bosnians who have been taking part in the Forgiveness Project exhibition at Blackburn Cathedral. They fly home tomorrow morning. Stef met Silva (a young woman from the Croat community), Amila (who teaches English in Tuzla and is connected to the beautiful madrassa there) and Niko (Deputy Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Tuzla area).
In a wholly uninspiring hotel lobby, conversation ranged from the dreadful and continuing pain of multiple and unexplainable bereavement, to justice denied, the thirst in Bosnia for creativity, beauty and the arts, the power of women’s stories and of the life-giving and transformative possibilities of carefully devised theatre. It’s impossible to have conversations like these with our Bosnian friends without a great deal of laughter, too – I love it.
I also caught sight of Chris and Anjum from Blackburn Cathedral, who worked hard to bring our Bosnian friends to the UK. We’re hoping that the final report of the original UK visit in October 2009 will be the kind of document that people will say, “If you’re going to Bosnia, read this”.
A couple of links, in fact three or four, to the East-West divide or confluence -
AA Gill at the source of the Danube (Tom Craig/Sunday Times Magazine)
First a piece by AA Gill in the Sunday Times magazine, found in a hospital waiting room today, of a journey down the Danube, from Furtwangen in the Black Forest to Constanţa on the Black Sea coast. The Danube doesn’t neatly divide the linguistic families or scripts, plum brandy from wine, what was Roman Empire from what wasn’t, or even Latin from Orthodox Christians, but it’s a charming tale. Gill includes reminders of some of the bad times – including iron footwear in Budapest as a tribute to the Jews killed there during WWII and a memorial to Croatians killed at Vukovar.
Second, BBC World Service’s Forum this evening included Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon. Part of the ambitious British Museum – BBC project The History of the World in 100 Objects. Listen again through the World Service website.
Younghusband by Patrick French
And thirdly, a book which someone has kindly given to me and which I’d love to read when life stops getting in the way – a biography of Sir Francis Younghusband by Patrick French. This book seems to be going viral since its publication in 2004. Younghusband travelled, but also thought about where he was and the people he met. He ended up co-founding the World Congress of Faiths – a body I’ve never quite got my head around.
And I can never say East-West without thinking West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
Alexandra Estate NW8
A great evening with old friends from Papua New Guinea days (now dividing their time between Timor and the US). Then TV news footage of the devastating earthquake in Haiti and a ‘phone call from someone with connections there.
Before turning off the television, surprised to find an Anthony Minghella film on BBC1, based in London (Alexandra Estate NW8), which includes characters (and a copper coffee ibrik) from Sarajevo – Breaking and Entering. Bit of a syrupy ending, but the distant and rather romantic view of Bosnia portrayed probably comes close to my own view before travelling there last year.
Glad to find Doreen Massey’s For Space mentioned in Stephen Greenblatt’s Cultural Mobility – a Manifesto, one of the books I shouldn’t really have bought from the London Review Bookshop the other day. Greenblatt reckons that cultures or patterns of meaning have rarely been stable or fixed. The kind of radical mobility that is taking place today is in fact an old, old story.
To grasp the shaping power of colonization, exile, emigration, wandering, contamination, and unexpected, random events, along with the fierce compulsions of greed, longing, and restlessness, cultural analysis needs to operate with a new set of principles.
It was good to mull over with friends how Papua New Guinea is doing nowadays, how Timor is getting along, how Bosnia is working its way to becoming part of the “international community” – and what our role is, as citizens of far more powerful nations. Although I associate the word ‘protectorate’ with days of empire, some small countries struggle to rise much above this status, even in the C21st, or perhaps particularly in the C21st.
Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4) on Karadzic and war crimes
The war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has opened at the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He faces 11 counts of genocide, including complicity in the Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed. It was one of the worst acts of atrocity in Europe since the Second World War. But is what we are about to see justice or revenge – A show trial organised by the victors, with TV coverage broadcast throughout the world, and eagerly viewed, especially in the Balkans. Can there ever be any morally certain and globally acceptable definition of what constitutes a war crime or will pragmatism and real politique always get in the way?
No podcast but listen again at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nfqzl
Heart & Soul (BBC World Service) Bosnia’s War Babies
One of the many charges faced by Radovan Karadžić at The Hague is that of organising the rape of 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women. Fourteen years after the conflict, many of these women remain traumatised, cast out from their communities, rejected by their husbands and families, and often ending up stigmatised and impoverished. Some had the additional humiliation of being raped in front of their parents or small children. Yet the psychological support that so many of them urgently need is inadequate and sporadic. Some women were kept for months and raped until they conceived. Those who became pregnant either abandoned their babies or had them adopted. Some decided to keep them, a constant reminder of their shame. These children – now in their teens – are beginning to ask questions about their fathers. The mothers now face a dilemma – should they tell the truth and risk damaging their child? Or keep their terrible secret?
Listen again and find the podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2009/03/000000_heartandsoul.shtml
And BBC Newsnight followed up with its Srebrenica report tonight – catch it now through this link:
The latest edition of From Our Own Correspondent can be heard from this link -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8311452.stm
While everything is still fresh in my mind, I’ll add some photos of our last few days in Bosnia (in reverse order) which will complement some of my recent messages on Twitter.
It’s a relief to get back to my comfort zone of a qwerty keyboard and reliable internet access, but I am already missing beautiful Bosnia, the impressive people we encountered, the warm hospitality we received and the challenging discussions from breakfast to late at night during our journey.
I’ll add more reflections later, as the experiences bed down. I’m mulling over our theme “how faith communities can help to sustain civil society and promote social cohesion” both in Bosnia and the UK, but also thinking about how identity (religious and other) affects local, national and international life – how much commonality/separateness do we need/want, the impact of migration/roots/history, how pluralism works best (Bosnia provided a very different model from the UK), the particular contribution of women, the particular contribution of education and the academy, what defines Europe and Europeans, what or who speaks for faith communities, and what we may do as a result of the visit. A big thank you to SANA and the Christian Muslim Forum for organising such a thought-provoking visit.
Thank you everyone who has kept in touch over the last week – it has made it a much more connected experience for me.
And a special welcome to Bosnian friends who have joined us! Please post your thoughts and keep in touch.
UK group – I hope there will be an opportunity to meet up one day, maybe at the report launch with The Lord, you never know.
Baggage reclaim at Heathrow: Anjum & Chris re-entering UK life
Our last night in Sarajevo - women dancing to the folk musicians in the restaurant. The one leading the line used a paper napkin which reminded me of Greek dancing.
Anjum spurns the menu and creates a chip butty, Blackburn-style.
Junuz in front of graffiti in Sarajevo - Don't forget Srebrenica. Junuz showed me where the UN had put huge containers along the streets during the siege so that snipers couldn't aim at people in the street.
Non-confessional space in central Sarajevo for everyone to use as a place to pray or contemplate. It isn't finished yet, but it is being used. Built and hosted by the Franciscans, I was interested in the language used, which reminded me of Bonhoeffer's German Confessing Church which opposed the Nazis.
Fr Paulo, Paul from SANA (partially hidden), a Franciscan friar involved in the trauma centre based in Sarajevo (open to Bosnians from all communities) & Anjum.
Students at a street stall campaigning for petitions to the Bosnian government to be debated in parliament.
A quiet moment for Guy at the Franciscan seminary in Sarajevo. The Catholic churches and chapels we saw were light and airy and included modern works of art. Stations of the Cross were prominent.
We travelled up through the hills on a dirt road to the Croat village of Drijenca where there is a Franciscan church.
Fr Marco telling us that the church here stays with the people of Drijenca to support them when everyone else seems to have abandoned them. There are villages nearby which are completely deserted since the war. Along with the coffee, we were offered locally distilled rakia - firewater! The countryside is beautiful around here and perfect for hiking, hill-walking and eco-tourism were it not for the landmines. These could be removed if someone was willing to pay and if any of the groups which used them during the war was prepared to share information on where they are planted.
Pop Nico, an archpriest in the Serbian Orthodox church, a member of the Bosnian group, Lila, from the Roman Catholic church in Tuzla, and Alenka Tanovic, our interpreter from the Muslim community who was once an au pair in Thamesmead in London. There were many times during our trip that it was clear that individuals from the three main communities in Bosnia were friends and building bridges across the divides. More organised and insitutional multi and inter faith activities were less common. Figures show that there has been a massive increase in organised inter/multifaith activity in the UK since 9/11, so circumstances obviously play a part.
One of the Stations of the Cross from the Catholic church in Tuzla. Bosnians (the different communities represented by their different hats) contribute to the world's suffering.
A work of art in the Franciscan seminary created by a Muslim artist from war debris.
Children at the Catholic high school in Tuzla, which accepts children from all communities (currently 30% are Muslims). Our UK group had different views on the two schools we visited, although this high school and the madrassa are not strictly comparable (the latter being partly a theological college for future religious leaders). This school was certainly a lot more noisy than the madrassa! Fra Zdravko, the Prior of the Friary, is standing behind the children. He had a very relaxed manner with them. It is easier to say Bosnian names than to read them . .
Europe for Sarajevo mural - something I had underestimated before the visit.
Going into Pop Nico's Serbian Orthodox church in Tuzla with our Bosnian friends. We spent one day with the Muslim community, one with the Serbian Orthodox church and one with the Roman Catholics, who are mainly Croat and mainly Franciscan.
Inside the church, Nico telling us about its history, interpreted by Alenka on the left. Different churches have different traditions and in the orthodox tradition, only Christian priests are allowed behind the screen at the head of the church. Some discussion about this within our group, including the recent incident of Jim Fitzpatrick MP and his wife walking out of a Muslim wedding reception in his constituency because men and women celebrated in different parts of the building. When in Rome . . . or stick to your principles? The symbolism of the building itself (eg some parts set aside for particular activities such as the font or lectern, pictures as teaching aids, sacred geometry) seems more prominent in churches, whereas behavioural symbolism (eg filling up the rows of prayer so that worshippers are close together, not walking in front of someone who is praying) seems more important in mosques. Put me right on this huge over-generalisation by posting a comment!
The starry dome of Nico's beautiful church. Daniel (a Muslim member of our group) saw this on my mobile later and remarked that at first glance it looked like the Islamic symbolic crescent.
Inside the Serbian Orthodox church at Bijeljina which is in the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia.
Prayer request slips and posting box - in my experience, commonly found in churches from Iona to the South Pacific.
Pop Nico in the centre, flanked by the director of a church project supporting children with disabilities and their families (left) and the Serbian Orthodox priest of Srebrenica (right). Earlier in the week we had listened to Bosniacs who had lost members of their close family in the Srebrenica massacre. People from all three main communities lost friends and family in the three-way war as a result of armed combat. More difficult is the unresolved issue of those from all sides who broke the Geneva Convention and whether any of the religious (or other) authorities have a responsibility to pursue justice on this. One of our group was involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and others of us are involved in mediation, restorative justice and peace-building in the UK. When there are competing narratives of victimisation (a mention of one illegal war incident can be countered by another, involving the alleged victims of the first as alleged perpetrators), there are various possible ways forward, either at grassroots level &/or at higher denominational, governmental and international levels, but it is unlikely that significant movement towards substantial reconciliation will be considered unless clear structures and safe places for discussion are first provided. We were privileged to be part of small, unofficial conversations during our visit which I found humbling and heartening.
Leslie Griffiths, one of our group, addressing the Mayor of Bijeljina.
Local TV interest was strong - Junuz and Paul facing the press after our meeting with the Mayor of Bijeljina. The concurrent USA-EU-Bosnia talks on changing the Bosnian constitution may have been a factor.
Serbian Orthodox Archpriest Pop Nico (seated in front of the waiter), hosting a wonderful meal for the UK group (Muslims & Christians), Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian RC Croats. The hospitality we received was very generous. You can see that in Bosnia people from all communities can and do have an excellent time together!
Nico in Christological discussion with Muslim members of the conference.
The latest edition of Dani, a political weekly, showing a selection of High Representatives in Bosnia (but not including Paddy Ashdown) wearing UN helmets, with the Srebenica safe zone sign in the background. Of all the people and organisations implicated in the Srebenica massacre, I am closely related by the democratic process to one, the UN, which failed to protect the thousands of civilians who fled to the safe zone for safety.
Patchwork strips of agricultural land - it is traditional for families to have some land and if they live in the countryside they will often have a day-job but also keep some chickens, a cow and maybe grow some maize or hay as well.
Approaching Sarajevo - there are many, many cemeteries in Bosnia
Paul and Junuz from SANA, our hosts, who have put together an amazing programme for us
Live folk music is common in restaurants - a family group couldn't resist dancing along to these guys. They played one of the songs on my Rough Guide to the Balkans CD and later sang along to it from my ipod - beautiful!
Muslim gravestones here are white and shaped liked small Cleopatra's needles. Carved turbans on the top are the graves of those believed to have gone straight to heaven.
Scented and spiced tea - cinnamon I think
Turkish coffee is served everywhere and frequently - I'll have withdrawal symptoms when I leave.
The Defence Attache at the British Embassy - he gave us a full briefing on EU and NATO support for and concerns about Bosnia.
The view from my Tuzla hotel room - socialist architecture from Tito's time, but well maintained and good quality.
Laying flowers at a memorial for young people who died when a shell hit the place where they used to hang out in the evenings.
Some buildings in Sarajevo have not yet been restored.
A dedicated substance abuse rehab centre run by the Muslim community in Bosnia.
The old town in Sarajevo.
An Abrahamic trio at lunch - guess who's who. And some verses of Persian poetry on the wall behind in Farsi and Bosnian. Bosnia loves its poets, too, & they are quoted frequently.
