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Tamas Dezso Freelance / GEO "A DECADE AFTER"


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Pigeons take off at a housing estate which used to be the frontline in Sarajevo. War scars from the siege lasting from May 1992 to February 1996 can still be seen. 07/2005

Summary: "Being civilised simply consists in making room for the other in your self-identity." Mirsad Prignica, Bosnian philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at Sarajevo University. Ten years ago, the Dayton Conference ended the Bosnian war, the bloodiest conflict in European history since World War II. The falling apart of Yugoslavia was a violent process accompanied by untold human misery. The nationalism of 'the blood and the soil', which inevitably begot counter-nationalisms, claimed the lives of 200,000 people, and it made two million homeless. No record remains about the children who starved to death, the women who were raped and the old people who froze to death. Once again, Europe had to encounter the things it had long wanted to forget: 'ethnic cleansing', concentration camps and mass graves. Ten years after the war, 15,000 people are not yet accounted for, the land is littered with millions of landmines, and many mass graves are still unearthed. Ten years after the war, the question for the people in Bosnia and Herzegovina in whose souls the horrors left an indelible mark is still the question of the possibility of reconciliation. After so many years, the tension is still palpable, mistrust and fear cast a shadow on everyday human interactions. Peace remains fragile and illusory.

 

 

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