In an era of fleeting public attention, where audiences are increasingly impervious to the images of human suffering that permeate their television screens, Rémy doesn’t report with the goal of shaping policy or generating a particular response from Western governments. Rather, he sees himself as a messenger for those people who are living through war.
Had he been born in South America, Gavrilo Princip would have been an equal to Che Guevara and Emiliano Zappata; in Africa, he would have been a counterpart to the glorious martyrs who fell in the struggle against colonialism.
“Only the details differentiate the narratives of WWI from those of the 90s Balkans wars. The latter speaks of Greater Serbian nationalism and the endangerment of other peoples, as well as some concept of Yugoslavia only mildly related to Yugoslavia itself, whereas the former is but another excuse to repeat the same arguments.”
A hundred years have passed since the first bullets were fired near the Latin Bridge. The century-long period saw numerous pits and canyons—and unmarked graves. In them, hundreds of thousands are “resting in peace”. They have names of mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, and brothers—but still, they remain unknown.