For several years, Albanians faced continuous occupation and violation of the rights to work, freedom of language, gathering, music, and moving. However, this became worse under the oppressive policies of Milošević’s regime. In 1998, the situation went from bad to worse. The Serbian police and armed forces started massacring civilians, raping women, burning villages, and perpetrating other crimes in Kosovo. […]

What expulsion of Croatian citizens? In Vojvodina? Not a chance. This year on May 6 it will be 29 years since the speech given in Hrtkovci by Vojislav Šešelj, the president of the Serbian Radical Party. Almost three decades since adding fuel to the flames which were already engulfing the houses of our neighbors. The results of those actions of […]

"The concentration camp is imaginable only and exclusively as literature, never as reality. (Not even–or rather, least of all–when we have directly experienced it.)" Imre Kertész Photo: Vesna Lalić Certain policies have not been defeated, not even after the collapse of their primary ideologues and leaders, as it was in the case of Slobodan Milošević’s fall in Serbia. Those policies […]

There is no doubt that the one who exaggerates with Serbian national identity has a problem with their own identity, with who they are – wars are caused by those who are at war with themselves.  (Živojin Bata Kara-Pešić, Vreme, August 5 1991)   The war in Croatia was the first of the Yugoslav wars for territories. The forces under […]

The audience frequently has conflicting opinions about regional films with a war-related topic. On the one hand, such topics reopen old wounds and do not allow persons to go on, and on the other hand, there is a need to preserve the remembrance of victims without an attempt to equate war crimes. It is specifically the second approach that should […]

On 8 March 1990, several hundred women, including members of the Women’s Association of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) – the political party that led the peaceful resistance against the Serbian oppression in the ‘90s – gathered at the Youth Center “Boro and Ramiz” in Prishtina (nowadays, Youth Palace). The Women’s Association of LDF notified publicly its disassociation from […]

When we started working on an initiative for the adoption of a legal regulation to ban denial, minimizing, justifying or condoning genocide, holocaust, crimes against humanity or war crimes two years ago, we put the following questions in our work paper: the context (do we need it and why), possibilities (what are the obstacles, what are the advantages), legal text models […]

The director Jasmila Žbanić, regarding the film “Quo vadis, Aida?” about the genocide in Srebrenica, about the film premier in Srebrenica, the relationship towards it, as well as the events it depicts in Republic Srpska, Oscar candidacy as an opportunity for more people to see the film. Photo: Aleksandar Roknić Translation: Luna Đorđević Right after the war they denied that […]

Thoughts of an old peace activist A conversation about what happened, I mean. About ”what you did to us”. If we have to, we can also have a more difficult conversation, ”about what we did to you”. ”How did it all start? Why? But actually, a deeper question: Why?” A few questions, and I immediately perceive the silence, uneasiness, nervousness. […]

Photo: Vreme There are many reasons to be deeply dissatisfied and sharply critical of the extent of the twenty-five year long implementation of the Dayton Agreement. A quarter of the century later, it is still not certain that its central provision, and one of the two main reasons for its existence, will ever be achieved – the irrevocable “sovereignty and […]

When I saw the German film ”Goodbye Lenin” for the first time, the thought that there was a similarity between the plot of this prize-winning film and the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not even cross my mind. I understand now that I did not think about things that I was experiencing back then, which are present in this […]

Walk the busy streets of Skopje, North Macedonia’s capital, and amidst the loud two-way car traffic there lies just off the city’s main plaza a large factory complex a visitor could quickly pass by without much thought. TKS Imperial Tobacco stands at the site of the former Monopol tobacco factory, a landmark in pre-war Skopje sitting adjacent to the railway […]