Fighting for the Future

A blue and yellow transparent proclaiming “Europe is calling us”hangs in front of the sports hall in Bratunac, behind which lies the entrance to the offices of the youth organisation Odyssey.

Members of Odyssey welcomed us into a relaxed atmosphere in this town nestled in the eastern Republika Srpska. Every day they are devoted to planning new projects intended for youth in Bratunac.

Although war crimes are a topic often avoided by young Bosnians, this is the focus of interest for members of Odyssey. Their willingness to talk about the crimes committed between 1992 and 1995 – when some members were only children – is surprising, as is the manner in which they deal with the heavy burden of the past.

However, their work is not appreciated by everyone. The group members have been victims of attacks in the past, and they regularly face a lack of understanding.

Odyssey was founded in September 2001 in an attempt to improve the financial and social position of young people in Bratunac and surrounding towns,as well as to offer informal education.

“We founded Odyssey because we believed that to be the only solution.At the time we were unemployed and wandered around the town without an idea what to do with our lives,” said Odyssey president Cedomir Glavas.

Cedomir told Justice Report that, at the beginning, the idea of forming a youth organisation in Bratunac was not accepted by the community.

“That year there was a general opinion that we should keep clear of ‘bad business’ and not put ourselves among ‘traitors’,” he said.

Still, they did not give up and have been active for six years now – but not without difficulties.

The organisation has 120 members today, “older than 14, of different genders, religions and nationalities”, mostly from Bratunac and Srebrenica, two towns in which the traces of war are still visible.
These include physical signs – abandoned buildings, recently opened mass graves, numerous monuments to those killed during the war – as well as the psychological wounds carried deeply inside many locals.

Odyssey member Vladimir Gataric believes that this organisation “is the only place where everyone can find themselves without being discriminated against”.

And the organisation has come far in its six years of existence.Among other things, independently and in cooperation with other nongovernmental organizations, it has organised numerous seminars dealing with problems of youth in Bratunac and other towns through out Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The three workshops they ran during 2006 were committed to the issue and importance of dealing with the past, as well as war crimes that were committed on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The selection of the topic created even bigger problems for them in the local community.

“As soon as they heard our topics, the community rejected us. However, we did not pay attention to objections and threats. We organised our workshops as planned. There were tears, emotions, all kinds of things.It was really hard,” said Cedomir.

One of the founders of Odyssey, Marko Glavas, tells us that attendance at the workshops was very good, regardless of the threats.

“Young people who come from locations where the war was most terrible and where tensions and burden can still be felt want to deal with that past,” Marko told Justice Report.

However, this desire to air issues relating to the war has brought Odyssey into conflict with the authorities as well as the community.
In April 2006, the decision to distribute flyers featuring photographs taken by Ron Haviv at the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina – showing civilians being abused by Serb soldiers and paramilitaries – led to the arrest of four young people by the Bratunac police.

They spent the night in the police station where they were beaten.

“They kicked us and beat us with their fists and nightsticks at the police station,” Marko, who was injured, tells us.

He also adds that all four of them had to testify at the police station in Bratunac, at which time they were insulted and abused again.

“When they brought me in to give a statement, they immediately started slapping and threatening me. The policemen said to me ‘we’ve been waiting for you, Glavas, for a long time and now you will pay for everything’, and that we from Odyssey gave ourselves too much freedom,” Marko remembers.

All four were released one day after the arrest, but did not dare visit a doctor, even though all were badly beaten.

“We didn’t see a doctor because I had a similar experience before when at the hospital they simply rejected me under the excuse that more than six hours had passed since the injury was inflicted and that they were not authorised to give a record of injury,” Marko explained.

However,the Odyssey ans did not give up and they used media to try and prove that they were victims. They tell us that an investigation was conducted because of the headlines in the media, but it was not completed in their favour. Investigators concluded that “there was not enough evidence and the perpetrator was not identified”.

Vladimir sees the reasons for threats and physical attacks by policemen and locals from Bratunac in the fact that most are “afraid of something”because they participated in the crimes committed during the war.

“I believe that 90 percent of policemen here took part in the crimes committed during the war. But they are not the only ones for whom we are a problem. Some citizens who call themselves patriots often abuse,humiliate and physically attack us every opportunity they get,” Vladimir told Justice Report.

Cedomir claims that there are still people in Bratunac who believe that Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are “absolute heroes” and that only Serbs are indicted for war crimes.

“I think that Mladic and Karadzic represent absolute heroes for many, but they are not that important any more. Their time is passing but we should not let them be forgotten,” Cedomir told Justice Report.

Never the less, members of Odyssey say that threats will not stop them from continuing to talk about dealing with the past, primarily for those who are even younger and who “know a small number of things first hand” about the war.

“Most young people heard stories about the war from their loved ones and relatives who, unfortunately, had to be participants in the war, but that does not mean that we can not work on dealing with the past,” Marko emphasis es.

Miljan Vujevic, who has been an activist since the founding of Odyssey, is of a similar opinion and believes that facing the past is necessary to establish and satisfy justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Many things have to come out in the open and be measured by the hand of justice in order to heal the wounds, and facing the past is only the initial step. We still have to dig inside the minds of those who live by ideologies of ethnically clean countries,” Miljan concluded.

Until 1996 all members of Odyssey who spoke to Justice Report lived in either Sarajevo or Zenica, and after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords they moved with their families to Bratunac.

Cedomir, Marko, Miljan and Vladomir also tell us that they do not intend to return to towns where they grew up “not because of the past or fear, but because life is not about buildings, it’s about people”.

You can learn more about Odyssey at http://ooodisej.org.ba/index.htm

Aida Alic is BIRN – Justice Report journalist. [email protected]