Tourism agencies resumed operations in Sarajevo almost immediately after the end of the war. The first post-war tourists began arriving in the city in 1996, just months after the siege came to an end.
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.
The Sarajevo Canton Memorial Fund and the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) recently released a scientific report entitled “The Siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995,” based upon the relevant court judgements. It documents the sniping and shelling of the city as well as the war crimes committed in eight municipalities, with the aim of promoting greater acceptance of judicially established facts and countering the denial of the crimes carried out against Sarajevo civilians.
The siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996) was the longest siege of a capital city in modern history. The daily campaigns of shelling and sniping, targeting the civilian population, were terrible and cruel, compounded by the blockade of humanitarian aid convoys and the severance of any connection with the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the world.
Plagued by nationalist-political narratives and rabble-rousing rhetoric, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is facing its worst political crisis since the end of the 1992-1995 conflict. However, street art in the country’s capital points to the possibility of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence in a society still polarized by the wounds of war.
In the days marking the 30th anniversary of the longest siege of a capital city in modern history, hundreds of Sarajevo citizens came out to protest Russia's aggression against Ukraine, sending a unique message of sympathy to the people of Ukraine. In addition, Sarajevans urged BiH authorities to enable Ukrainian refugees to stay legally in our country for more than 30 days.