We should never forget human cost of hatred
LATER this week, I’m leading a delegation of a dozen Scots to Sarajevo to study the effects of the genocide that took the lives of 8000 men back in 1992.
It’s a trip sponsored by the charity Remembering Srebrenica Scotland but what we are really remembering is the huge human cost of hate and intolerance.
Men who had for decades lived peacefully side by side with each other, sometimes in the same house, turned on each other in the name of religion and race.
The Serbian army sought to cleanse Sarajevo of Bosniaks – Bosnian Muslims – and rained bullets and shells into Sarajevo from the valleys above.
This trip will take a dozen leading Scottish women to witness not just the bullet holes and mortar shells that have left their mark on the country’s capital, but the scars on the souls of the women who were left behind to pick up the pieces.
Women who, to this day, strive for peace and justice.
Munira Subasic, from Mothers of Srebrenica, a women’s organisation who we’ll meet, told me a story once about the choices they’ve made to find peace in their hearts.
They can choose to leave plates out for their brothers and husbands to remind their children that the Serbs took their lives, or they can strive to build a Bosnia where their grandchildren have Serbian friends.
It’s the latter they choose. It’s the only path to peace, and the wisdom it demonstrates never fails to inspire me.