SREBRENICA, JULY 2008 – FINAL THOUGHTS

The following nine blogs were posted after a visit to Srebrenica in Bosnia, in late July 2008. Our group, the Advocacy Project, is helping survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre to develop and promote a memorial quilt commemorating the victims. Beba Hadzic, who heads the Bosnian women’s group Bosfam and is coordinating the quilt project, is keen to involve [...]

HASNIJA

The return of refugees has been easier in the hills around Srebrenica than in the town itself. This afternoon, we are traveling out to visit a Bosfam member, Hasnija Music, who returned here from Tuzla in 2003 and could be a prime candidate for any Bosfam training.
 
Those familiar with the Advocacy Project may remember the [...]

THE EMPTY TOWN

Monday July 28: Standing in the debris of what used to be her family house, Beba Hadzic confronts the central fact of Srebrenica today: the place is virtually empty. Srebrenica the symbol may be growing, but Srebrenica the community is shrinking.
 
Several cars are parked on the street, but their license plates are from Holland, Sarajevo, [...]

SREBRENICA

Srebrenica must have been stunning before the war, with its Alpine setting. But for most of the past 13 years it has boasted some of the most picturesque war damage in Bosnia. The massive wrecked supermarket in the center of the town, where the single road divides, must have been captured by countless foreign cameras [...]

MAGBULA

We stop off at the home of Magbula Divovic, one of the Bosfam weavers who returned home from Tuzla three years ago. Magbula lives just up the road from the Potocari memorial – the place where she was separated from her husband and youngest son in 1995. She remembers how Mladic, the Serb General, reassured the crowd [...]

POTOCARI

The story of the Srebrenica massacre has been told many times, including on the website of the Advocacy Project. Beba Hadzic was among those Muslims expelled in the first days of the war, in April 1992. The Muslims who remained in Srebrenica then regrouped and pushed the Serbs back. For the next three years the [...]

RETURN TO THE CRUCIBLE

Sunday July 26: We set off from Tuzla to Srebrenica early in the morning with Shweta and myself squeezed into the backseat of Beba’s small car together with Antigona Kukaj, another wonderful AP Peace Fellow who is volunteering this summer in Tuzla with the Bosnian office of the Landmine Survivors Network. Beba’s husband is at [...]

“MEMORY IS EVERYTHING”

Tuzla, Friday July 24: Tuzla is built on salt, and so much salt has been extracted that part of the city is subsiding. The old town hall has already been abandoned. In 1995, towards the end of the war the Serbs lobbed a shell into the city center which killed over 70 Muslims (now called [...]

JULY 2008 – RETURN TO SREBENICA

Sarajevo, Thursday July 24, 2008: Today, I embarked on a visit to Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia, scene of the 1995 massacre. The trip is being undertaken at the invitation of Beba Hadzic, director of the Bosnian women’s organization Bosfam which is headquartered in the Bosnian town of Tuzla. Many of Bosfam’s members lost relatives in [...]