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"To be Besieged" - personal reflections by Suada Kapic |
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"Sarajevo the City of the Future" |
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"...Looking at Life and Wondering..." - FAMA Life Magazine |
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"How to Survive, but also how to die in the city?" - Survival Guide review by Bora Cosic |
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"Sarajevo's Art and Philosophy of Survival" - Baby Universe Festival |
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Slobodan Milosevic (Serbia) |
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"Sarajevo the City of the Future" |
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| If
you play with lines on the map of Europe, you will have to find Sarajevo.
It is revealed where lines cross over the Balkans. First you draw
a line from Paris, through Venice and then to Istanbul, the closest
East that Europe knew for centuries. A second line starts in Northern
Europe, goes between Berlin and Warsaw, through the Mediterranean,
and then to Africa. These lines meet over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And, in fact, they cross over Sarajevo. Here wars were started and
here they went on, while people loved and longed for love. Here merchants
were selling goods from all over the world and life was close and
distant to ways of the East and the West. It was Western for the East,
and Oriental for the West. It was the life of Sarajevo. On April 5, 1992 Sarajevo, the capital of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was attacked The city which lies in the valley of the Miljacka river is surrounded by the Olympic mountains on which there were placed 260 tanks, 120 mortars and many weapons of smaller caliber. The Yugoslav National Army aided by the local terrorists encircled the city and started to tighten the circle around 500,000 citizens. On May 2, 1992 the city was completely blockaded. A part of the city was occupied and the part which could not be conquered was exposed to a barrage of shelling and artillery fire. Every day the city was hit by some 4,000 shells and among the targets there were hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, synagogues, maternity hospitals, libraries, museums, and the places where the citizens stood in lines for bread and water. The aggressor destroyed the Post Office and the city was left without telephones, its water, gas and electricity supply was cut. The food supply was fast disappearing. The cemeteries were expanding. But despite all the images of terror, some 300,000 people remained in the city and continued to survive, live and work under impossible circumstances. All of them were sentenced to death, the reason for their punishment forgotten, the hour and the day of their execution unknown. The world was watching daily reports from a city living under the siege thanks to the global television network. After years of terror, Sarajevo became a state of reality, and the people living in it unreal to the outside world. Running from snipers, from mortars, for their lives. Living under siege and enduring the most sophisticated types of terror for four long years has brought out a totally new and positive human experience from the depths of Hell. Sarajevo represents hope for the world, but the world is no hope for Sarajevo. As it proves that a person can survive a cataclysm and still remain a human being. On February 26, 1996 by opening the Northwest Passage, i.e. by liberating the Vogosca and Ilijas districts, Sarajevo was proclaimed an open city. After the Dayton Agreement and the coming of the IFOR, the aggressor started to leave the occupied territory around the city. They plundered, burnt and destroyed everything. On March 19, 1996 the aggressor left the occupied district of the city - Grbavica - which was the last part of the city to be returned to the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Agreement. 10,615 persons, out of whom 1,601 children, were killed in Sarajevo. More than 50,000 persons were wounded, a great number of whom remain invalids. The siege of the city lasted from May 2, 1992 to February 26, 1996 or 1,395 days, which is the longest siege in the modern history of mankind. Back to Top |
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