watch out sniper
Love your neighbours
The Bosnian War ended 30 years ago. The complex history of ethnic and religious differences in the Balkans has given rise to numerous conflicts. There was a period of temporary peace under Josip Broz Tito, but after his death, the Yugoslav Federation collapsed under ethnic conflict, leading to several civil wars and then ultimately disappeared from history.
Among the Yugoslavian civil wars, the Bosnian War is remembered the longest and most brutal one. During the three years of war, former friends and neighbors tortured, killed and raped each other. Finally, the war forcely ended by the internationl intervention. But the war crimes committed between neighbors left deep trauma in the society and it became the cause of persistent ethnic conflict after the war.
Today, Bosnian society still lives with the scars of this past. Buildings and roads throughout the cities still have the trace of bomb shells and bullets, and society remains under constant ethnic tension. Even these tensions continue to affect post-war generations. This situation has severely impacted the economy, and faced with an uncertain future, many young people have left the country. This project aims to recount the traumatic Bosnian society.
The Bosnian War ended 30 years ago.
But the ghost of the war is still haunting in the society.
Serb Army cut off all the resources, there were no water and no electricity. And we escaped into a basement from the bomb shelling and sniper fire. The only way to know how the war was going was with an amateur ham radio. We took the dynamo out of a car and connected it to a bicycle wheel to generate electricity. Then we could listen to the radio. The broadcasting always started with: “Hello, Sarajevo. So far I have survived today -did you survive too?”
For three days in July 1995, around 8,500 people in and around the town of Srebrenica were murdered by the Serbian Army. Although 27 years have passed since this genocide, every year, on Memorial Day, newly identfied bodies arrive at Potočari to be buried.
“Back then, I fought in war to survive, and now I sell war to survive. All I have left in my life is the damm war.”
Zeljko, former veteran, is making a living as a war tour guide.
“We all cried, but we did not know we were burying Yugoslavia”
(Mahmut Bakali, Kosovar Albanian politician, speaking about Tito’s death.)
During his reigm, Tito was able to calm Yugoslavia’s ethnic and religious conflicts and bring a peaceful period. However, after his death, Yugoslavia was devastated by several civil wars and eventually disappeared from history.
