— Essays & Opinion Pieces —

A space for young people to express their opinions in the form of essays, short stories, op-eds and similar forms.

Commentary on Bosnia’s Dark Tourism
Tourism in areas known for acts of war, genocide, and terror has been dubbed ‘dark tourism.’ BiH has been included on a dark tourism website which provides information on various dark tourism destinations, including Sarajevo, Mostar, and Srebrenica.

On Holocaust Memorial Institutions and the Bosnian Genocide
Polish-born Jewish legal theorist Raphael Lemkin first coined the term ‘genocide’ in his 1944 work ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress.’ Lemkin’s description of genocide as entailing “criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group” laid the foundations for the Genocide Convention and genocide studies as a sociological discipline.

Vanja Šunjić’s Commentary: Historical Revisionism in the Education System
Professors of Serbian Language and Literature do not see anything controversial in these competitions, but they emphasize epithets of pain, metaphors of suffering, hyperboles of loyalty, so that we become aware and never repeat the past. I often think about how historical revisionism comes about – how someone can possibly disregard the facts and create …

A Short Review of Jasmila Žbanić’s Blum
There, behind the apartment blocks which once obscured the festival’s inaugural 1994 iteration from VRS snipers, we settled down for a special pre-screening of Jasmila Žbanić’s still unfinished documentary, Blum.

Memento: Srebrenica-Potočari’s new oral history exhibition
I had heard his story before. In fact, I had read and re-read it dozens of times already. But, as I listened to Ahmed Ustić’s Death March story, there was no way of quelling the strange paralysis that I had felt when I first read the account of this young man’s horrifying six-day journey for survival. 

„ŠTO TE NEMA“: How to Connect Art and a Society That Is Still Experiencing Post-war Wounds
One would think that art and post-war wounds were not so connected. Aida Šehović, a Bosnian-born artist based in New York, disagreed and, for the past 15 years, has proven that art can help in post-conflict recovery.