June 6th

I had the opportunity today to be a part of   the United World College (UWC) summer school/conference. There I met international students   from all across the globe. We had a lecture on the introduction to peace studies and theories with a dynamic discussion of conflict cases in small groups. The discussion heated up quickly when we began talking about the different ethnic groups in BiH. We had a Bosniak Muslim, Orthodox Serb, and Catholic Croat in the room voicing different opinions about discrimination, territories of different ethnicities and the root cause behind the ethnic divisions after the war. It was so exciting to be directly at the forefront of the divisions that are still occurring here. I was informed that here in Mostar, Muslims and Croats go to the same school but have separate classes. They share the same building but have completely different curriculums. One of the major discussions we had was about the differences in history facts each ethnic group learns according to their specific ethnic group. The Serbian student explained that it wasn’t that they necessarily changed the truth

 of historical facts to make Serbs look better for instance, it was that they omitted some facts to make Serbs look more favorable in Serbian text books. This seemed to be the case with the other ethnic groups as well. This is one of the reasons why NDC’s work with integrating school systems is so important! The different ethnic groups here are not learning the same history—they are learning history that caters to their ethnic group. By being in separate curriculums, they are deepening the divide between them.

The Bosniak Muslim also mentioned how his parents provide a major influence on how he feels toward the different ethnic groups. He said that if his parents told him all his life to hate someone, he probably would. He also said that many of his friends are like that which again, creates major divisions between these people. The Muslim boy even said that on Friday nights he never goes to the Croat side of town for fear of his life. He says that some people may recognize him as a Muslim or recognize him from a group that was Muslim affiliated. The Coat girl also chimed in by saying that two years ago she started hanging out with a few Muslim friends, but once her Croat friends found out; they stopped hanging out with her and haven’t talked to her for the past two years. As you can see, divisions between ethnic groups are still deep because of institutionalism and cultural prejudice.

            In the afternoon we all got back together for another lecture on the history of the former Yugoslavia. The presenter started in the middle ages and went up to the war in 1992. He was trying to make a point that by looking back at history, one can see the root causes for the ethnic divisions in the former Yugoslavia. I am not going to go in depth on this because it was a very dense two hour lecture. However, I would suggest reading The Bridge Betrayed: Religious Genocide in Bosnia by Michael A. Sells if you would like to know more about this subject.

We then watched a BBC documentary that was called “The Death of Yugoslavia.” This documentary came out in 1996, just after the war so everything was still very fresh and the political leaders that were interviewed were very open about what they had done because they still thought that they were right. If the documentary were to have come out now, it is very unlikely that w could get that kind of information out of the political leaders about the war.