Sarajevo My Love

The Story Of Jovan Divjak, An Ethnic Serb Who Defended Sarajevo Against Serb Forces During The Bosnian War.

Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

In Bosnia he is a hero and humanitarian who, since the war, has worked to improve the lives of citizens - Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs alike. But his native Serbia accuses him of being a war criminal and has sought his extradition.

As a young conscript, Divjak served in the elite guard of Yugoslavia’s first president, the country’s founding father Josip Broz Tito.

Under Tito’s rule, Yugoslavia’s ethnic divisions were kept in check and Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Slovenians came together to establish the Republic of Yugoslavia on November 25, 1942. 

But war changed all that and nationalist parties rose to power and fought each other for dominance.

Amidst the conflicts of the 1990s Radovan Karadzic’s propaganda was that co-existence with Bosnian Muslims was impossible.

For Divjak, a Serb who had made Sarajevo his home, there was a hard choice to be made.

On May 3, 1992, Divjak played a role in one of the war’s most bitterly contested incidents, a role which was to stain his reputation.

Serbian forces had taken the Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian president, hostage in a bid to secure the release of a Serbian general. But the exchange went awry and Divjak, a deputy commander who has been handling the operation, was accused of betraying his cause. 

Years later after a forced exit from the army and an end to war, Divjak found solace in helping the children who were scarred by the atrocities of war through his NGO, the 'Education Builds Bosnia’. But this newfound peace was interrupted one day in March 2011 by his sudden arrest in Vienna airport, and request for his extradition to Serbia.

Two decades later, Serbian authorities still held him responsible for the deaths of their soldiers in the bungled hostage exchange but a surprise campaign by locals Serbs who championed his release vindicated him and he was released without charge.

The siege claimed the lives of over 10,000 people, mostly Bosnians, and is often considered the worst act of genocide in Europe since World War II.

Divjak’s NGO work with children victimised by the war is motivated by his belief in a multi-ethnic Bosnia and his own childhood loss of a father figure. And for many in Sarajevo, this has shown that Divjak not only fought to protect them in times past, but is also helping rebuild their future.

The solider who became a husband, a father and then grandfather reminices about the legacy the conflict has left and his part in it: "I never hated the ‘other’. I have created a link and a love bond with the ‘other’. At my age, I try to understand the harm that has been done."

Sarajevo My Love, a film by Eylem Kaftan, profiles the retired Bosnian army general and offers a poignant insight into the painful healing process under way in Bosnia today.

Is Another Conflict Looming In The Balkans?

When in the 1990s Bosnian Serbs and Croats took up arms against Muslims to prevent Bosnia breaking away from Yugoslavia, the international community hesitated as tens of thousands of civilians were killed. Eventually the US stepped in; Washington sent troops and got the parties to sign a peace agreement in Dayton Ohio at the end of 1995.

The deal created one country with two entities. Muslims and Croats formed the Federation; Bosnian Serbs formed Republika Srpska or RS. But the deal balanced power so carefully any community can block the will of everyone else.

So to break the deadlock which was sure to come, the international community also created a 'High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina' in 1995. He was given ultimate authority and the so-called 'Bonn' powers to impose decisions to keep the state running. That regularly upsets Bosnian Serb leaders who never wanted to share a state with Muslims in the first place.

Milorad Dodik, the RS leader, now talks about breaking away and has made moves which are worrying Valentin Inzko, the High Representative.

Dodik says the current government structure is not working, and in October, he asked the RS parliament to discuss the abolition of Bosnia's army. The same parliament earlier tried to assume state powers by giving RS authorities the right to take over property of the former Yugoslavia. In November, Inzko wrote to the UN Secretary General warning that Dodik is trying to unravel the country. A move he says would lead to conflict.

So, is Dodik a threat to Bosnia? Is Inzko bullying Bosnian Serbs? And is the region heading back to war? On Talk to Al Jazeera we will talk to several leaders in the region; today: Milorad Dodik and Valentin Inzko.

Dodik says: "If Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to ignore the status of Republika Srpska and keep creating further problems we will opt for the referendum. A peace where we would coexist, some sort of internal agreement without the interference of foreigners, this is of course my preferred path. But if that path is not possible, I don't want Republika Srpska to be trapped in a non-viable version of Bosnia, to be collateral damage incapable of setting up a sort of normal way of life in an experiment conducted by foreigners."

The House Fata Didn't Build

Fata Orlovic is a 70-year-old Bosnian widow. Hers is one of the most intriguing and dramatic war stories of modern times.

Fata's suffering reflects the plight of many Bosnian war refugees still fighting for justice.

Her hometown of Konjevic Polje was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces. Her family was separated and decimated in the fighting.

When she returned in 1999, her house had been occupied by an Orthodox priest and a church had been built on her front lawn.

Though the priest has left, the church remains.

She has been fighting to have the church removed ever since. She even won a court ruling agreeing that the church should be removed.

Fata's continued fight to get her land back has even seen her accused of disturbing the religious harmony of the area. She has been beaten and stabbed, and is constantly threatened.

Yet she fights on, determined to get justice or die trying.

Through her story, Al Jazeera presenter Sami Zeidan exposes the ongoing tensions in the aftermath of the Bosnian war.

Srebrenica: A Town Still Divided

A Srebrenica man weeps among hundreds of coffins in Potocari 2011.


Mina Subasic slowly walks with a cane into the missing persons' identification centre in Tuzla, northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the table in front of her is a handful of bones. Her face frozen with pain, Subasic listens to a forensic expert who explains why it would be good if the remains of her 20-year-old son, Mesud, were buried on July 11, along with those of 519 other victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide - a massacre described by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

"I came once more to see him, so I, too, can cross over to the other side. If I could, I would lie down next to these bones right now and never wake up," Subasic says. Mesud's remains were located in two mass graves in the Srebrenica area. The remains of his 18-year-old brother Nermin were buried two years ago.

Wednesday marks the 17th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide in which Serb forces reportedly under the command of General Ratko Mladic killed more than 8,000 people, mainly Bosniak Muslim men and boys. While the figure on the headstone at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Centre is 8,372, the number of missing persons, experts say, may never be discovered. At midday, an estimated 30,000 people will gather at the centre for the burial of the remains of 520 victims. Among them will be those of six 15-year-old boys, and the oldest genocide victim, a 94-year-old woman. Two Srebrenica families will pay their final respects to three brothers each lost from their homes.


Forensic Pathologist Rifat Kesetovic examines the skulls of Srebrenica genocide victims at the Tuzla Hospital in 1997.


Road To Justice

In Apil 1993, the United Nations declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica, in north-eastern Bosnia, populated by 36,000 people (27,000 Bosniaks and 8,000 Serbs) a UN "safe area". In July 1995, a 400-member contingent of Dutch peacekeepers from the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) failed to prevent the capture of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces, assisted by irregular fighter units from Serbia, nor the subsequent mass atrocity.

In a unanimous ruling in 2004, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, ruled that the Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide. Three years later, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concurred with this judgment.


The funeral of Srebrenica man Rudolf Hren in 2010, one of four Catholic genocide victims and the only one to be buried among thousands of Muslim Srebrenica citizens


The then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was cleared of direct responsibility for, or complicity in, the massacre, but was found responsible for not doing enough to prevent it and not prosecuting those responsible.

The entire government of the Netherlands resigned in 2002, upon publication of an international report on Srebrenica, which blamed Dutch officials and Dutch soldiers for not preventing the mass killings. In 2005, Kofi Annan, the then-UN Secretary-General, noted that, while the blame lay first and foremost with the perpetrators, the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN. It has been documented that more than 25,000 people participated in the atrocities in Srebrenica in July 1995. So far, more than 30 people accused of war crimes have been sentenced at the ICTY and at Bosnian war crimes courts. General Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic are currently on trial in The Hague, accused of genocide and war crimes.




Srebrenica refugees on the way to Tuzla after the town was captured by Serb forces, July 1995.



Survivors' Tales

When the 520 coffins are laid to rest this afternoon, about 7,000 participants of the annual March of Peace will be present to lend a hand. The 120 kilometre (74 mile) walk marks, in reverse, the path which 10,000 citizens of Srebrenica passed in 1995 on their way to free territory. There are no definite figures on the number of those ambushed and killed by Serb forces during what was then known as the March of Death, but it is estimated that more than two thirds were slaughtered.

Al Jazeera reporter Almir Seckanovic, who has been live blogging from the three-day march, which ended Tuesday night, said only a few women survived the trek in 1995, through inhospitable mountainous terrain in the searing July heat.

"Among them was Fatima Dautbasic-Klempic, a Srebrenica doctor, who was 30 at the time," reported Seckanovic. "During this year's march, at Mt Udrc, she remembered constant grenade attacks, spies who tried to lead the marchers to ambushes, the crashing of booby-trapped trees.

"Today, she is married to Smajo Klempic, a fellow marcher whom she didn't know 17 years ago. He separated from the line at Kamenica Hills and roamed through the forest for 20 days before making it to safety."

After the war, 15 secondary mass grave sites were found in the village of Kamenica - containing the remains of bodies previously buried elsewhere, exhumed, then broken up and reburied. The site is now known as the Valley of Mass Graves.


Family members gather to pay final respects to a genocide victim ahead of a mass burial in 2011


"Marchers this week found several human bones in the valley and they have been handed over to authorities for identification," said Seckanovic. At Mt Udrc, which overlooks the valley, 65-year-old Muharem remembered how he made it to freedom in 1995 after a 10-day trek. "Here, at this turf, I found two potatoes. I had separated from the line and accidentally walked towards these meadows," said Muharem. "Do you know what those potatoes meant to me? Life. For days, I had been eating just fruits and leaves."

This year, one of the speakers at the commemoration will be Holocaust survivor and New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier, one of the leading world figures in the field of inter-religious dialogue.

Schneier, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, told Al Jazeera there was no greater evil than nationalism.

"If you want to bring about a reconciliation, there is no shortcut," Schneier said. "There has to be an admission, and also [a recognition that] the present generation is not responsible for the brutality of what happened in the past."

Many of the genocide survivors gathered at the memorial have participated in the Cinema for Peace (CFP) foundation's project in Bosnia and Herzegovina, entitled Genocide Film Library. Inspired by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, CFP aims to record 10,000 video testimonies of Srebrenica genocide survivors over five years. The online archive will be made available to relevant museums and universities worldwide.

"About 95 per cent of those we have contacted have wanted to tell their story," says project director Selma Hadzic. "Some people have found it too traumatic to participate and we fully understand and respect that. We always underscore that this is a volunteer project which exists in memory of those whose voices will never again be heard."


Every year in July 11, citizens of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo place flowers on trucks carrying hundreds of coffins to Srebrenica.


Ethnic Tensions

In Srebrenica, survivors' families have slammed plans for a concert which is to be held at the town's central Serb Orthodox church during the "Days of St Peter" festival, on the same day as the mass burial.

Hatidza Mehmedovic, president of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, who lost her husband and two sons, said that such provocation on July 11 were common in a town that remains deeply divided along ethnic lines.

"In previous years, there were songs celebrating Mladic and Karadzic," she said. "We don't expect anything good this year. After all that happened, letting such songs to be sung from year to year... the international community is to blame."

Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of two separately governed units, or entities, the Bosniak-Croat-dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS). There is also an overarching state government.

As Srebrenica is part of the RS, whose government does not recognise the genocide, July 11 is not considered a day of mourning as it is in the FBiH.

Srebrenica's primary and secondary schools follow the RS curriculum, which means Serb and Bosniak children, who make up roughly half each of the school's population, are taught that Srebrenica was "freed" in 1995. In a petition currently before the RS Education Department, Bosniak parents are requesting that a joint, more acceptable curriculum is developed for subjects such as language and history.

The ethnic divide is most pertinently felt in activities surrounding the local elections, to be held on October 7. The central fight in these elections is not over which candidate would bring economic prosperity to a war-ravaged town without a bakery, health centre other basic services - but whether they will be Bosniak or Serb.

During the 2008 local elections, a legal exception was made for thousands of displaced Srebrenica citizens to vote in Srebrenica, despite their address at the time of the elections.

Srebrenica's Bosniaks view the removal of this exception as the continuation of ethnic cleansing, says Bosniak candidate for mayor, Camil Durakovic, the current acting mayor and a survivor of the March of Death.

A citizens' group "I'll Vote for Srebrenica" was formed, aimed at lobbying as many displaced Srebrenica citizens as possible to register their residency in the town and vote there. Bosniaks claim they are allowed to work in only one of a handful of local factories, while Serbs say they would be threatened if a Bosniak were mayor.

Durakovic, an independent Bosniak candidate, is backed by 13 citizens groups and the four most influential political parties in the FBiH. His opponent, council head of commerce Vesna Kocevic, a Serb, has the backing of nine RS-based parties.

Durakovic says that he wants to make Srebrenica a multi-ethnic town with a more prosperous future, but one which must not forget genocide. He says Srebrenica's economic potential - its mines and wood industry - were first ravaged through a corrupt post-war privatisation process, while he says the RS government is now blocking council efforts to retain control of the area's vast natural resources. Durakovic estimates that, with better management, Srebrenica could join the ranks of the most developed local councils in Bosnia and Herzegovina within three years.

Kocevic did not respond to numerous Al Jazeera requests for an interview. During a recent press conference in Belgrade - where she lobbied for Srebrenica Serbs displaced in Serbia to register for the local elections - she said that, during 10 years of Bosniak rule, all the money had been channelled into Bosniak interests. She accused the Bosniak vote-registering campaign of being a ruse for the fictitious registrations of people who do not - and would never again - live in Srebrenica.



More than 16,000 shoes placed in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 2010 in memory of the 8,327 genocide victims. .


Via: "Al-Jazeera"

Women Who Refuse To Die

We Follow Four Survivors Of The 1995 Srebrenica Massacre As They Look To The Future Despite The Pain Of Their Past.



"When they took away my children in 1995, they also killed me - in the most brutal manner. This is not life .... I had my family and in just one day I'm left without them, without knowing why. And every morning I ask myself why, but there is no answer. My children were only guilty of having the names they had and their names were different from their killers. It was not only my children killed on July 11, 1995; thousands of other innocent children were murdered in the bloody genocide in Srebrenica .... I no longer have anything to lose; the criminals killed all I had, except for my pride."

Hatidza Mehmedovic

In July 1995, an estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys - sons, husbands and brothers - were dragged away never to be seen again.

The Srebrenica massacre marks a particularly inhumane and brutal act within the tragedy and bloodshed of the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian War.

My Home, Ripped Apart

A photo of the author examining bullet holes near the cemetery where his family is buried in Bosnia. (Credit: Eldin Trebincevic)

As I watch the Bosnian war crimes trial, I wish I could explain the horrors I saw as a boy, and how much we lost

BY KENAN TREBINCEVIC
SUNDAY, MAY 27, 2012 05:00 PM EDT
Courtesy Of "Salon Magazine"

My American friend James and I were watching soccer at a restaurant in Queens, but I couldn’t stop reading a story about Ratko Mladic’s trial at the Hague. There were two pictures with the story: One showed him smiling as he listened to his indictment at a pretrial hearing, and another of a mass grave he created.

“What’s that?” James asked.

I wanted to tell James how personal this was. It made me crazy to watch for 16 years as this monster responsible for killing what might be as many as 250,000 of my countrymen eluded authorities. “It’s the modern-day Nuremberg trial,” I said, wishing I could explain better.

I grew up in Bosnia, and fled to America in 1993, at the age of 13, after my family was exiled. A 31-year-old survivor of the war, I am one of the 5,000 Bosnians living in Astoria, Queens. Not long ago, I went back to visit my hometown for the first time since we fled. Vacation for other guys my age means partying, or hanging out with old friends. I spent two weeks visiting graveyards.

On the runway at JFK, I sat between my brother Eldin and my 72-year-old father, Senahid, nervous to return to the land after so many years.

“Which day are we going to the cemetery?” my father wanted to know.

“Which cemetery?” I asked as the plane took off.

The next morning in Brcko, the town of my birth, I climbed into the back seat of our rented car wearing a tank top, jeans and sneakers. My brother Eldin shook his head. “You’re not going like that, exposing your tattoo.” He gestured to the bright blue and yellow coat of arms of the historical Bosnian Flag on my arm. He did not want any trouble.

We were going to see the karate coach, Pero, who betrayed us. Our goal was not to pay respect. It was to see for ourselves that the bastard was dead.

But I’d waited 20 years for this; I would not back down so fast. “Let’s stop so I can get two bottles of water,” I said.

“Why?” my brother asked.  “So you can piss on Pero’s grave?”

Eldin knew me too well. As we parked, I felt his body temperature rise, along with his anxiety.

This was a Serb cemetery. We didn’t belong here. As I walked by the black marble markers and crosses amid the bitter scent of candle wax, I was conscious of sour looks and muttered profanities. How dare I walk over their sons’ graves with that ink on my left shoulder. In 1992, I would have been shot dead.

As I stood over Pero’s grave, I recalled how my brother and I were his favorites in the karate club.  He helped me become the youngest brown belt there.  One happy evening, my mother invited him over for stuffed peppers.

After the war broke out, Pero was put in charge of the city’s special-police unit. I was shocked when he arrived in front of our building in an army van to cleanse the building of non-Serbs like us. We were given an hour to leave, or be killed. My father and brother were thrown in a concentration camp while my mother and I stayed behind.

Pero turned my second home, the sports complex hall where he’d once coached me in karate, into a torture center where corpses of my neighbors were dismembered and stored, my father learned from fellow inmates. Five months later, I passed by Pero standing with a girl holding an AK-47. He pointed his finger at me and laughed. We later heard he was killed by one of his own, a Serb soldier, over a different girl.

“He’s gone, we’re alive and they still have to live next to us,“ my brother Eldin tried to console me at Pero’s grave. His time came before ours.  At least he had a funeral, unlike many of his innocent victims.

The second cemetery, for Bosnian Muslims, was located on the other side of the city. My Grandpa Suljo was buried there. The hatred and bitterness in the city spread to gravesites: Even the dead were split among ethnic groups. When the fighting began, the burial ground became the frontline, and the place was pummeled in order for Serb soldiers to have an unobstructed view. Horses and tractors ripped up and carried away the remaining headstones. Suljo’s tombstone was sliced in half. Reconstructed, it was glued back together at its base, just like we were.

I also found the grave of my great Uncle Sabit. He passed away a few months before our arrival. I had been hoping to go trout fishing, like we used to.

When the Serbs stormed his apartment, he hid behind a bookshelf. His sister, my Great Aunt Fatima, lay in the grave next to him. She sacrificed herself in 2003, jumping in front of a cab to save her granddaughter. Her husband, Smajl, mysteriously died in the hospital during the war. We never found out what really happened. In my final memory he was offering himself to the military police to distract them from finding Sabit and my father, who were hiding.

Last, we visited my Grandmother Emina, who passed away after holding services for the sixth month anniversary of my mother’s death. Heartbroken, it was a no-brainer that she’d go into cardiac arrest.

“Your tattoo looks amazing,” the undertaker said, waving as he walked away.

We belonged here.

We visited two more cemeteries. One contained 556 fighters from our side. Another was a burial ground for both Bosnian soldiers and civilians, a six-hour car ride away.

“Hey, you have to see this guy, he’s not one of us,” I yelled to my brother as I read the Serb name of a soldier buried there: Goran. He was a Serb who fought in the Bosnian Army against his own people; he fought for the good side, despite what he had been born into, and his family put him to rest among his Muslim neighbors. In my book, Goran deserved the most respect.  His ethnicity didn’t matter because he saw the war through the same eyes as everyone else who landed here.  If I’d died in my homeland, this would be the place I’d want to lay.

“You’ll never catch me dead flying over Bosnia,” my mother Adisa used to say after we’d escaped to the United States.

It had been four years since we’d been to see her in Enfield, Connecticut, where we’d promised to spread crushed marble stones on her grave.

“We have to visit mom,” my brother said.

“I know. But it’s too cold. Let’s wait until spring,” I told him.

“That’s what you said last time, “ Eldin said.

I blamed conditions of the war for the disease that killed her. The leading cause of death for Bosnian women who survived was breast cancer, with high malignancy and mortality rates. Ironically, my mom’s cemetery, just a few hours from where we lived in the United States, was the one grave I couldn’t bear to see.

I couldn’t explain all of this to James – the loss and the unbearable grief. Instead, I just remain glued to Ratko Mladic’s trial in a public viewing gallery in the courtroom, hoping that Ratko will be convicted before he dies in a country-style prison and is given a hero’s funeral, like Slobodan Milosevic.

As my family I wait for a semblance of justice to close the 20th century’s bitter chapter called Bosnia, forgiveness is not an option.  It’s hard not to feel that all the wrong people are dead.

Kenan Trebincevic’s work has appeared in the New York Times and on American Public Media radio. He is finishing a memoir about surviving the war called “The Bosnia List.”

MORE KENAN TREBINCEVIC.

Bosnians Mark 20 Years Since War Began

A father and daughter flee a grenade attack in Sarajevo. Civilians never knew where a projectile would hit, so they were never safe from being harmed.


War-Scarred Nation Set To Remember Thousands Of Victims Of Conflict Marked By Near-Four-Year Siege Of Sarajevo.

Last Modified: 06 Apr 2012 08:50
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina - On April 6, Sarajevo is marking 20 years since the beginning of the longest siege in modern history, during which Serb forces killed 11,541 of its citizens - more than 1,000 of them children - with grenades and snipers.

A concert entitled "Sarajevo Red Line" will be held in the memory of those killed during the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo. Its organisers want to send a message to the world, not to repeat such slaughter. 

"This project will serve as a warning to wholesale destruction, firstly the destruction of every person who happened to be under siege," said Sarajevo mayor Alija Behmen.

Nobody will sit on the 11,541 chairs placed in Sarajevo's centre. "The chairs being placed over 800 metres will remain empty on April 6, because the people killed during the siege are unable to attend the show. They were civilians and Sarajevo's defenders," said Haris Pasovic, project organiser and theatre director.

In 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina was populated by a mix of 43.4 per cent Muslims (known today as Bosniaks), 31.2 per cent Serbs, 17.3 per cent Croats, 5.5 per cent Yugoslavs and others accounting for 2.3 per cent. 

More than 60 per cent of its citizens voted in an independence referendum held in early 1992  with 98 per cent of them in favour. 

As soon as Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognised by the international community, fighters linked to power political interests who opposed independence  began atacking Muslims and Croats. The siege of the capital, Sarajevo, had begun.

It is estimated that during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 100,000 peple were killed. Dozens of women were raped and hundreds of thousands of people were forced out of their homes or fled before a peace accord was signed in 1995. 

When Death Comes Quietly

"A drop of my blood falls and Bosnia does not dry out," reads a sonnet engraved on the memorial plaque of Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic Bridge in the city centre, a testament to the first official victims of the Sarajevo siege, killed by Serb soldiers on April 5, 1992, during peaceful anti-war demonstrations.

Dilberovic, born in 1968 in Dubrovnik on Croatia's coast, was a fifth-year medical student. Sucic, born in 1958, was a parliamentary employee and a mother of two.

A day later, the Serb ring around Sarajevo was officially closed, pushing more than 300,000 people to lead a life without power, water, gas, food, or telephone service. New signs sprang up on Sarajevo's intersections: "Sniper, watch out!"

People pray outside the burnt Zetra Olympic complex, which became a makeshift cemetery during the war [Danilo Krstanovic]

Public transport stopped. Shops were transformed into collection points for humanitarian aid - the gift of the international community, completely unprepared to stop the bloodletting in the streets which the world came to know through foreign reporters. They wrote about the reserve field of the Koševo Stadium that had turned into a cemetery, massacres in schools and bread and water queues.

Death crept into Sarajevo slowly eventually becoming the city's master.

Children invented a new form of fun: A little while after explosions, they would run outside, wanting to be the first to grab the tails of 62, 80 or 120-milimetre grenades, which meant they would be the coolest kids on the block that day. Parents screamed after them in vain not to go out, fearing and despairing that they couldn’t provide them with security and a decent childhood.

'Unspeakable Horror'

During nearly four years of siege, an average of 329 grenades fell on Sarajevo each day. The daily record of 3,777 grenades was tallied on July 22, 1993.

Sarajevo building with mortar marks [Fehim Demir/EPA]

"It's almost unbelievable that despite the unspeakable horror, Sarajevo not only endures, but shows its spiritual superiority in comparison to the rest of Europe," said Pasovic in 1993 in conversation with journalist Nada Salom, now a contributor to Al Jazeera Balkans.

Two decades later, many Europeans will join Sarajevans in marking the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the siege. Among them are journalists who reported from wartime Sarajevo. The idea about foreign correspondents' reunion at their "base", the Holiday Inn hotel, started with a few email exchanges and a Facebook group.

It was started by Remy Ourdan - of French newspaper Le Monde - who was 22 when he began reporting on the siege of Sarajevo, a city he stayed in for four years and where he returns frequently.

Soon, dozens of journalists contacted him and the gathering of old colleagues grew into a public event with film screenings, conferences, workshops and exhibitions.

"I might have initiated it, but I didn't organise anything," said Ourdan, who came to Sarajevo weeks before the reunion. "That was the whole idea... because that is your memory, your war, your country."

Memories of wartime Sarajevo still haunt him, although he reported from nearly all the other subsequent wars, including Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The situation during the Sarajevo siege was very unusual. In warzones, the civilians usually run away, and that is their right. While the fighters stay alone, and we, as reporters, go after them. Here, everybody was stuck together - the fighters, the civilians and us reporters who'd decided to stay. It was a very special situation. In a way, it was our war together," recalled Ourdan.

The doctors who attended to more than 50,000 citizens wounded by grenades and bullets particularly remember the war.

"No other generation of surgeons in the painful wartime history remembers performing surgery in theatres, the walls of which are shaking from bombings during four long, cold and dark years," recalled Dr Ismet Gavrankapetanovic, head of Orthopaedics and Trauma at the Clinical Centre of the University of Sarajevo and a Medical faculty professor.

Wounded Children

Dr Gavrankapetanovic and his colleagues saw the wounding of the wounded for the first time. "The children whom we operated on a day or two before were again wounded at the children's department of the Orthopaedics Unit, with direct grenade hits to the unit's walls," he recalled.

"The doctors who stayed in Sarajevo for four years made a big sacrifice to the medical profession and the citizens of Sarajevo."

Grenades fell everywhere - on hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, the TV tower, the central post office, trams, hotels, university buildings, the central market, cemeteries, the central library, mosques, churches, the Olympic museum, the central bread factory, the National Museum, the Central Bank and the Presidency building.

The city was defended by a poorly equipped Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, consisting mainly of Bosniaks, but also of Serbs and Croats.

Sarajevo's only connection to the outside world was a tunnel, dug during the war beneath the Sarajevo International Airport. Today it is a must-see tourist destination, with a permanent museum collection.

The Kolar family - whose house at Butmir contains the tunnel's exit - is now the guardian of the Tunnel of Hope, as Sarajevans had called it during the war. The tunnel was used for the transport of food, medical supplies and weapons.

"The tunnel was built over four months and four days, by simultaneous digging from both ends. The works were finished on July 30, 1993, when the diggers met beneath the airport runway," said Edis Kolar.

The tunnel is nearly 720 metres long and between 1.5 and 1.8 metres high. It was dug using only shovels. The diggers used oil lamps well known to besieged Sarajevans, small bowls filled with cooking oil and a short wick.

Gravediggers on the way to a burial [Fehim Demir/EPA]

The tunnel was extremely narrow, so groups of people took turns moving through it from each end. There were sometimes up to 1,000 people in the tunnel, while each man carried a backpack with about 50 kilograms of food.

During 1994, railway tracks were placed inside the tunnel for the easier transport of goods using small carts.

An average of 4,000 people passed through the tunnel each day. Due to constant Serb shelling and sniper fire, the transport took place at night.

Kolar recalled that grenades hit people waiting at the entrance three times. There were three massacres in which mostly civilians lost their lives.

"The siege of Sarajevo is one of the greatest crimes committed in Europe in the second half of the 20th century," said Rade Radovanovic, editor of Belgrade daily newspaper Danas.

He said people in Belgrade and Serbia today remain silent about that crime, "as has been the case over the past two decades".

"Those who know the truth about the siege of Sarajevo in Serbia are rare, they are the people who care about that truth," said Radovanovic.

A Crime Against Humanity

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2003 delivered its first judgment over the Sarajevo siege.

Stanislav Galic, the commander of a Serb corps which attacked Sarajevo, was pronounced guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. The tribunal described the siege thus: "There was no safe place for Sarajevans - at home, school or hospital - from deliberate attack."

Sarajevo has been recovering for years after the siege. Most of the buildings have been renovated and the city has been nominated for the title "European Capital of Culture 2014".

"Sarajevo's wartime history is really the living global present and future. Everyone has to finally realise we weren't victims, but winners, which, at the same time, gives hope to humanity today united behind the saying ‘it's too late for pessimism’," said Suada Kapic, founder of the FAMA project, the largest collection of written, audio and video materials about the siege of Bosnia's capital and events linked to the fall of the former Yugoslavia.

The collection is a testament to people who had enough energy and love to write books, create gardens, build families and live fully despite the possibility that every outing could have been their last.

Some Pictures:

Oslobodjenje newspaper building

Remains of the Oslobodjenje newspaper building which never stopped publishing during the four-year siege. The building was 100 metres away from the front line between the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serb forces. Oslobodjenje was named the Best Newspaper in the World in 1992.

Newspaper headline

"The war must stop",  reads a headline in the Oslobodjenje newspaper. Newspapers placed on city walls became fashionable again during wartime, as there was not enough printing paper available. Sarajevans often read about the deaths of people in the besieged parts of the city, which they could not reach because of constant shelling.

Refugees fleeing Sarajevo

Thousands of Sarajevans fled the besieged city during the war. It was possible to flee by bus only at the very beginning of the four-year siege. After that, people were only able to get out through a tunnel dug below the city's airport.

Children in shelter

There was no electricity, water or gas in the city. People prepared food using makeshift firewood stoves, which children used as heaters, often in basements, where they sheltered from constant shelling. Makeshift schools were also run in the basements of Sarajevo's apartment buildings.

Water collection in snow

Water collection in winter was particularly difficult for Sarajevans. Instead of children sleighing on the surrounding Olympic mountains, sleighs were used for the transport of canisters filled with water. Sarajevans would fill them at various collection points throughout the city, which were often shelled, leaving many casualties.

Burnt vehicles in city centre

Public transport was non-existent in Sarajevo during the siege. People went everywhere on foot, risking their lives while foraging for food, water and other goods. All of the city's intersections were the targets of Serb snipers positioned atop surrounding hills.

Wounded

Everyday images of  wartime Sarajevo, on which 329 grenades fell daily, included dozens and sometimes hundreds of the dead and wounded. Doctors worked in cold and dark operating theatres, often without anaesthetic and other vital drugs.

Olympic Games

A young woman who lost both legs in a grenade attack being is wheeled over the sign for the Winter Olympic Games, which Sarajevo hosted in 1984. The Olympic mountains, where the world's top athletes once competed, were now the scenes of fierce battles.

Gravediggers

During the shelling of Sarajevo, there were so many civilian casualties that the cemeteries became too crammed. The dead were therefore often buried in parks and their remains would only later be moved to Sarajevo's cemeteries. According to official statistics, 11,541 people were killed in Sarajevo during the four-year siege, of which more than 1,000 were children.

Crying mother

A mother cries for her son, a fallen soldier of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which defended Sarajevo. Because of the international arms embargo, the army was no match for the well-equipped Serb forces. Yet it still managed to save the city, despite big losses.