Sarajevo remembers the beginning of the siege in a leaden atmosphere
Strajo Krsmanović directs the National Gallery of Fine Arts in Sarajevo.
© RFI / Simon Rico
Text by: Jean-Arnault Dérens Follow |
Simon Rico Follow
6 mins
Bosnia and Herzegovina commemorates this Wednesday, April 6 the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo, in 1992. For this thirtieth anniversary, no common ceremony is planned, while the country is torn apart and the war in Ukraine awakens all its traumas.
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From our regional correspondents,
On the evening of Thursday March 31, the Sarajevo Tobacco Factory closed its doors for good.
It had been founded in 1880, at the time of the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and produced cheap cigarettes, the Drina, very popular throughout the former Yugoslavia.
During the last war, in Sarajevo as in the other besieged cities, in Zenica, Tuzla or Srebrenica, the salaries of civil servants were partly paid in cartridges of Drina, cigarettes which were even used as currency to buy bread, a packet of coffee or oil.
It is one more symbol that is disappearing in the city, while Sarajevo commemorates in a leaden atmosphere the thirty years of the beginning of the war, on April 6, 1992.
On that day, thousands of citizens from all communities in the country – Bosnian Muslims, Croats, Serbs, but also all those who did not identify with these national categories, for example because they were from “mixed” marriages – had gathered in front of the Parliament to celebrate the international recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state.
It was then that the first snipers opened fire on the crowd, tipping Sarajevo into an interminable siege.
Officially, this was only lifted in February 1996, two months after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, on December 14-15, 1995 in Paris.
The first two victims were called Suad Delibegović and Olga Sučić, he Bosnian and she Croat.
Their names have been given to the bridge that crosses the Miljacka, the river of Sarajevo, near which the young couple was shot, not far from "Sniper Alley", the large boulevard which connects the modern socialist city to the historic Ottoman district.
In 2012, for the twentieth anniversary of the siege, 11,541 red chairs were lined up to form a huge line crossing the center of Sarajevo, in memory of all the officially registered victims.
This year, on the other hand, the commemorations will remain discreet, apart from the traditional ceremony with the eternal flame, which also recalls the liberation of Sarajevo by the anti-fascist supporters of Tito, on April 6, 1945.
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: Srebrenica survivors worried about a return to violence
The "
most complicated institutions in the world
"
The Dayton Peace Accords endowed Bosnia and Herzegovina with the "
most complicated institutions in the world
": the country is divided into two "entities", the Republika Srpska and the Croat-Bosnian Federation, itself subdivided into ten cantons, predominantly Bosnian and sometimes Croatian, without forgetting the District of Brčko, in the very north, with a special status.
"
This aberrant institutional mechanism serves above all the interests of the nationalist parties of the three communities - Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian - who monopolize power and have no interest in change
", explains Tanja Topić, analyst for the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Banja Luka. , the capital of the Serbian entity.
“
These nationalist parties need to raise tensions, especially in the pre-election period
”, she continues, while general elections are still scheduled for autumn 2022. “
Everyone knows very well that they are corrupt and that 'they've taken our country hostage, and the only thing that still makes people vote for them is fear of the other.
Theoretically rivals, these nationalists actually need each other to stay in power.
But this time around, they may have pushed things a bit too far.
»
Highlights of #Sarajevo (1/5) • series in #freeaccess |
It was founded in the middle of the 15th century and was for a long time one of the most important cities in the European part of the #Ottoman Empire.
The #Baščaršija was his beating heart https://t.co/7U5MgD318X pic.twitter.com/DuoiTZnNZa
— Balkan Courier (@CdBalkans) April 4, 2022
Since the start of the 2021 school year, the Serbian leader Milorad Dodik has indeed embarked on a real process of "
creeping secession
" from the Republika Srpska, which intends to equip itself with its justice system, its tax authorities, as well as an army and intelligence services. separated.
For their part, the Croatian nationalists are calling for electoral reform, which would further strengthen the ethnic structure of the electorate in the other entity, which they share with the Bosnians.
On March 20, the negotiations on this reform, conducted under the aegis of the European Union and the United States, officially failed.
Under these conditions, Croatian and Serbian nationalists are threatening to boycott the October 2 elections.
On that day, the country must renew the many parliaments of all its entities, but also its collegial presidency comprising three members, a Bosnian, a Serb and a Croat.
If these elections did not take place, Bosnia and Herzegovina would perhaps not fall into war, but at least into the unknown.
►Great report: Should we really fear a war in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
"
The cosmopolitan spirit of Sarajevo has disappeared
"
At the time of the invasion of Ukraine, the shelves of oil and flour were brutally emptied in the supermarkets of Sarajevo.
And in recent weeks, local social networks have also been buzzing with comparisons with Ukraine: “Sarajevo 1992 – kyiv 2022, same scenario”.
"
The political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is worse than at the beginning of April 1992. We had no arms and our country was under attack, but at least its borders had just been internationally recognized and we had a legitimate government.
Today, the country is divided into multiple entities, and instead of a government, ethnic chiefdoms share the power and the prebends of the State
”, launches Strajo Krsmanović.
Before asking: “
If war broke out again, who would defend Bosnia and Herzegovina
?
»
Strajo Krsmanović directs the National Gallery of Sarajevo, one of the last “national” cultural institutions in the country.
A challenge in a country that no longer has a Ministry of Culture.
He never knows how he will pay the salaries of his employees at the end of the month: "
We have no supervisory authority, the government of the Federation and that of the canton of Sarajevo pass the buck and no one feels bound to ensure our budget...
"
A member of the Serbian community, the septuagenarian worked on television in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war and never wanted to leave Sarajevo, even in the darkest hours of the siege.
But thirty years later, he notes with bitterness how much his city has changed: most of the Croats and the Serbs who left have not returned and, he laments, “
the cosmopolitan spirit of Sarajevo has disappeared
”.
►Emphasis on Europe: Living under siege, from Sarajevo to war in Ukraine
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