60 Years of Human Rights
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
In the night between December 7th and 8th, a mosque in southeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina was burned down. It was the night before Eid al-Adha, or Kurban Bajram, as it is called in BiH. The mosque lies in the village Fazlagića Kula, near Trebinje; a region now dominated by a Serb population due to ethnic cleansing that began in the 1990s. If this is a case of arson, as much points to, then it’s just another sign that the ethnic cleansing continues to this day.
The mosque in Fazlagića Kula has been targeted before. In 1992 it was blown up and burned down, but reconstructed in 2003. A total of 37 Muslims have so far returned to their homes in the village. On the morning of Kurban Bajram, when they were supposed to go to prayer in their finest clothes, the villagers found their mosque in ruins and a stench of smoke and fire was hovering over the village. But they had their prayer anyway, in the ruins, under the open sky.
The returnees have been attacked numerous times, they have recieved death threats - and threats about setting the mosque on fire. The fact that the local authorities never did anything about it speaks volumes of the “Republika Srpska”. Fact is that this entity breaks a number of articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on a daily basis:
Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. (And also the first part, considering the fact that the entity was established through genocide.)
Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. (…)
Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 13, 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 17, 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18 as quoted above.
Article 26, 2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
And that’s just a quick run-down.
Today on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I encourage you to pledge your own commitment to it by signing here. A day may come when we too could be forced to fight for these rights by other means, but today we can at least send a clear message to all those who flout them: These are the principles of a world that’s moving forward. Where do you want to go?
Read more:
Café Turco: Mosque arsoned in “Republika Srpska”
Jasmin’s Heart: Mosque burned in Bosnia Today
Jasmin’s Heart: Thoughts on a Meaningless Crime
“Two Hours from London”
I saw this documentary about the war for a Great Serbia yesterday at Jasmin’s Heart. Even though this isn’t anything new, it was absolutely devastating to watch and several times my stomach turned. One of the best things I’ve seen about the war.
Happy Eid!
Today is Eid al-Adha which marks the end of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. It is a religious festival celebrated in commemoration of the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God.
When I was little we all used to go to my grandmother’s and her old, old house would get so full that they would send us children out in case it collapsed! At least that’s what they told us. 
Mine is a family of comedians so I have a lot of stories like that.
Eid Mubarak - or Bajram Mubarek Olsun, as we say in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
November round-up
Other blogs do their round-ups at the end af a month. Here at Amila Bosnae we don’t like to do things quite the same way as others; one example is writing “we” even though it’s just me running the blog.
Switching the blog to English turned out to be a really smart decision that helped reach more readers. And here I thought that my Bosnian-Danish-political-activist niche was too narrow for that
My text about my impressions from Serbia made it to the linking stream at Belgraded.com and from there to Global Voices Online, who has since mentioned several other of my texts. The text was also partially translated into French by Dragan Grcic for his human rights watch blog. Another text translated into French was RESF: Activism at its finest, which recently appeared in the first issue of RESF Strasbourg fanzine.
I’ve decided to keep my old mirror blog at urbanblog.dk, but now it’s a separate blog only in Danish. Mixing languages would probably not help promote the blog, so I’ll see if I can avoid it (although comments are still welcome in other languages, as long as I understand them).
Last but not least, I’ve revamped the design of the blog. It’s so much nicer now, don’t you think? There are some problems with it in Explorer, but why some people still don’t use Firefox I’ll never understand…. 
Storm 1993
When I was 12 I used to play a lot with this girl I knew. The kids I had grown up with had bullied me out of their group for being Bosnian - or “a dirty Muslim”, as they put it - so I found someone else to play with further down the street. Her parents had a shed in their back yard, and the shed had a tiny attic. We used to play there all the time.
There was war around us and on more than one occasion we had to dart into the house when we heard a ground-to-ground missile being fired. You never knew where it would blast but you had to be within concrete walls to keep you safe from splinters.
In their little front yard her parents grew some vegetables and I remember how great their tomatoes tasted with home baked bread. It was the kind of time when having someone offer you a piece of bread and a tomato was like being offered an entire all you can eat buffet, all to yourself.
We had dolls that we secretly played with. Secretly, because we were supposed to be big girls and playing doll was for babies. We’d go up to the attic of the shed, close the shutters and create our own little world inside. We always played the same game too. Storm. A violent storm or a hurricane would sweep through the attic, throwing all our things around, making a mess of everything, not to mention endangering our and our dolls’ lives. We used to huddle together under a blanket until the storm was over.
Then the good part of the game would start. We would tidy up, sort our things, put everything back in its place and clean up our dolls. We were in charge of things again. This is the part that made us feel all grown up and important, organizing things after the storm, feeling relieved and comforted that the bad part was behind us - yet again.
I haven’t thought about this in years. Then tonight I watched a war movie, just a Hollywood production, but it made me remember. It had a long battle in it and everything was chaos, everybody was yelling and trying to grasp what was happening, trying to organize a defense and an infirmary. The scene was very long. I really don’t like war movies, I usually look away during the hard parts, and this scene just went on and on.
And at one point I felt the exact same way I used to feel while huddling under the blanket with my friend and our dolls. I blocked it all out, I turned deaf and just waited for the bad part to be over so the organizing and the cleaning up could begin. I was even convinced that the characters in the movie were feeling the very same thing.
Then, finally, the battle was over. They started organizing and cleaning up. There was blood everywhere, countless dead, people dying from their wounds and there was no way to help them all. But the battle was over. And those who had made it through alright just looked relieved and comforted that the bad part was behind them.
