Sarajevans mark anniversary with thoughts of Ukraine
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA >> Sarajevo was paying a subdued tribute this week to the resilience of its citizens who survived the longest military siege in modern history, and commemorating thousands of others who did not.
Many of the survivors said they found the 30th anniversary of the start of the siege of the Bosnian capital particularly hard because they were marking it against the backdrop of what they described as similar suffering being inflicted on civilians in Ukraine by Russia's occupying army.
Bosnian Serb forces, armed and backed by neighboring Serbia, laid siege to Sarajevo on April 6, 1992, during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. For the next 46 months, about 350,000 residents remained trapped in their multiethnic city, subjected to daily shelling and sniper attacks and cut off from regular access to electricity, food, water, medicine and the outside world. They survived on limited humanitarian supplies provided by the United Nations, drank from wells and foraged for food.
“The world used to watch us suffer and now we just watch (Ukrainians) suffer and there is nothing we can do to help them,” said Arijana Djidelija, a 52-year-old primary school teacher. “It is a very strange and difficult feeling,” she added.
Similar acts of defiance are being honored this week in numerous exhibitions, art installations, concerts and performances in Sarajevo. At the start of the week, a large piece of white cloth was suspended by local artists between the residential buildings flanking one of the busiest street crossings in downtown Sarajevo. A similar cloth stood there and in other urban intersections during the siege to hide terrified Sarajevans from Serb snipers and gunners deployed around their city. This week, the fabric is being used to project wartime photographs of Sarajevo civilians running for cover from or falling victims to Serb snipers.
More than 11,000 people, including over 1,000 children, were killed by snipers and mortars as they went about their daily lives in Sarajevo during the siege. Countless others were wounded.