Report from Bosnia: I went with two friends last week to Bosnia (3 days in Sarajevo and 2 days in Tuzla) to try to understand the situation there. Here is some of the information we gathered. This is far from being a proper analysis, as we need more time to try to make sense of these facts. We’ll keep following what is happening and will write more when we find more information. Protests in Sarajevo: They take place every day since the government building of Sarajevo’s canton was burned. People meet at 1pm in a place they call ?the square? but which is in fact the intersection between two streets in front of the burned building. The protest looks small at first, but people come and go from 1pm to around 9pm every day so it means that a lot more people in total are coming to protest. It should be said that the rest of the city functions (so to speak) as usual, and this is true of Tuzla as well. There is little police around the building, we heard that those remaining in power are very afraid of what is going on and are trying not to provoke the demonstrators by massive police presence. Those protests started in solidarity with the events in Tuzla, but quickly the protesters in Sarajevo started having their own demands and assembly. They burned the government building of Sarajevo’s canton on Friday the 7th. According to some of the participants, the people taking part in the riot were very diverse, many young people but also many pensioners, men and women alike, and apparently the big majority was not political before or involved in any organization. One young woman we met was very proud of having been part of the riots and insisted she was not the only one, and that older women joined as well. In Sarajevo it seems that young people and retired people are the most present in the movement, or let’s say those with the most anger. We met many old people who told us it was great that the government building burned, and that a lot more should be burned. Young people named massive unemployment as a cause of protest; pensioners complained that they were still receiving the same pensions than years ago even if the prices had gone up dramatically and they couldn’t possibly survive on that money. Protests in Tuzla We were only two days in Tuzla and have less understanding of the situation there. We met some workers of the Dita factory, one of those which got bankrupt after its privatization. They said that they have already been struggling for more than a year to get their wages, health insurance etc? that they tried many different ways to struggle (including a hunger strike) but that nobody cared. But when they went to the streets on the 5th of February and got attacked by the police, that provoked immediately a massive movement of solidarity by younger people and unemployed, who took to the streets and stormed and burned the government building of canton Tuzla. The workers of Dita we met said that they were very happy that that building burned and people protested in the streets, and that they were proud that their struggle had initiated such actions. They said that they were not organized in any union as the official union abandoned them 10 years ago. Tuzla’s assembly The ?assemblies of the citizens of Tuzla? are pretty big (more than 500 people as we were there) and apparently it is the first time such assemblies took place, at least in the last 20 years. Most of the participants were over 30 years old, all sorts of people, not really the kind of typical ?Occupy? crowd. Still, workers of the Dita factory told us that it was younger people who had the idea of meeting in assemblies, so maybe there were a few younger people (maybe students) who had somehow heard about the whole Occupy/Assemblea thing abroad. In any case there was apparently never any mention of these examples. We went to one assembly and it was very well organized, those who put their hands up got the chance to speak, the decisions were written in a document that was projected on a white board. It looks that there was a massive need for something that looks transparent, that contrasts with the corruption of everyday politics. The content of what was discussed was very far from being revolutionary, people said they wanted a government of experts, ?the continuity of institutions? (not yet quite sure what that means) etc? Problems of form were central to the discussion: that the delegates of the assembly were not to be part of any political party, that they were not to be paid? People insisted as well that there should be women among the delegates (at first only men were proposed). Of course these are only formal things but they seemed very important to people. Critique of nationalism This is a point that was constantly raised and one of the main point that was making people euphoric: nationalism (which means there: the division of Bosnia into ethnic groups) has been the major axis around which any social relation, political and social demand etc? was supposed to be articulated and understood. And all of a sudden, anti-nationalism turns to be the cement of the protests, the common value that makes very different people come together. Anti-nationalism means there something very different than what we would mean by it. It is in no way a form of internationalism. In fact, most of the people we met did not have a clue of what is going on outside ex-Yugoslavia, and never heard of Occupy or the Arab Spring (which does not mean at all that it is impossible to make parallels between these movements and what is happening in Bosnia.) Sometimes anti-nationalism was combined with a call for a real Bosnia, which seems to be less of a nationalism per se (there is not really a Bosnian-Herzegovina identity) than a call for a functioning state (possibly understood as a functioning welfare state): because of the division of the country in three parts, with three governments and three presidents, the administration and the institutions are a big mess, so people don’t get their benefits, laws that are voted don’t go through, etc. We met many people who were pissed off by that and said they just wanted a ?proper functioning state?. Obviously many old people were nostalgic of Yugoslavia, but I don’t think it was much present among young people, and this was normally more expressed implicitly than explicitly. It is still not completely clear to us what is happening in the Serbian part of Bosnia (Republika Srpska). The president of that part is claiming that the protests are only an ?ethnically? Bosnian phenomena and that Serbs should not join the protest. But there is at least a small minority that is trying to join the protest and is getting into trouble for it. We heard that there were curfews in some of these parts to prevent people to join the protests but we still do not know if that is true. It should be said that this part is generally poorer that the Bosnian part. Demands Formal demands were far from being revolutionary: a government of experts, a proper functioning of the state etc? Still it is worth questioning if the participants really believe that such a government could actually exist, and if they do think so, it is very likely that they will be disappointed soon. And, from the level of anger we could see, it seems highly probable that what we are witnessing is only the first round in a series of protests. Solidary protests in other ex-Yugoslavia countries There were protests in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and last Saturday there were riots in Montenegro. ------------ To be continued?
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