Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs

ISSN: 1360-2004 (Print) 1469-9591 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjmm20

Long-distance Mourning and Synchronised

Memories in a Global Context: Commemorating
Srebrenica in Diaspora

Hariz Halilovich

To cite this article: Hariz Halilovich (2015) Long-distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in
a Global Context: Commemorating Srebrenica in Diaspora, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 35:3,
410-422, DOI: 10.1080/13602004.2015.1073956

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2015.1073956

Published online: 04 Sep 2015.

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 Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 2015
Vol. 35, No. 3, 410–422, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2015.1073956

Long-distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories

in a Global Context: Commemorating Srebrenica in
Diaspora

HARIZ HALILOVICH

Abstract
This paper discusses annual commemorative activities of July 11 in the Bosnian dia-
spora communities in Europe, the USA and Australia, a widely embraced grassroots
trend commemorating the 1995 Srebrenica genocide that has become an important
act of public memorialisation, reassertion of collective identity and a form of political
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activism among the Bosnian refugees and genocide survivors in different places
across the globe where they have settled. In addition to serving as a cohesive
factor among the members of the Bosnian diaspora communities and providing
them with a social context in which they can collectively mourn their losses, the Sreb-
renica commemorations in diaspora have been increasingly reaching out to include
members and leaders of the mainstream communities; hence becoming distinct,
locally situated, global public events about Bosnia and Srebrenica rather than
remaining the exclusive Bosnian immigrants’ gatherings that they initially tended
to be. In conjunction with the public commemorations, Bosnian diaspora organis-
ations and initiatives have successfully lobbied the governments of their adopted
countries to pass resolutions recognising the Srebrenica genocide and calling for
July 11 to be acknowledged as the Srebrenica Remembrance Day.

Introduction
According to the estimates and the official statistics, Bosnian expatriate community—or
Bosnian diaspora—includes over 2.3 million people, living in approximately 100
countries around the world, majority of them are ethnic Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims).1
In addition to regional, Western European, and Scandinavian countries, close to a half
a million of Bosnian refugees settled in the so-called “third” countries, primarily in the
USA, Canada and Australia. Thus, over the last two decades, Bosnian expatriates have
created a distinct transnational migrant community, and have come to represent one
of the largest, globally widespread and socially best organised migrant groups from the
former Yugoslavia.
When discussing Bosnian diaspora in all its heterogeneity, it is important to remember
that unlike some other diasporic communities this diaspora was not formed as part of a
process involving a spontaneous or economically driven migration, but due to forced dis-
placement behind which was a clearly defined policy and the required mechanisms to
implement it. As such, these forced migrations are inseparable from the politically motiv-
ated violence and the legacy of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH).2 Moreover, they are
also inseparable from the genocidal plan to destroy BiH as a state and eliminate Bosniaks
(Bosnian Muslims) as a people, whose collective identity and habitus—in cultural, politi-

© 2015 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs

 Long-Distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context 411

cal and existential sense—are based on the very idea and existence of BiH as their native
homeland.3
Once forced to abandon their homes, many of the displaced did not have options other
than to look for safety outside BiH. They hoped this move was of a temporary nature,
until normalcy returned to their hometowns, villages, hamlets and neighbourhoods.
To their disappointment, for most of them that was a vain hope: hundreds of thousands
of people who might never have contemplated migrating even into a large local town,
have become global nomads, refugees, migrants and settlers in many “unusual” desti-
nations across the globe. For instance, people from small Bosnian villages ended up in
cities like Melbourne, St Louis or Vienna.

The Waves of Migration

The war-induced emigration from BiH was not a linear migratory process; it happened in
two phases: during the war—especially in its first year—and then in the years after the
war, mainly during the first five years (1995–2000). While the first wave of migration
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from Bosnia was perceived to be more of a temporary nature and often involved dramatic
flights from violence, the second phase involved more deliberate plans for permanent
emigration and settlement in a third country. During the first phase, refugees looked
for safety mostly in nearby European countries. In the second, most of those leaving
post-war BiH were migrating to USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—usually
associated for good. There were also cases of migration within European countries—
such as the Bosnian refugees leaving Germany and migrating to Sweden—as well as
exchanges of temporary refugee status in Europe for permanent residence in northern
America or Australia.4
Expelled from their homes and homeland, Bosnians followed the trajectories of similar
refugee groups in modern history: they organised themselves primarily as a political dia-
spora, a transnational community of Bosnian citizens with clear trans-local organisational
patterns (usually initially emerging as local community associations linked to larger
Bosnian social clubs). What brought and kept them together in the new destinations
have been the shared memories of violence, genocide and a homeland they might have
lost forever.
It can be argued that members of Bosnian diaspora, like other similar groups, need
each other not only to socialise with each other in the present and to confirm who they
are now, but also to reaffirm, through shared memories, who they were in the past.
The shared memories of home back in the past are complemented by the lived experi-
ences of home—the new home, here and now, in the diaspora.
Homes and places of origin of Bosnian refugees have been in many cases irreversibly
lost, physically and/or in the sense that they no longer feel “at home” in their places of
origin. Additional factors of this alienation are related to the post-war political context
of their places of origin now being incorporated in the Republic of Srpska, a separate
entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, established on the foundation of crimes of geno-
cide and ethnic cleansing.5 Since the places of origin remain an important identity
marker, Bosnians in diaspora endeavour to recreate these social places in the new
locations through memories, narration, enactment and meetings with former neighbours,
thus creating a “new home away from home”, both similar and different from the one
they had left. The attachment to the idea of the old place as home, as Ghassan Hage
argues, should not be seen as a hindering factor for migrants and refugees in their new
places of settlement. Rather, it provides them with a “sense of possibility” to (re)create
 412 Hariz Halilovich

their new home constructed around “[the] desire to promote the feeling of being there
here”.6

Remembrances of Srebrenica
One of the most cohesive narratives and memories among the members of the Bosnian
worldwide diaspora has been the memory of the Srebrenica genocide. The remembrances
of Srebrenica serve multiple roles by: brining members of the Bosnian diaspora together
through fostering communal solidarity among themselves and in the process creating new
homes based on the idea of old home; creating “a safe” space for public mourning and
sharing individual and communal experiences of survivors; sending an explicit message
of support to their fellow compatriots living in Bosnia and other countries; positioning
themselves in relation to their new places by sharing their stories of suffering and survival
with the host communities and societies they settled in, and it that way inscribing their
own memories in the new socio-cultural and political landscape. The Srebrenica remem-
brance events are getting increasingly synchronised and coordinated and thanks to the
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information and communication technology and the time difference between Australia,
Europe and the USA, it is possible to have a series of “simultaneous” commemorations
taking several hours apart, so that remembering Srebrenica literally moves across the
world, in both time and space.

From Australia to Bosnia

In 2012, the Parliament of Australia adopted a special motion, acknowledging the events
of the genocide at Srebrenica in 1995. The motion, or the “Srebrenica Resolution” as it is
popularly known, comprises eight points stating in a very plain language what happened
at Srebrenica, who were the victims and who were the perpetrators. The full text of the
resolution reads:
(1) on 11 July 1995, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica which was at that time pro-
claimed a Protected Zone by a United Nations Security Council Resolution of
16 April 1993, fell into the hands of the Army of Republika Srpska, led by
General Ratko Mladic and under the direction of the then President of the
Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadzic;
(2) from 12 July 1995, the Army and the Police of Republika Srpska separated men
aged 16 to approximately 60 or 70 from their families;
(3) Bosnian Serb forces killed over 7000 Bosnian Muslim men following the take-
over of Srebrenica in July 1995;
(4) all the executions systematically targeted Bosnian Muslim men of military age,
regardless of whether they were civilians or soldiers;
(5) the acts committed at Srebrenica were committed with the specific intent to
destroy in part, the group of Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina;
(6) these were acts of genocide, committed by members of the Army of Republika
Srpska in and around Srebrenica from about 13 July 1995;
(7) these findings have been confirmed by the International Court of Justice and the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia through final and
binding judgments; and
(8) the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, July 11, should serve as a time to
remember the victims.7
 Long-Distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context 413

While to some it might look somewhat unusual, or even irrelevant, that parliament of a
country on a different hemisphere, 16,000 kilometres away from Bosnia, would be con-
cerned with something that happened in a small, faraway town in the Balkans 17 years
earlier, none of the Australian parliamentarians felt that way; they adopted the motion
solemnly and unanimously. Their motivation to spend time drafting, debating and
voting such a resolution came not so much from a sense of a retrospective moral obli-
gation, but foremost as a response to an expectation to do so by their fellow citizens
(and voters), some 50,000 naturalised Australians of Bosnian background, including
about 2000 survivors and people directly linked to the Srebrenica genocide who live in
Australia today. They, like most of the Bosnian Australians, came to Australia as refugees
during the 1990s and in early 2000s.

Remembering Srebrenica in Australia

Many of the some 2000 Srebrenica survivors who settled in Australia, especially in the Mel-
bourne’s western suburbs like St Albans, are war widows and their children who lost hus-
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bands and fathers in the genocide. In fact, along with being one of Melbourne’s most
socially disadvantaged suburbs, St Albans also has the largest concentration of Bosnian
female-headed households outside of Bosnia.8 The reason why so many of the war
widows migrated to Australia and settled in St Albans can be found in Australia’s Special
Humanitarian Programme which gave preference to applicants under the “Women at
Risk” category, that is, most vulnerable women and their family members. It can be said
that Australia was a friendly destination to many Bosnian refugees. As Val Colic-Peisker
argues, Australian immigration policy privileged Bosnians over other refugee groups “com-
peting” for Australian residency in the 1990s.9 For instance, the humanitarian immigration
quota (between 10,000 and 15,000 permanent visas a year) was increased by 2000 places in
the financial year 1993–1994 to allow for a larger intake of this refugee group.10
One of the first steps the newly arrived Bosnian refugees in Australia, the USA and
other countries did was to establish their cultural clubs and societies, including places
of worship that fulfilled multiple roles—as places to meet community’s social, cultural
and spiritual needs. Both religious and non-religious type of remembrances and com-
memorations for the victims of the 1992–1995 Bosnian war took place at these commu-
nity venues. The events started as grassroots initiatives, with individual community
members facilitating tehvids (commemorative prayers for the dead)11 and commemora-
tions of massacres at places such as Prijedor, Višegrad, Brčko and Srebrenica. Soon
these events were to include individual members and prominent leaders of the host com-
munities. In 2005, the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide was marked outside of
Bosnian community centres and mosques, taking place in form of two commemorative
conferences at the University of Sydney, Sydney, and the Victoria University, Melbourne.
In the chronicles of the Bosnian diaspora in Australia, these events can be regarded as
historic and even formative as it was the first time that a gathering of this type and
scale, recognising both those who perished in and who survived Srebrenica and other
places in Bosnia, took place at a public institution in Australia.
In fact, the events were ground-breaking in many other ways too. They involved a mix
of community-led activism, public mourning, interfaith dialogue and academic lectures.
A number of survivors provided public testimonies about what they survived and who
they lost in the genocide. During the midday prayer, led by a Bosnian imam, the
Muslim worshipers prayed on the green grass on the University of Sydney’s campus. A
number of community and religious leaders from Muslim, Christian, Jewish and
 414 Hariz Halilovich

Buddhist faiths participated in the events. Along with them, many prominent Australian
academics such as, for instance, Professor Ron Adams, Professor Rob Watts and
Professor Paul James, delivered powerful speeches and called for justice for genocide sur-
vivors. (At the time, many of the masterminds of genocide were still at large or their trials
at ICTY were not completed.) Both the Sydney and Melbourne events were covered by
the Australian mainstream media and broadcast in the primetime. What started in 2005,
continued every July 11 in subsequent years, with commemorations, seminars and other
forms of remembrances becoming public events rather than isolated community gather-
ings of Bosnian refugees. Hence, it did not come as a surprise when in 2012 the Austra-
lian Parliament passed one of the most comprehensive motions on the Srebrenica
genocide. This formal act did not only recognise the Srebrenica genocide, but it also
acknowledged that the tragedy of Srebrenica had become an Australian story too, as it
has become the story in many other places across the world where Bosnians had settled.

Remembrances in St Louis, Missouri

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One such place is St Louis, Missouri, USA, which over last two decades became host to
60,000 Bosnian immigrants, making St Louis “the largest Bosnian city outside Bosnia”.
These immigrants are mostly Bosniaks from Podrinje (the basin of the river Drina) and Pri-
jedor, who were forced to move from their homes during the war.12 “The Little Bosnia” in
St Louis is made “visible” by numerous restaurants, shops with products imported from
Bosnia, and social and sports clubs as well as the fact that the Bosnian community has
its own radio programmes, newspapers and magazines, and even a television station.13
Since 2014, the St Louis’ suburb of Bevo—an area of St Louis where entire Bosnian villages
can be found in a single street, or a neighbourhood—has become even more Bosnian, with
a replica of the Sarajevo sebilj, the famous fountain from Baščaršija, Sarajevo’s old town,
now adding to the cultural mosaic of the place and standing in front of the local town
hall, on Gravois Avenue, in the close proximity to the historical Bevo’s Windmill, a cultural
landmark of St Louis. These and many other examples show that St Louis does deserve a
reputation of a “largest Bosnian city outside Bosnia”. The city is very Bosnian, or does
reflect realities back in post-war Bosnia, also in terms of the Bosnian recent history as
almost every Bosnian immigrant in St Louis was directly affected by the war, which was
the main reason for their migration.
Like with the Bosnian refugees in Australia, the shared experiences and memories of
home and war have been a strong cohesive factor among the Bosnians in St Louis and
other places in the USA (e.g. Chicago and Atlanta). While various cultural, religious and
sports activities have played an important role in providing the social context for Bosnian
diaspora to emerge as a distinct transnational community in the USA, remembrances
and commemorations continue to be very solemn occasions where different groups and
individuals belonging to Bosnian diaspora stand united in remembering those who perished
and in the process reasserting who they themselves are. Regardless of where they originally
come from, during such commemorations they all identify with Prijedor or Srebrenica, two
places that have become synonymous with genocide in Bosnia and have been providing the-
matic framework for organised commemorations in St Louis.

Bringing Bosnia Home in St Louis

As in many other places where they settled over the years, Bosnians in St Louis share their
stories and their memories also with those from outside the Bosnian diaspora—with the
 Long-Distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context 415

“mainstream” host community. Bosnian stories have become a part of St Louis’ new nar-
rative, and regularly feature in the local St Louis newspaper, the STL Today, under the
section “Bringing Bosnia Home: A continuing look at Bosnian immigrants in St
Louis”. The stories have also been explored by mainstream artists. Playwright Cristina
Pippa, for instance, combined a number of oral histories with her own observations to
tell a Bosnian story in her play, Little Bosnia, based on the lives of St Louis Bosnians, gen-
erally perceived as “one of the largest cultural groups in the city”.14 The play, about iden-
tity and home, includes Bosnian and non-Bosnian actors, and goes beyond the usual
pathos of refugee life in exile and includes a good dose of Bosnian-style humour as
well as local particularities of St Louis Bosnians from Podrinje and Prijedor. So
popular was the play among the members of the Bosnian community that it quickly
sold out for the entire 2008 season.
Other forms of storytelling and remembrances have also reached out to the wider St
Louis public. In 2007 the exhibition Prijedor: Lives from the Bosnian Genocide was
opened at the Holocaust Museum and Learning Centre in St Louis. The exhibition pro-
vides a chronology of atrocities perpetrated in Prijedor beginning in 1992, focusing on the
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experience of concentration camp survivors who now live in St Louis, and including “nar-
rative accounts of life before, during and after the war, the concentration camp sites in
and around the city, and the search for the missing”.15 The exhibition also includes a
number of material objects and personal belongings of survivors and those who per-
ished—like a pair of worn-out boots, a brown jumper and family photos that once
belonged to microbiologist Kemal Cerić, who was among Prijedor’s more than 200 intel-
ligentsia killed in the summer of 1992.

A Visitor from the Homeland. The author Rezak Hukanović,16 a prominent Prijedor sur-
vivor and returnee to Prijedor, came to visit his fellow Prijedorčani (citizens of Prijedor) in
St Louis to express his support and contribute to the memorialisation of the Prijedor
tragedy both in diaspora and back in Bosnia. Like Rezak, many St Louis Prijedorčani
attending the exhibition were both visitors and hosts, and even “walking exhibits” as sur-
vivors who contextualised what was on display with their own stories. The exhibition pro-
vided the survivors with a context in which they could share their stories and have the
hardship they went through recognised. In fact, many of the stories told here were told
publically for the first time. The exhibition also provided the Prijedor survivors with a
public space to affirm their identity as both Prijedorčani. Beyond this, the exhibition
brought acknowledgment of and respect for the Prijedor trans-local community by
other Bosnian communities in St Louis, including from Podrinje—who not only
acknowledged Prijedorčani as fellow survivors but also helped them to organise such
an important “mainstream” event to tell the story of their shattered home city.
Similarly, members of the Bosnian diaspora coming from Srebrenica and Podrinje
have been commemorating their lost relatives, friends and neighbours. Their shared
tragedy has become a strong point for their collective identification with Srebrenica.
“The Association of Survivors of the Srebrenica Genocide in St Louis”, their formal
organisation through which they have been commemorating their personal and commu-
nal tragedy, has institutionalised “Srebrenica Remembrance Day” on July 11. In July
2005, at the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, the Missouri
House of Representatives issued official House Resolution No. 3934, recognising the
Srebrenica genocide, followed by a Proclamation issued by Francis G. Slay, Mayor of
the City of St Louis, declaring July 11 “Srebrenica Remembrance Day in Saint Louis”.
 416 Hariz Halilovich

Since then, Srebrenica Remembrance Day has been commemorated each year as an offi-
cial public event in St Louis.
Through these recognitions and public acknowledgments, the stories of Srebrenica
and Prijedor survivors in St Louis have moved from the realm of communal and
popular memories to official, public memories, and in the process gaining new meanings,
new audiences and new interpretations.

Amir Amerikanac. The fact that local Bosnian collective memory has become part of the
local American collective consciousness is seen as a significant symbolic achievement by
survivors—and the Bosnian diaspora in St Louis—as well as a clear indicator of Bosnian
integration into St Louis’ mainstream society. However, this official, once-a-year event
could also be seen as a form of instrumental multiculturalism from above, used by
local mainstream politicians to appeal to migrants’ marginal—or not so marginal—con-
stituencies. While there is a public acknowledgement of and an expression of solidarity
with the survivors of genocide on this one day in a year, on the other 364 days the survi-
vors can remain “invisible” White European migrants/newly emerging Americans, swal-
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lowed by the “detached” capitalist system as a readily available labour force, often
working prolonged shifts under conditions that an average “mainstream” American
would not tolerate. However, in terms of the argument of this paper, this interpretation
does not detract from the organisational and experiential significance of public commem-
orations among the Bosnian diaspora of St Louis.
While for the politicians in St Louis, Bosnians represent a solid pool of prospective
voters—hence the solidarity and interest in responding to their social, cultural and pol-
itical demands—a number of St Louis-based activists and scholars have picked up the
Bosnian cause and become strong advocates of Bosnian diaspora. Among them, most
active and prominent have been Ron Klutho17 (known in the Bosnian community as
“Amir Amerikanac”), Patrick McCarthy18 and Benjamin Moore.19 They all have
been at the forefront of various activities and projects20 aimed at bringing stories
and memories of St Louis’ Bosnians into the mainstream, starting with commemora-
tions, museum exhibitions and research projects to developing the Centre for
Bosnian Studies, based at St Louis’ Fontbonne University, the first such academic
centre in the Western world.

Remembering Srebrenica in Europe

Bosnian migrant communities in European countries in many ways differ from those in
the USA, Australia and Canada. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the close-
ness of Bosnia to the EU countries to the host countries’ different immigration and inte-
gration policies, or lack of such policies. However, Bosnian diaspora groups in the EU do
share a number of organisational patterns with each other, and this is especially true for
the well-established diaspora communities in Sweden, Austria and Germany, the EU
countries hosting the largest number of Bosnian migrants. In each of these countries,
among other activities, commemorating July 11 as the Srebrenica Remembrance Day
has been taking place in both the community as well as the public spheres.
Unlike in Australia, the USA and Canada, whose respective governments responded to
the “bottom-up” demand by the Bosnian diaspora groups to formally recognise the Sreb-
renica genocide, on 15 January 2009, the European Parliament adopted its resolution on
Srebrenica as a “top-down” policy.21 The preamble of the resolution states
 Long-Distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context 417

… having regard to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the

European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, of the other part, signed in Luxembourg on 16 June
2008, and the prospect of EU membership held out to all the countries of the
western Balkans at the EU summit in Thessaloniki in 2003 … .22
Hence, this resolution needs to be seen in the context of the EU expansion and the EU’s
ongoing role in post-war reconstruction and stabilisation of BiH rather than a response to
the presence of Bosnian diaspora in its member states.
The eight point resolution clearly spells out the main facts about the Srebrenica geno-
cide and, under the last point (H), it goes further by stating:
… the institutionalisation of a day of remembrance is the best means of paying
tribute to the victims of the massacres and sending a clear message to future
generations.23
In line with this, the resolution:
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… calls on the Council and the Commission to commemorate appropriately the

anniversary of the Srebrenica-Potočari act of genocide by supporting Parlia-
ment’s recognition of 11 July as the day of commemoration of the Srebrenica
genocide all over the EU, and to call on all the countries of the western
Balkans to do the same.24
Since then the EU Parliament has regularly been acknowledging the Srebrenica Remem-
brance Day, with some EU governments having their own Srebrenica commemorative
events. By doing this, Srebrenica genocide has officially become (as it has always been)
a European story.

Remembering Srebrenica in the UK

Some political groups and governments have recognised the potential of Srebrenica
remembrance not only to honour the victims, but also to appeal to specific constituencies
within the EU. Starting in 2013, the UK government has taken the annual commemora-
tion of Srebrenica at the highest level, with a week-long commemorative activities taking
place at prominent venues, including Lancaster House, and involving the UK political
elite and state representatives from Bosnia, such as President Bakir Izetbegović. A
group of Srebrenica survivors was also invited to travel from Bosnia to UK and share
their stories of genocide at these events. As they disclosed in our conversations thereafter,
they had mixed feelings about their experience at these “gala events”, where they were
“paraded to show their pain”, a survivor stated. To facilitate these high level commem-
orative activities, an organisation called “Remembering Srebrenica”25 was established
with the support of the British government.
A natural response would be to ask what prompted this sudden interest in Srebrenica
by the British conservative government, considering that, compared to other countries,
the UK accepted a relatively low number of Bosnian refugees during the war (about
2000)?26 Bosnian refugees and other Bosnian migrants who ended up in the UK inte-
grated and blended in relatively well, so much that it is hard to talk about the existence
of a Bosnian diaspora of the kind present in Sweden, Australia or the USA, for instance.
Among others, the question about Bosnian refugees as a diasporic community in the UK
has been posed by Lynnette Kelly,27 who argues that the settlement polices in the UK
 418 Hariz Halilovich

have been instrumental in creating a “Bosnian diaspora” in the UK. Instead of an “infor-
mal community”, she argues,
there is a contingent community: a group of people who will, to some extent,
conform to the expectations of the host society in order to gain the advantages
of a formal community association, whilst the private face of the group remains
un-constituted as a community.28
While this, at least to some extent, represents the reality of Bosnians in UK, there have
been a number of prominent Bosnian refugees turned human rights activist such as, for
instance, Kemal Pervanić, an author, filmmaker and Omarska survivor, or Zrinka Bralo, a
journalist and refugee advocate. Both of them however are more on the left of the political
spectrum and not necessarily the people sympathetic with the policies of the Conserva-
tives. Unlike them, Arminka Helic, a former Bosnian refugee—who has become Baroness
Helic and “the third Conservative female Muslim peer”—has been an active member of
the Conservatives, acting as the British Special Adviser and Chief of Staff to the Former
British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
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None of them however has been involved in the work of the organisation called
“Remembering Srebrenica”. This “British charitable initiative” tasked with “building a
cohesive society in the UK” by engaging with Muslim communities in the UK, is
almost exclusively staffed and led by young British citizens, Muslim men with political
ambitions, all second generation descendants of migrants from the former UK colonies
such as India and Pakistan.29 Recognising that Srebrenica genocide has become one of
the tragedies Muslims across the globe strongly sympathise with, the UK Government
has been using the Srebrenica commemoration to publically show that British Govern-
ment does care about Muslims. By doing this, it is hoping to reach out not necessarily
to Bosnian Muslim survivors living in the UK or elsewhere, but to its own “problematic”
populations, members of ghettoised Muslim communities who might be attracted by
radical groups and potentially involved in terrorism and acting against British interests.

Engagement through Reasserting Identities

As the different examples of memorialisation and remembrances of Srebrenica genocide
and other Bosnian tragedies described here show, these activities differ in forms and
motifs from country to country and serve a variety of different purposes and agendas,
from reasserting identities of survivors in the Bosnian diaspora communities to being
used as a policy to engage with targeted Muslim populations. What we should be
reminded of however is that for the Srebrenica survivors, regardless of where they live
today, “Srebrenica is not just a once a year event” but the everyday reality. In my research
on displacement and emplacement of Bosnian genocide survivors, I regularly come
across “Srebrenica remembrances” performed in the homes of Bosnian diaspora
members throughout the year. In some of my earlier publications,30 I have written
about them and their sense of loss and grief, which is visible in the absence of important
family members: fathers, sons and brothers.

A Thirsty Man in Blue Shirt

That sense of loss and grief can be triggered by more serendipitous events. In late May
2005, the family Salkić, now living in Melbourne’s suburb of St Albans, was shocked
by an event that could only be compared with the surrealism of a bad nightmare. It
 Long-Distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context 419

came in the form of a report on the evening news on the Australian public television
broadcaster SBS.31 What was shown was close-up footage of an execution of 6 civilians
from Srebrenica 10 years earlier. Their hands were tied behind their backs, they looked
exhausted and one of them, a man wearing a blue shirt, asked the executioners, the Serb
soldiers, if he could get some water before they killed him. The request was denied with
laughter and abuse by the captors, who continued filming. In that thirsty man in a blue
shirt captured on the hand-held video, Mido, a 22-year-old university student, and his
17-year-old sister Mubera recognised their father. Their mother Zifa recognised her
missing husband, Sidik. The footage showed how their father and husband was forced
to carry the bodies of four men killed seconds earlier and load them onto a truck; then,
how he and the remaining captive were lined up and the gun barrels of the execution
squad pointed at their chests before they were gunned down in cold blood. A week
after he saw his father’s last moments, Mido was in Bosnia trying to get any information
he could about his father’s grave. Nearly two more years passed before Sidik Salkić’s
remains were positively identified. He was laid to rest at Potočari on 11 July 2007.
A grieving widow Zifa might be viewed as an exemplar for Bosnian women’s continu-
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ing pain, for their memorialisation of what they have lost. Her old “Bosnian” memories
are present in her “new” home in Australia: the photos in her lounge room, the picture of
the young smiling Sidik, and the film footage—the family retains a copy of the awful film
clip, which now serves a memorialising function like a photograph.

A Young Man in Olive Green Shirt

On the other side of the world, in St Louis’s suburb of Bevo, Fatima’s new home very
much resembles that of Zifa’s in Melbourne, and it is like most other living rooms in
Bosnian homes I have been in—in Bosnia as well as in the Bosnian refugee diaspora in
Australia, Sweden, Austria and the USA.32 What makes Fatima’s household recognisably
“Bosnian” are not only the distinct coffee cups ( fildžani), copper coffee pots (džezve) and
crystal glasses and ornaments displayed in the large credenza dominating the living room,
but also the framed photos of her family members.
One of the photos is of a young man, a teenager, dressed in an olive green shirt and a
Titovka cap with a red star on his head. In another photo, one can see a moustached man,
probably in his 30s, hugging a school-age boy: both are smiling happily. Next to them, in
the same photo, is a red car, a 101 Stojadin, which seems to have been the main reason for
the photo opportunity. Both photos were taken during the 1980s, when Fatima’s life
looked fairly ordinary and when it was impossible for her to imagine that some two
decades later she would become a refugee, a migrant living in the USA, while all three
people in the pictures, her husband and two of her sons, would be dead, killed in the
Srebrenica genocide in 1995. One of her sons was 25 and the other was 21. Her
husband was 46.
The pictures in her living room are some of the few material records of Fatima’s past
life. She tells me how in 1992, before escaping to the nearest safe village, she only
managed to fetch a photo album and a handful of documents from her burning home.
Among the photos were the two now standing on top of her credenza in her house in
St Louis. The documents she saved back then included her children’s school certificates
and the family’s healthcare booklets.
Fatima, just like Zifa and many other genocide survivors I have had the privilege
to meet and talk to, would then go on with her story at great length, adding
many mundane details as by retelling her stories for who-knows-what time, she was
 420 Hariz Halilovich

remembering, commemorating and celebrating those who she had lost and who now only
exist in the stories of those who remember them and those keen to hear about them.
Fatima’s and Zifa’s perished relatives, their lost community and sense of belonging can
now be recreated only through the memories and stories of the times past, or, as Leslie
Van Gelder said, “people of diaspora do not root in place, but in each other”.33
Rooting in each other’s stories, these daily performances of memories in diaspora rep-
resent the invisible and intimate commemorations of those who perished and who con-
tinue to be an important part in the lives of those who survived.

The Srebrenica Narrative Serving Collective Identity

Through describing different commemorative practices in the Bosnian diaspora in Aus-
tralia, the USA and Europe, and illustrating the importance of such activities to the indi-
vidual survivors and their respective communities, the paper demonstrates how this
commemoration serves different needs and agendas. These vary from deeply personal
to highly political as they intersect at the public remembrance events and demonstrate
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how “Srebrenica” has come to represent not only one of the great tragedies of the twen-
tieth century but also a powerful symbol and a theme around which peace activism, social
inclusion and tolerance can be promoted.
Indeed, this idea has been taken up by a number of political groups and governments
within and beyond the Bosnian diaspora. While the symbolism of Srebrenica does—and
should—have a universal appeal as yet another reminder of how low the politics of hatred
and nationalism can get us, for the survivors, Srebrenica is not just a mere symbol or
metaphor for evil, pain and suffering; it rather represents a very visceral memory and
trauma, an ongoing reminder about the absence of the perished relatives, affecting
them profoundly on a deep personal level on a daily basis.
Among many other everyday tacit practices, the walls with photographs of the perished
family members that have become the intimate memory shrines in the new homes of
many Bosnian survivors testify this. Moreover, the described examples of public com-
memorations demonstrate that the very idea of the Bosnian diaspora, as a distinct de-ter-
ritorialized transnational community, revolves around the shared memory of genocidal
violence in Bosnia in which Srebrenica remembrance serves as performative enactment
of such memory, communal solidarity and identity. Hence, it could be said that the Sreb-
renica narrative has had an important formative role in shaping the collective identity
among the displaced Bosnians and has become inseparable from the narrative of the
Bosnian diaspora.

Conclusion
From the low-key diaspora gatherings, held some ten to fifteen years ago, the Srebrenica
commemorations have grown into well-organised and well-attended public events,
increasingly attracting a wide spectrum of people—from human rights activists,
academics and students to artists and politicians. The commemorations have strength-
ened the bonds between members of the Bosnian diaspora and their host communities
as well as reinforced connections with their fellow compatriots back in Bosnia. Thanks
to such activities and their ability to mobilise not only the members of the Bosnian
diaspora but also political leaders and the governments in the host countries of
settlement, the power, sophistication and the full potential of the diaspora was also recog-
nised back in BiH. As a result, a growing number of prominent personalities and political
 Long-Distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context 421

representatives from Bosnia have responded to the invites to take part at such events held
in diaspora communities. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that every year
thousands of Bosnians from diaspora visit Bosnia to take part in collective burials at
the Srebrenica Memorial Cemetery.
While genocide, politically motivated violence and forced displacement were the
primary reasons for massive migration from the country, Bosnian refugees and migrants
have not abandoned the memory of Bosnia as they remember it being once. Thus, they
continue to maintain active support for their original homeland and local communities—
economically, politically and symbolically—even though, in many instances, their desire
to return to the original places destroyed in the war remains a fantasy and a wish and one
of the key narratives about the “lost home back at home”. Along with the psychological
factors, the impossibility of the actual return is hindered by the political context of Repub-
lika Srpska, a “serbianised” apartheid-like political entity founded on the war crimes and
genocide, in which the survivors (Bosnian Muslims and Catholics) have been reduced to
a marginalised minority, the ultimate ethnic “other” and the unwanted.
In that regard, Srebrenica remembrances in diaspora also represent an act of defiance
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and a demonstration of resilience, reaffirming the identity of the decimated communities

and their destroyed places that will continue to exist as long as they will be remembered
and longed for.

NOTES
1. M. Valenta and S. P. Ramet, “Bosnian Migrants: An Introduction”, in The Bosnian Diaspora:
Integration of Transnational Communities, eds. Marko Valenta and Sabrina P. Ramet, Ashgate:
Farnham, 2011, pp. 1–23; and Ministarstvo za ljudska prava i izbjeglice Bosne i Hercegovine,
Pregled Stanja Bosanskohercegovačkog Stanovništva, [BiH Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees,
Overview of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Population] Sarajevo, 2008.
2. Cf. H. Halilovich, “(Per)forming ‘trans-local’ homes: Bosnian Diaspora in Australia”, in Bosnian Dia-
spora: Integration in Transnational Communities, eds. Marko Valenta and Sabrina P. Ramet, Farnham:
Ashgate, 2011, pp. 63–81.; Hariz Halilovich, “Trans-local Communities in the Age of Transnation-
alism: Bosnians in Diaspora”, International Migration, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2012, pp. 162–178; Hariz
Halilovich, Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-local Identities in Bosnian
War-torn Communities, New York: Berghahn, 2013.
3. Norman Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ in Eastern Europe, College Station:
Texas A&M University Press, 1995.
4. Marko Valenta and Sabrina P. Ramet eds. Bosnian Diaspora: Integration in Transnational Communities,
Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
5. C.T. Dahlman, “Geographies of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing: The Lessons of Bosnia-Herzego-
vina”, in The Geography of War and Peace: From Death Camps to Diplomats, ed. C. Flint, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 174–197.
6. G. Hage, “At home in the entrails of the West: multiculturalism, ‘ethnic food’ and migrant home–
building”, in Community and Marginality in Sydney’s West, eds. Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley
Johnson, Julie Langsworth, and Michael Symonds, Annandale: Pluto Press, 1997, pp. 99–153.
7. http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/liveminutes/index.htm
8. Hariz Halilovich, Places of Pain, op. cit.
9. Val Colic-Peisker, “Bosnian refugees in Australia: identity, community and labour market inte-
gration”, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 97, 2003, Geneva: UNHCR.
10. Ibid.
11. These are Muslim religious gatherings involving commemorative prayers for the dead.
12. R. Coughlan, “Transnationalism in the Bosnian Diaspora in America”, in Bosnian Diaspora: Inte-
gration in Transnational Communities, eds. Marko Valenta and Sabrina P. Ramet, Farnham:
Ashgate, 2011, pp. 105–122.
13. Hariz Halilovich, “Reclaiming Erased Lives: Archives, Records and Memories in Post-war Bosnia and
the Bosnian Diaspora”, Archival Science, Vol. 14, No. 3–4, 2014, pp. 231-–247.
 422 Hariz Halilovich

14. S. Truckey, “Little Bosnia”, St Louis Magazine, April 2008. Retrieved 20 May 2012 from http://www.
stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/April-2008/Little-Bosnia/#
15. P. McCarthy, “Prijedor: Lives from the Bosnian Genocide”, Missouri Passages, Vol. 4, No. 12, 2007.
Retrieved 20 November 2009 from http://mohumanities.org/E-News/Dec07/prijedor.htm
16. Rezak Hukanović, The Tenth Circle of Hell: A Memoir of Life in the Death Camps of Bosnia, London:
Little, Brown and Co, 1996.
17. http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/my-bosnians-hard-working-generous-strong/article_
95d1d239-e278-5867-9213-a725a1bbee11.html
18. http://www.stlbosnians.com/tag/patrick-mccarthy/
19. http://mohistory.org/bosnia101
20. http://www.fontbonne.edu/academics/undergraduate/departments/englishcommunication/bosnia_
memory_project/
21. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009-
0028&language=EN
22. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009-
0028&language=EN
23. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009-
0028&language=EN
24. Ibid.
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25. http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/
26. http://www.bhcuk.com/index.html
27. Lynette Kelly, “Bosnian Refugees in Britain: Questioning Community”, Sociology Vol. 37, No. 1,
2003, pp. 35–49.
28. Ibid.
29. http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/memorial-day/message-chairman/
30. Hariz Halilovich, Places of Pain, op. cit.; and Hariz Halilovich, “Reclaiming erased lives” op. cit.
31. The story of the Salkić family features in Hariz Halilovich, Places of Pain, op. cit.
32. Fatima’s story was described in more detail in Hariz Halilovich, “Reclaiming erased lives”, op. cit.
33. Leslie van Gelder, Weaving a Way Home: A Personal Journey Exploring Place and Story, Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2008, p. 58.