For those of you reading this blog I am going
to apologize now for how much more educational and historical this is about to
get. I will also be updating it
more often because part of the program here is to keep a blog and update it a
few times a week so I will not be offended if you just look at the pictures!
FYI - BiH is short for Bosnia-Herzegovina
Monday morning we met with the International
Commission of Missing People (ICMP), which is a non-governmental organization
that in short locates mass graves and small gravesites from the war and
identifies bodies. ICMP does so by
taking DNA tests of family members with missing people and matches samples with
the bodies that they discover.
This task is an enormous project because in BiH there were around 30,000
missing persons after the war from 1992-1995. So far they have identified and informed the families of
over 22,000 persons, which is pretty amazing! The ICMP has state of the art software and has worked on
other cases of mass death that required human identifications such as hurricane
Katrina, Iraq, Columbia, etc.
Yesterday morning we all met at the hotel (we
are split between two hotels) and walked to the Presidency building. The term sounded a little weird to us
all because we have the White House which to me sounds a more personal
(probably because it is more familiar). One person asked if the president lives
in the Presidency Building… no they do not live there and it would also be
strange because there are 3 presidents in Bosnia. There are 3 presidents
because they represent the 3 main ethnic groups in BiH; Croats, Bosniaks, and
Serbs. Each president rotates once
every 8 months but they are all part of decisions even when they are not
president. It is more the sense
that there are 3 presidents in terms of the power that they have it is just
that one would act as the representative for the country during the respective
8 months. At the Presidency building
we met with Elvir Camdzic who is the foreign policy advisor for the current BiH
president who is Bosniak. We met
in an impressive room in the Presidency building and began discussing and
asking questions about the government and foreign policy in BiH. While Elvir was talking the door opened
and Bakir Izethegovic, the current Bosnian president walked in! We met the Bosnia President! He even
posed for a picture with the group!
It was a fantastic surprise!
After our meeting with Elvir we walked about 300 meters down the road to
the parliamentary building and met with two of the government officials working
on redrafting the BiH constitution.
They briefly explained why it is so important for the constitution to be
redrafted, which is because the constitution violates human rights, i.e. only
allowing different ethnic groups to run for president, everyone should be able
to run for president. The meeting
was then open to Q&A, which was really interesting to see how insightful
other students are and also to hear more about BiH country, history and
political future.
The 2012 Balkans dialogue group with Bosnian President Bakir Izethbegovic! (Photo by Marie)
Listening to Elvir
I am about to get extremely nerdy right now… Yesterday
after talking a walking tour of Sarajevo our group sat down in the lobby of our
hotel and began to listen to, Mladen, our Teacher’s Assistant lesson about the history
of the Balkans war conflict.
Mladen grew up in North Serbia and is getting his Ph. D at Northeastern
University. Mladen began by
explaining that he tries to be as unbiased as possible but it is hard to be completely
unbiased because many issues are no certain and can be disagreed upon. Throughout the lesson it was great to
see how engaged everyone was and then when it came to Q&A my colleagues
were incredibly intuitive and genuinely interested! It has been wonderful to be around such an incredibly smart
group of people. One of the my colleagues, Kelsey, made note of how at the ICMP
the woman presenting had said, “I guess we just like to kill each other” with
kind of a laugh when discussing how there has been a war in the Balkans at
least once every 50 years for the few centuries. Kelsey then
stated how striking this statement was to hear (and to all of us) and asked if
there was ever a possibility of there being something for people to unite on so
the trend could end. Mladen began
to answer the question and then the owner of the hotel that we are staying in,
Maya over hear the question and asked to respond. We were more than welcoming to hear her opinion and it
turned out to be the most moving, emotional and eye opening speech that I had
yet to hear since arriving to Bosnia, possibly ever in my life. Maya spoke of never having animosity
towards other ethnic groups prior to the war. In her opinion/view, they were all just Bosnians living in
Yugoslavia. She spoke with
frustration, loss and anguish. It
was devastating to see in her eyes how hard the war was and her confusion of
why it even happened, she was nearly in tears. After, the lobby was silent and it was just an amazing moment
where all of us were really struck by her words. The discussion continued on and after a few of us asked if
we could have these types of lectures more often and everyone agreed and my
thought to this was, Only at Northeastern! I am really grateful for all of the opportunities that have
been available to me through Northeastern and I am really looking forward to
the next few weeks!
You can see the holes on the bottom in the cement wall. This was caused by mortar shells... imagine the how much damage the shells cause to a human body if this is the damage it did to a cement wall.
After the war the an artist in Sarajevo would melt pieces of medal in the holes left from mortar bombs and paint it red. They were then coined with the term "Sarajevo Roses" It marked a place of loss and and reminder of what happened. A little while after the war they then decided to remove most of the "Roses" however they left a few to keep the reminder.
The river divided the city but was united by the 12 bridges that cross the river. However, during the war the bridges were extremely dangerous because snipers would monitor them.
Getting away from all of the educational
information… We have had quite a bit of free time to explore the city and enjoy
the food! Sarajevo is surprisingly
small and is very European. I am
still a bit shocked at how well the country has recovered, architecturally and
in on the surface, socially. The
food here is A LOT of meat and bread and it is actually hard to find a salad… I
don’t understand how they can still be so skinny here! There are ton of mosques, churches and cathedrals.
I am sorry that my blog has taken such a
serious turn. The history in the
country is incredibly dense and such a big part of the culture that it is hard
to ignore. Thank you for reading,
ta ta for now!
Ciao
