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This year the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) will be a strategic partner of the Srebrenica Memorial Center in order to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide.
This year the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) will be a strategic partner of the Srebrenica Memorial Center in order to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide.
The centre will screen three documentaries, hold a summer school, run sample classes and open a memorial room based on a long running project, entitled ‘The Lives Behind the Fields of Death’, alongside other activities.
BIRN BiH has cooperated with the Srebrenica Memorial Center previously. The largest project has been “The Lives behind the Fields of Death”, which began in October 2020, when 100 testimonies of surviving genocide witnesses were filmed. They are now part of a permanent exhibition alongside items the survivors donated for preservation in the memorial room set up in the Memorial Center in February 2022. Following a series of positive reactions, the project continued by filming another 100 oral histories.
Earlier this month the Memorial Center and BIRN BiH opened an exhibition titled “From Words to Violence: The Lives Behind the Felds of Death” at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to mark the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. The exhibition consists of 12 displays from the material previously recorded by BIRN BiH and the Memorial Center, alongside around 200 more testimonies during an oral history project.
The memorial room previously placed in the administrative building will be relocated to a separate exhibition space in a former battery factory, where visitors will have the opportunity to listen to 100 short interviews with genocide survivors, in addition to visiting a small cinema space and see artifacts donated or found in mass graves.
The space will be multimedia-equipped, and BIRN BiH’s documentary “Samir Mehic Bowie – Letters from Srebrenica” will also be exhibited there.
The film follows written conversations between members of a rock’n’roll band from Srebrenica, whom the war separated in the spring of 1992. Drummer Faruk left Srebrenica, while guitarist Samir stayed in the town. Through their letters, they dreamt of reuniting until July 1995. As part of the 30th anniversary, the documentary was screened in Zagreb, Tuzla, Mostar, and Visoko.
“Visitors to the memorial room in Potocari contact us every day with positive experiences, and we are really proud and satisfied that this exhibition will become a permanent exhibition at the Memorial Center. But also that we have managed to tell the stories of survivors in a way that we have managed to preserve their voices,” Dzidic said.
Emir Suljagic, director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, pointed out the importance of this collaboration, especially given the sensitivity and complexity of reporting on genocide.
“This year, on the 30th anniversary, our message is that the story of Srebrenica will be told by survivors from Srebrenica. This is our story. That is why it is important for us to have partners who are proven friends, and who have the respect and trust of our community, and these are certainly the journalists and editors of BIRN BiH, who have a proven sensibility for such topics,” Suljagic said.
BIRN BiH’s documentary “Pravda i правда” [Justice and Truth] which deals with peace and transitional justice, as well as experiences of Bosnia and Herzegovina and war-torn Ukraine, will be screened at the SrebrenicaDocs Festival on June 25.
The third film by BIRN BiH to be screened in Srebrenica and Sarajevo is an animated documentary titled “Fahrudin”. The story of Fahrudin Muminovic, a boy who survived a massacre in Orahovac, is one of the most devastating testimonies of the brutality of the genocide and the power of human survival. Fahrudin was only seven when he and his father were taken to be shot together with other men and boys from their community. His father did not survive, while Fahrudin, who was hit with bullets and covered with bodies of the dead, stayed alive.
The films “Fahrudin” and “Samir Mehic Bowie – Letters from Srebrenica” will be screened for participants in the Memorial Center’s summer school in Srebrenica.
As a contribution by BIRN BiH to the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the genocide, sample classes on the Srebrenica genocide were held in Tuzla and Srebrenica using materials available in the Database of Judicially Established Facts about the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Detektor will report on these and other activities of the Memorial Center, and during the commemoration in Potocari on July 11.
