Bosnia – Faith Matters

Bosnian genocide survivor recalls joy of birdsong after fleeing conflict for UK

Faith Matters — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 13:13:57 +0000

An architect has recalled spending his first “beautiful” days in Newcastle after fleeing his war-torn Bosnian town as a schoolboy to escape the genocide.

Smajo Beso, now 36, said he heard birdsong for the first time in years after arriving in the north-east of England on July 19 1994, after Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic ordered troops to execute mostly Muslim men and boys.

Mr Beso and his mother and siblings spent a month in a Croatian refugee camp after fleeing their town of Stolac.

His father was among the many males, aged between around 13 and 90, who had been rounded up by guards storming Stolac a year earlier, before being granted refuge in Newcastle.

Local people then successfully campaigned to have the family reunited in Newcastle.
Speaking on the anniversary of the Bosnian genocide, Mr Beso, who describes himself as equal parts Bosnian and Geordie, told the PA news agency: “Coming here was amazing.
“I remember it was beautiful weather and silence, not hearing bombs and shells and screaming and cries.

“The first thing I noticed was how different it was to Bosnia.

“Coming from a war zone – that shock, the contrast, not hearing bombs and explosions, hearing birds for the first time in years – that shock was so vivid.”

Mr Beso described how his first real understanding of the impact of war was when a Serbian friend turned against him.

He then saw relatives killed, men rounded up and buildings destroyed.
“War might be an abstract concept for a young boy,” he said.
“It might be something you see in films and TV and are impressed by, but when you see the crater a shell leaves behind, or the explosion when you are a few metres away and your ears are ringing and you’re disorientated – then you know what war is.”

Mr Beso said his most defining moment was when his mother sat him and his brother and sister down, the day her sister – his aunt – was fatally wounded by a Croatian bomb, and told them to reject hatred.

He said: “She said the best way to resist those trying to kill us is not to become hateful like them.
“If my mam had chosen the easy route … the most soothing thing would be to direct all our anger to them.
“But she chose the most courageous thing.
“It had the most impact on my life.”

Migrants from Bosnia camp kept in buses as relocation halted

Faith Matters — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 15:14:41 +0000

Hundreds of migrants from a burned-out tent camp in north-west Bosnia remain packed in buses where they had spent the night after an attempt to relocate them failed.

Bosnian authorities sent buses on Tuesday to transfer the migrants from the much-criticised Lipa camp to an army barracks in central Bosnia.

The mass move was cancelled after local residents organised protests to prevent the relocation.

On Wednesday morning and later in the day, migrants were still inside the buses, local media reported.

The Lipa camp near Bosnia’s border with Croatia was demolished in a fire last week and lacked basic facilities such as running water or heating.

Some 1,000 migrants were stranded there for days during a spate of snowy and windy winter weather that followed the fire.

The situation has prompted EU officials and aid groups to warn of a looming humanitarian disaster and increased pressure on Bosnia to act to move the migrants away from the camp.

The troubled Balkan country, which went through a devastating war in the 1990s, has been struggling with the influx of thousands of people seeking to reach western Europe.

Bickering among Bosnia’s ethnically divided authorities has prevented an organised response to the crisis, leaving some 3,000 migrants sleeping rough or in makeshift tents.

The head mufti of the Islamic Community of Bosnia, Husein Kavazovic, called for better treatment of migrants, describing the situation as “shameful” for both the country and the rest of Europe.

“We do not treat people in need in such a way,” he said in a statement.

Most migrants are staying in the north-west corner of Bosnia, where they hope to cross into European Union member Croatia before moving on towards wealthy EU nations.

To get to Croatia, migrants use mountainous illegal routes and often face pushbacks and alleged violence at the hands of Croatia’s police.

Two arrested over wartime killing of 78 civilians

Faith Matters — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:15:18 +0000

Two people have been detained in Bosnia on suspicion of taking part in the killing of at least 78 civilians during the 1992-95 war.

The two men were apprehended in Banja Luka, the main town in the Bosnian Serb-run part of the country, according to the prosecutor’s office.

They are suspected of crimes against humanity over the June 1992 killings in the north-western village of Velagici.

Bosnian Serbs slaughtered imprisoned Bosniak civilians, who are mainly Muslims, outside the school building with automatic weapons.

The victims’ bodies were later driven away in trucks and dumped in a mass grave that was exhumed in 1996.

More than 100,000 people died during the war in Bosnia, which erupted when Bosnian Serbs rebelled over the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia and moved to carve up a mini-state of their own, expelling Bosniaks and Croats from the territory.

Bosnia: Leader accuses U.S. of meddling in elections

Faith Matters — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 09:42:23 +0000

The president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic has accused the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo of using its development agency to interfere in the Balkan country’s election process, a charge dismissed by the embassy as a “wild” conspiracy theory.

Milorad Dodik said the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was implementing its aid programme through non-government organisations to conceal what he said was its real agenda of countering Russian influence in the region.

“Aiming to directly interfere in internal affairs of the Republika Srpska and Bosnia, USAID … tries to avoid all institutions and to grant funds under cover of the alleged fight against crime and corruption,” Dodik said.

Dodik, a critic of the West who favours closer ties with Russia, accused the central Bosnian government of conspiring with USAID in the matter and said that NGOs in the Serb Republic which receive USAID funding would be investigated.

Bosnia is divided into a Serb Republic and an entity for its Muslim Bosniak and Croat populations, which are linked via a weak central government.

The U.S. Embassy dismissed Dodik’s accusations.

“Once again, the assistance of the people of the United States is being used to support wild conspiracy theories in the interest of election campaigning in Bosnia,” it said in a statement.

The embassy said it was still negotiating with the Bosnian central government programmes worth a total $8 million to help combat graft, and it accused Dodik of trying to mislead the public and intimidate USAID partners.

Bosnia’s Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic also dismissed Dodik’s allegations, saying the programmes accepted by the Council of Ministers were only at an initial stage and could not influence the election process.

Dodik, who has been blacklisted by the United States for pushing for an illegal referendum on an illegal holiday, has often accused Western governments of being biased against Serbs.

Political analysts said Dodik’s rhetoric showed he had begun early campaigning for Bosnia’s parliamentary and presidential elections on Oct. 7. He plans to run for the Serbs’ seat in Bosnia’s tripartite inter-ethnic presidency.

Last month, Dodik also accused Britain of sending intelligence specialists to Bosnia to meddle in the election campaign. Britain said he was “inventing fake threats” as part of his election campaigning.

For Mostar bridge-diving champion, success takes more than gravity

Faith Matters — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 15:36:34 +0000

Lorens Listo’s name may not headline the world’s sports pages, but on the streets of his native Mostar he is hailed as a champion among champions in a sport that is central to the Bosnian city’s identity: high diving.

Mostar is home to the Stari Most, a 16th-century Ottoman peaked bridge that spans the river Neretva and, at its highest point, stands 79 feet (24 m) above the water.

The picturesque town has become famous for the diving competition from the white bridge, rebuilt in 2004 and a symbol of reconciliation after it was destroyed by Bosnian Croat artillery in 1993 during the Bosnian war.

Listo won the competition’s head-first diving category for the eleventh time on Sunday with his trade-mark swan dive, before a crowd of about 5,000 people. It was the 451st contest held since the first in 1556.

“Jumps are the identity of Mostar,” he said. The plunge from the bridge is a ritual for local youths to signal their transition into manhood. It is also a major tourist attraction, and a unifying force in a divided city.

Croats and Muslims, known as Bosniaks, live on opposite sides of the river and tensions linger from Bosnia’s 1990s war that saw fierce fighting between the two communities. But post-war, Croats and Bosniaks come together for the diving contest.

“Jumps connect both sides because we are together, looking forward to see who is winning. Boundaries are just in people’s mind, they actually don’t exist,” he said.

Approaching 40, Listo has a muscular physique, adorned with tattoos on his arms and thigh, and a buzz-cut hairstyle.

“I could say that everything that I do, my business, my life, my family, everything is dedicated to jumping off the bridge for at least 18 years”, he said, adding that he saw diving as a second full-time job, rather than a hobby.

Listo, who works as the local director of a fuel company, says the threat of injury hangs over the sport. “We fly, we don’t just jump,” Listo said, adding he had broken a finger and injured his back over the years diving from the bridge.

Others have not been so lucky. Listo said a handful of people have died jumping from the bridge over the years, though never during the competition. Listo’s friend Andrej Beuc also died last year diving in a different competition in Bosnia.

Pope doubts Medjugorje apparitions are authentic

Faith Matters — Sun, 14 May 2017 19:56:12 +0000

Pope Francis has voiced serious doubt about the authenticity of alleged continuing apparitions of the Madonna in Medjugorje, a once-obscure village in Bosnia boosted by the pilgrim business.

“These presumed apparitions don’t have a lot of value. This I say as a personal opinion,” he told reporters on his plane returning on Saturday night from Portugal where he gave the Catholic Church two new child saints.

Six children first reported visions of the Virgin Mary in 1981 in a scenario reminiscent of famous apparitions in the French town of Lourdes in the 19th century and 100 years ago in Fatima, which Francis visited on Friday and Saturday.

In the following years, the Bosnian village became a major pilgrimage site, giving many visitors a renewed sense of spirituality and locals a steady source of much-needed revenue.

It also became the focus of controversy as local Franciscan priests running the site promoted their claims in such open defiance of warnings from the Vatican that some were expelled from the order and the local bishop called them schismatic.

Some of the alleged visionaries, now adults, say they still experience apparitions regularly, and that the Madonna tells them ahead of time when she will appear to them.

Many say the apparitions are a hoax.

Former Pope Benedict set up a commission of theologians and bishops to study the situation. Its report has not been published but was given to Pope Francis in 2014.

Francis said investigations are continuing into the first alleged apparitions when the reported visionaries were children or teenagers, but again made it clear that he is highly sceptical about today’s claims.

“The (commission) report has its doubts. I personally am more nasty. I prefer the Madonna as mother, our mother, and not a Madonna who is the head of a telegraph office, who every day sends a message at such-and-such an hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus,” he said.

“Who thinks that the Madonna says, ‘Come tomorrow at this time, and at such time I will deliver a message to that visionary?'” he said.

But Francis acknowledged that some people who go to Medjugorje experience a spiritual renewal and “encounter God, change their lives.”

Frontline Insight: Lessons on hatred from Bosnia

Faith Matters — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:02:12 +0000

Kemal Pervanic grew up in a Bosnian Muslim village surrounded by Serbs. “My schoolmates were just my schoolmates and my teachers were my teachers and that’s how it was until the early 1990s,” Pervanic told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at London’s Frontline Club. But in 1992 he was in a concentration camp being interrogated and tortured by his favourite teacher.

“If you are born in peace, and raised in peace, you take peace for granted,” Pervanic said. “If you speak to anyone out there right now, they’ll tell you that they’re crazy if you tell them that something like that may happen. But now after I lived through such events, I know that it can happen to anyone.”

It’s been over21years since the war inBosnia Herzegovinaended. Pervanic has become a writer and human rights activist. He believes that the process of reconciliation has hardly begun. “Reconciliation and peace building is going to take decades and many generations,” he said. “The process leading up to the war didn’t take long, five to seven years. So you destroy peace, you destroy a normal society so quickly. And it takes such a long time to rebuild it again.”

Now a British citizen, Pervanic splits his time between London and Bosnia. He fears that people in Western Europe don’t appreciate how fragile peace can be.

“We don’t think somebody will come take it away from us,” Pervanic says. “Because it can so easily be taken away from us we all have to become educators, and we all have to become involved in politics.”

Historic mosque reopens in Banja Luka in Bosnia

Faith Matters — Sun, 08 May 2016 19:33:22 +0000

Thousands of Muslims gather in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka to celebrate the reopening of an historic mosque destroyed during the country’s war.

The spire of the Fehadija mosque soars above the Bosnian city of Banya Luka, as the Muslim call to prayer echoes through the air.

This city is now mainly Orthodox Christian, but thousands of Muslims from across Bosnia have gathered to celebrate the reopening of this historic structure.

It’s restoration is a symbol of the slowly healing rifts between the country’s various ethnic and religious groups, according to outgoing Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davatoglu.

The video highlights Turkey’s ourgoing Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu as saying

“Bosnia-Herzegovina, with all its nations, its Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox and Jews, is one body, one heart.”

The mosque was originally built by Ottoman rulers in the 16th century but was demolished during the Bosnian was in 1993 and its stones scattered.

Experts said they were able to find 70-percent of the stones for the rebuilt structure.

But as difficult as that was, it could prove to be easier than bridging the rifts that still divide the country, according to former Serb Republic president Dragan Cavic.

The Serb Republic President and Banja Luka resident, Dragan Cavic, said,

“The next thing that will happen is we will be rebuilding the trust, but it will take more time to do that.”

But Banya Luka now has the soaring spire of the rebuilt mosque to show that difficult goals can be achieved.

Katie Hopkins Suggests that Islam Teaches Muslim Men to Rape White Women

Tell Mama — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 18:21:37 +0000

Katie Hopkins, ever the self-publicist, has done it again. In the desire to play to an audience that is distrustful of Muslims and who may never have taken the time to get to know Muslims, Hopkins has once again, pushed the boundaries in packaging Muslims as being deviant.

Hopkins states:

“Muslim men raping white women is consistent with the teaching of Islam. Revoke their citizenship and deport the bastards. Asian my arse.”

The tweet infers that Muslims (note that she makes no distinction between Muslims), rape white women and that it is a religious directive of sorts. The text is clear on the following. That Islam teaches Muslim men to rape white women. On this point, there is no wiggle room on the tweet. It is clear.

Taking this point alone, the statement does not stand up and if we were to use the same logic, it could be said that Christian men were raping Muslim women in Bosnia in line with the teaching of the Christian church. Not only would such a statement by inflammatory, it would also be wrong. Whilst it could be strongly argued that the Church in Serbia sanctioned the brutal war against Croatia and Bosnia and in some instances, specific churches and priests sanctioned the use of brutal violence and sexual violence against Muslims in Bosnia, suggesting that Christianity drove such a lust for rape against Muslim women in Bosnia would be incendiary and deeply inflammatory. Yet, you can see the support for such rhetoric that is out there on social media which is deeply troubling and worrying.

Hopkins also plays to the ‘impulsive’, ‘uncontrollable’, and ‘sexually predatory’ tropes that were associated with the Black man who was enslaved in plantations and which has been a constant in the framing of men from non-white communities. Native Americans were also framed in this way, Jews were framed in this way in Germany in the 1930’s and young African Caribbean men were and continue to be framed in this way since they arrived in our country in the 1950’s.

So there is nothing different here, yet it must also be acknowledged that the activities in Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford need to be looked at in light of the perpetrators and we must stand front and centre with the victims who suffered the most brutal abuse and worst still, being denied justice for so many years. It is telling that Hopkins chooses not to stand on this point but to punch buttons around all Muslims being potential rapists.

Muslim men raping white women is consistent with the teaching of Islam. Revoke their citizenship and deport the bastards. Asian my arse.

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) February 26, 2016

We would also like to add that we will be writing to the Metropolitan Police Service today on this material. This is not a one-off and there are a series of tweets that have been made before that are deeply troubling. Furthermore, we will be writing to Twitter to take action in relation to accounts that promote such wide sweeping bigoted statements and which are more about playing to an audience, than remembering about the victims of such abuse who deserve our support.

The post Katie Hopkins Suggests that Islam Teaches Muslim Men to Rape White Women appeared first on TELL MAMA.